I worked the summer of 1973 at an office of the New England Telephone Company. My father was the head engineer for the new computer section. My job entailed updating the cable lay-outs on the vellum sheets for the autumn transfer to the massive IBM main frame.
Three months of 40 hours a week. $5/hr. My wages helped to pay my college tuition of $1500. My mother banked over $2000. She said the other $500 was for an emergency.
My overtime left a surplus of $400 and I decided to spend the last weeks of August traveling across the USA. A college friend, Nick, was in Oklahoma, visiting his girlfriend, Vickie. He had a BMW. His cousin lived south of LA. A week in Seal Beach before a drive up the coast to San Francisco.
A good plan.
I celebrated my departure at the Hi-Hat Lounge. My next-door neighbor in Bug Village scored some hash. I drank beer till closing. Andy and I bought a small pizza and smoked hash at my apartment.
"Next year I'll come with you." Andy was a pianist with a funk band. The Long Islander was two years older. We played basketball at a nearby park. He beat me with ruthlessness.
"Next year is a long time away."
"So is Tulsa."
"Last exit to Tulsa." I sang the chorus to Gene Pitney's hit.
In the morning I took to trolley to Mass. Ave. I stuck out my thumb at the entrance to the Pike. A VW bug stopped for me. The driver was headed to Albany.
30 hours later I was in Oklahoma.
Nick had bad news.
Two days earlier his girlfriend and he had visited the State Fair in Oklahoma City. Passing the roller coaster his eyes drifted off the road and he rear-ended a truck. Parts for the damaged front end of his BMW were scarce in the Midwest. A Chicago dealer was shipping the parts via Greyhound.
A week's wait at best.
Tulsa was fun and Vickie was beautiful, but I was California dreaming.
"I'm heading west."
"How?" Nick might have been a doctor's son, but he was in the same mood.
"The same way I got here." I lifted my thumb. We had a country to see. The first day of university was in two weeks. It was time to go.
Vickie dropped us on the highway. Our first ride was with a Yale student headed to LA. It was our only ride.<
Seal Beach was fun.
A greasy ocean next to the oil rigs of Long Beach.
One night we stopped at a bar. A convertible Porsche was parked in the shadows. The keys were in the ignition. Nick and I discussed stealing the sports car. He was destined for medical school and I was thinking about joining the Peace Corps. Honesty ruled our decision and we brought the keys into the bar. The driver was happy, but didn’t even buy us a beer.
The next morning we started our trip north.
Hitching through the coastal towns wasn’t easy, for LA is basically one big suburb filled with crackers. They shouted out threats. By sunset we had reached LAX.
The beginning of the PCH.
Planes were taking off every minute. Nick and I abandoned the lure of the road for a midnight flight to San Francisco. $15 one way. Our friends met us at the airport. We saw the Grateful Dead in Berkeley and strippers on the Barbary Coast. My money was running low. Nick could fly back, but decided to hitchhike with me across the West to Tulsa.
Our starting point was Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. A hundred hippies competed for a ride. A Pinto rolled along the curb with the window open. The driver was interviewing prospective passengers. None of them made the cut.
“You want a ride to Denver?” The woman was 25. She was a long-haired beauty. Her daughter was in the crowded backseat. The little girl was about 7. The driver explained with a southern accent, “I only have room for one.”
“You want to go?” I asked Nick, knowing he wouldn’t abandon me.
“No, what about you?”
“I have $10. If I had more than I’ll stick with you.”
This wasn’t the truth. I had $12. I was asking for a loan, but Nick hesitated and I jumped into the Pinto. It smelled of patchouli.
“I’ll see you in Boston.”
I felt like a shit for ditching out on Nick, until we wound through the Sierras. The surrounding mountains were twice as high as Mount Washington. Someplace east of the Donner Pass she told her story.
She was leaving her husband. He was in the Cockettes. A queer transvestite show group. Gays were queers for straight men back then.
"Are you gay?"
"No." I had danced with more than a few men at the 1270 Club in Boston. They pawned me off to fag hags as a homo on the wire. To them every man was gay, if the situation was right.
"Good, I've seen enough gays to last me a lifetime or at least until I hit the East Coast." She was a fag hag. Straight men scared her. It probably had something to do with her Father or uncle.
Marilyn let me drive the night across Nevada. Her daughter slept in the back. her name was Merlyn. Her mother and I talked for hours. She was from Atlanta. Her father preached the Bible. Her mother drank gin. She had run away from home in 1967.
San Francisco and the Summer of Love.
The September air in the high desert was cold and the sky dotted with the stars of the Milky Way. A Boulder radio station played Slade and Deep Purple. My eyes had shut several times since crossing the state line into Utah. First the right, then the left. It was a dangerous game and I pulled into the Bonneville Salt Flats rest stop well past midnight.
“I can’t drive any further.”
"I was surprised you made it this far."
I got out of the crammed Pinto and stretched my muscles.
A friend and I had crashed here with the previous summer on a westward journey. Nothing had changed in the past year. Trucks thundered past the rest stop. The flatness stretched to the horizon. Speed demons challenged the limits of man and machine on the evaporated salt lake. The most famous was Craig Breedlove. His Spirit of America broke the sound barrier at 600.601 mph in 1963. I stood on the firm crust and looked north.
No one raced at night.
Dawn was 6 hours away.
Marilyn looked in the back seat. Merlyn was out cold.
“You want to sleep outside?”
“Yeah.” Not really because I suspected for a few seconds that she would steal my things once I was unconscious. “You want to sleep with me?”
“Sure, it’s been a while since I had a man.”
I hadn’t expected this response and we had sex on my sleeping bag.
Twice.
Several trucks caught our shapes in their headlights. There was no place to hide. No trees. No bushes. They blew their horns. I tore off my clothes and we laid naked under the desert stars. It was magic, although headlines caught her daughter watching us. She smiled for a second, as if she had seen a familiar mirage and dropped out of sight.
I didn't mention this to Marilyn. She was lost in lust. The wetness on my loins was more than I had experienced with other women. it wasn't until the dawn that I noticed that my ride was having her period. My sleeping bag was ruined and my jeans weren't much better. She said she was sorry and we stopped in Little America to shower.
Marilyn and her daughter in the Women’s room and me in the Men’s room. I was clean, although my jeans looked like they belonged to a butcher.
Late in the evening we reached Cheyenne. Marilyn turned south to Colorado. She was heading to Boston in the fall. I gave