by Carol Selick
Fifteen minutes later, we were in Old Town. It was Sunday, and the sidewalk was teeming with hippies, gays, and excitement. There were head shops, boutiques and plenty of bars. We spotted a neon sign for a club called The Blues Cellar and went to check it out.
“What time does the music start?” I asked the sexy guy at the front door. He was dressed in tight black jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black leather vest. His thick black hair was pulled back in a long ponytail. But it was his hands that caught my eye. He had long slender fingers with four silver rings on each hand. I couldn’t stop staring at them.
“In about an hour,” he said.
“Are they any good?”
“I think so.” His mood changed and he cracked a slight smile as he opened the club door.
We ordered some burgers and fries and waited for the music to start. About an hour later, the lights dimmed and five musicians took to the small stage.
“Carol, check out the guitar player. Isn’t he the guy we talked to at the door?”
“Cool. No wonder he said the group was good.”
I was instantly blown away by the tightness of the group, which reminded me of the Paul Butterfield Electric Blues Band. But most of all, I was drawn to the soulful energy of the guitar player. I could not take my eyes off him. After an amazing first set, he and the bass player sauntered over to our table.
The guitar player placed his hands on my shoulders and leaned over. “So, how did you girls like the music?” he asked in a soft, sexy voice. My whole body felt an electric current zap through it. I couldn’t believe he remembered talking to us! I didn’t want to let on how I was feeling, so I stiffened, turned around, and smiled.
“Incredible! You didn’t tell us you were in the band,” I answered in my best flirty voice.
They sat down and introduced themselves. Carlos played guitar and Conway played bass. I moved my head towards Carlos and caught Melanie’s glance. She picked up on my signal. “You’re not from Chicago?” Conway asked, but it was more of a statement.
“Is it that obvious?” Melanie turned to ask him. I could feel her kicking me under the table. I’d have to ask her what that was supposed to mean later.
“Well, your New York accents kinda gave it away. Would you like us to show you around tomorrow?”
“Cool!” Melanie and I said together.
The next day Carlos and Conway pulled up in front of the Y in an old, beat-up, white station wagon. Carlos motioned to me to sit next to him in the back seat. I looked in his eyes and smiled. He smiled back, but something was missing. His eyes looked tired, one-dimensional. He touched my hand very gently and I felt a spark. That’s where his magic is, I thought, in those long sensitive fingers that make his guitar come alive. I wondered how old these two musician/guides were. They looked older than us, their faces thin and gaunt. Probably the late hours, I thought.
We ended up in The Old Town Ale House, which Carlos said was famous for bringing well-known folk singers to Chicago. He and Conway ordered some beers and Melanie had a glass of wine. I wasn’t into drinking, so I just had a Coke while we made small talk waiting for the music. A singer-songwriter whose name I’d never heard of was announced. A young woman about my age with long, straight, medium brown hair and bangs covering her eyebrows took a seat on a bar stool on stage and picked up her guitar. As soon as she began to sing, goosebumps ran up my arms. I was struck by the power she commanded with just her voice and guitar, singing the words of her own songs. I’d written some poems in high school and my English teacher had encouraged me to continue.
I’d taught myself to play some chords on the guitar, but the only things I ever played were from the Joan Baez or Judy Collins songbooks. I was getting tired of singing “Someday Soon” every time someone asked to hear something. The more I listened, the more I felt the desire to share my feelings, frustrations, and longings with an audience. It wasn’t a “star thing”—I just wanted to express myself and maybe strike a chord with others who felt the same way.
Why couldn’t I set my ideas to music and write my own songs, too? I knew with all my being that was what I had to do. As I walked out of the club that night, my life felt like a blank canvas waiting to be painted in wide, colorful strokes. But as time went on, I would discover that it was the gray, dark colors that changed me the most.
On the ride back to the Y, Conway invited us to their gig the following night.
“We’re catching a plane to Montana tomorrow. From there we’re going to California,” Melanie informed him.
“Bummer,” Carlos muttered and pulled me closer.
“Why don’t you guys meet us in San Francisco?” I asked.
“You have your whole life ahead of you, babe. There’s no future left for us,” he whispered in my ear.
“What do you mean? You’re not that much older?”
“We’re into some heavy shit. Can’t just break free.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed me the lines on his arm. “We’re paying the price for playing the blues.”
I’d never seen heroin tracks before and it made me sick to my stomach. So that’s why his eyes looked so dead, I thought and wondered how long it would take for his addiction to overtake his talent. I couldn’t wait to get out of the car. Carlos and Conway didn’t pressure us to spend the night. They clearly only had room in their lives for two loves, heroin and music.
That night, I picked up my guitar and wrote my first song.
Funky Fanny did her thing
On the streets of New Orleans.
Man, that chick could really sing.
Conway and Carlos liked her sound,
But they were living underground . . .
I was one song closer to my dream.
5
ALL ROADS LEAD TO CALIFORNIA
Oh Lordy, Lordy, got those Hunting Ground Blues.
Brand new territory, help me choose.
Looking for a real man, a real good man.
Montana was, well, mountainous, and watching a geyser erupt in Yellowstone Park was not the kind of eruption that Melanie and I were looking for. We got on a bus to LA and sat behind a man who coughed non-stop the whole way. We didn’t smoke during the entire ride and swore we would quit for good, but conveniently forgot when we got off the bus in Los Angeles.
The Sunset Strip turned out to be a major disappointment. It definitely wasn’t our scene. There was a phoniness about it. Just a bunch of hippie wannabes—chicks with striped, department store bell-bottoms, and perfect hair standing on street corners trying to attract the guys in expensive sports cars cruising up and down the Strip. I felt like I was on a movie set, but this wasn’t the movie I wanted to be in.
San Francisco was where it was at. Melanie and I splurged on a rental car and headed up Highway 101. Staring out the passenger window, I was struck by how uniquely beautiful the West Coast was, with mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. It was fertile ground to spawn new ways of living and revolutionary ideas that skipped over the backward middle of the country on their way to the East Coast. I felt hopeful and excited.
“Let’s stop here! I think the beaches are free,” Melanie suggested as we drove toward a sign for Carmel. We parked the car, jumped out, rolled up our jeans, flung off our sandals, and splashed our feet in the cool refreshing waters of the Pacific. It was official! Now we were in California!
A few hours later we zig-zagged up Lombard Street to the one famous place Melanie knew about in San Francisco: City Lights Bookstore. She filled me in about how it was started by Beat Generation poets like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the 1950s and how the government had tried to ban their books because they wrote about sex and homosexuality and used obscenities. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. All our friends said fuck, fucked-up and fucking far out.
I spotted a community bulletin board as we walked into the store. Ther
e were rooms for rent in San Francisco, but a summer rental in Berkeley caught my eye. “Berkeley’s just over the Bay Bridge - we could go to San Francisco anytime we wanted. Besides, we might meet cool people from the university,” I said to Melanie as I unpinned the index card. We walked outside to find the nearest payphone. What I didn’t tell Melanie was that San Francisco seemed big and intimidating and a little scary to me.
We were in luck! The room was still available, so we drove our rental car over the Bay Bridge, and knocked on the door of a grand-looking Tudor house just a few blocks north of the Berkeley campus. I straightened out my army jacket, smoothed my hair, and stood there waiting like a hopeful mess. A hunky guy with wet, curly brown hair opened the door, holding a towel precariously around his waist.
“Hi, I’m Daniel. Come on in. Sorry, I just got out of the shower!” He flashed us a smile that seemed more directed at Melanie, who coyly smiled back. I sensed an immediate attraction between them. We walked into a huge living room with two worn couches and a big stone fireplace.
“That’s Mark,” Daniel said. A guy with a scruffy blond beard and bloodshot blue eyes sprawled on one of the sofas was unclogging his hash pipe with a pipe cleaner. He didn’t bother to get up, just nodded and stared in our direction. Was I being paranoid and insecure, or did he stare a little longer at Melanie?
Uh oh. Both guys are digging Melanie. She was such a knockout that I hardly got a second look, although I knew I was attractive in a different, hip, spacey kind of way. My thick dark hair flowed down past my shoulders in soft, frizzy waves, and I often wore off the shoulder peasant blouses that showed off my slim arms.
“It’s just the two of you?” I asked Daniel.
“Rob’s in class. Wanna check out the room?” he pointed upstairs to a large loft area that overlooked the entire living room.
It was a decent-sized room at the end of the hall. A trundle bed draped with an Indian print bedspread gave off a faint scent of incense.
“We’ll take it!” Melanie and I said in unison.
We learned later that Daniel was a pre-med student from Sacramento and Mark was a political science major from a wealthy Boston family. Whenever they weren’t studying or screwing, they mainly laid around, watched old movies, and got stoned.
The third guy was the least cool of the bunch. Rob was short and wiry with reddish-blond hair, cut short. A philosophy major from Brooklyn with very strong opinions about nutrition, he ate a whole tomato with his dinner every night, convinced it was the key to good health.
The days took on a laid-back rhythm. The sun was always shining, the temperature never dipped below seventy-five degrees, and hunky guys with tight jeans and flowing hair were paraded everywhere. It was as if Peter Pan’s Lost Boys had all flocked to Berkeley, just waiting to be found. I was in hippie heaven!
One of my favorite spots was the steps of the Student Center on the Berkeley campus by the fountain in Sproul Plaza. It was a great place to sit and check out the musicians holding impromptu jam sessions, playing guitars, wooden flutes, and conga drums. Some days the Hare Krishnas with their shaved heads and orange robes danced around the fountain, shaking their tambourines. I sometimes quietly chanted along with the chorus, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare Krishna.
One day I spotted an interesting-looking guy sitting a few steps in front of me. I could only see the back of his pony-tailed head and the red handkerchief tied around his neck, but I was instantly drawn to him. His aura had a kind of magnetism to it. He must have felt my eyes on him because he turned around and looked right back. I could feel myself blush. Something in his clear blue eyes radiated inner peace. Both of us turned away, but for me he was a living, breathing symbol of what I was searching for—a path to spiritual enlightenment and peace.
I’d been reading The Autobiography of a Yogi and Castaneda’s Don Juan series ever since I’d got to California. I still needed outside validation to know I was on the right path, and yet realized that it was ultimately up to me to discover my true karma. Melanie was following a different path. She’d let the chemistry she felt for both Daniel and Mark take over, and never knew if one had told the other. According to her, sex was to be celebrated and different partners kept things spicy.
It all caught up with her one afternoon when she ran into our bedroom in a panic.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking up from my book.
“I can’t go downstairs! You’ve gotta do something. Daniel and Mark are hanging out and so is that guy I met at the bookstore. You remember, right? I think his name was John. And some other dude I slept with, too! What should I do?”
I lay down Be Here Now on the paisley bedspread and tried to stifle a laugh. This was something that could only happen to Melanie! Ironically, being here now was the last place I wanted to be, but I had to help my friend.
“Just go down there and make something up,” Melanie begged in a desperate voice. “Tell them I’m sick. Yeah, that’s it! Tell them I have a stomach bug and I can’t stop throwing up,” she urged.
“Okay. I wish I had your problems!”
All eyes were on me as I walked into the living room and told Melanie’s fan club that she was sick and couldn’t come down. They looked bummed out but were cool about it. She hadn’t committed to any of them, it was just casual sex. No big deal, just part of living in Berkeley.
Hitchhiking was the only way to get around. Hippies lined up on University Avenue waiting to get rides into San Francisco or beyond. I wasn’t afraid to hitchhike on my own, but I did have one hairy experience on a ride back from San Francisco when a middle-aged Chinese man picked me up. I immediately got bad vibes, but it was too late to get out since we were already at the entrance to the Bay Bridge.
He had his car radio on and the newscaster was talking about a Manson sighting that didn’t pan out the day before. A few weeks earlier Charles Manson and his followers had murdered Sharon Tate in LA. It was all over the news, every gory and gruesome detail.
“Manson, I knew him,” bad vibes guy said.
Who would brag about that? I wondered. This guy is seriously messed up.
“Uh-huh,” is all I said, looking straight ahead and all the while praying, God please protect me! Please let me make it back alive!
Then out of left field, he said, “I might be short, but I can kick butt if I have to. Feel my muscle. Go ahead, feel it!” He suddenly bent his elbow and made a fist, his other hand on the steering wheel. I closed my eyes and felt the biceps of his tattooed arm. I was hoping it was the only hard body part he wanted me to touch. I could already see the headlines: “Manson follower throws Jersey girl over Bay Bridge for refusing to squeeze his biceps.”
As soon as we crossed the bridge, I jumped out of the car at the first stoplight. Shaken and scared, I stayed in Berkeley for the next few days and chilled out. I spent my mornings listening to musicians jamming at Sproul Plaza and my afternoons at Cody’s Bookstore on Telegraph, perusing the latest books and the latest hunks in the New Age section. I was tempted to buy a book on casting spells but chickened out. Black magic was way too heavy and I didn’t want to kiss any frogs and turn them into Prince Charming. With my luck, I’d screw it up and end up turning Prince Charming into a frog! Besides, I needed to know I could attract a guy using my own powers.
Except for the Fillmore West and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco wasn’t the happening place I thought it would be. Haight Ashbury’s cool factor had faded, and its Flower Children had been picked over like a wilted bouquet. Many of the original hippies had moved north to start communes in Marin and Mendocino counties. Others followed the Yellow Brick Road all the way to Eugene, Oregon—The Emerald City. The only ones left were druggies who lived in the brightly painted Victorian houses on the Haight. Word on the street was the speed freaks lived in the purple house, the heroin addicts in the blue, and the coke heads in the grey house with the pink trim. I’d arr
ived a year too late.
“Daniel told me about a nude beach in Marin. Wanna go?” Melanie asked me a few days later while I was still laying low. I could see she was making an effort to perk me up, but I wasn’t ready to come out of my funk.
“I don’t know if I can take my clothes off in front of a bunch of strangers. I don’t feel very sexy. Maybe because I’ve never had sex!”
Melanie must have sensed that I was feeling down about not meeting anyone.
“Oh, come on Carol! It’ll be fun. Besides, you don’t have to take all your clothes off. Anyway, once you get there, you might change your mind.”
“Well, okay. I need a change of scenery.”
We hitched rides with a Berkeley professor named Bentley and an out-of-work musician who claimed he knew the Grateful Dead. They acted like perfect gentlemen and I was able to put my scary bridge experience a little farther in the rearview mirror.
“What’s the big deal about this place?” I asked Melanie as we walked on the sand at Muir Beach.
“I wonder why everyone’s walking over the rocks down there? Let’s check it out.” Melanie headed off, looking determined. There was nothing left for me to do but follow.
When we got to the other side of the rocks, Whoa! What a sight! I didn’t know where to look or not look. Nude sunbathers were nonchalantly hanging out everywhere, and acting like nothing was hanging out! For them, it was just a typical day at the beach—throwing frisbees, swimming, jogging, and sunbathing.
“Let’s start with our tops,” Melanie suggested. I guess I could do that. I’m proud of my breasts. We took off our t-shirts and bathing suit tops and put them on our towels. I tried acting cool as we walked on the beach. A muscular guy with a deep tan stopped to talk to Melanie, and I quickly walked back to my towel to sunbathe and body gaze. I was uncomfortable and so uptight that I quickly hooked the back of my bathing suit top and put on my grey GWU t-shirt. No point in getting sunburned, I told myself, but the truth was I felt too exposed both physically and emotionally. Maybe the next time we came here I’d do it, but that depended on other things changing. My virginity was still up for grabs.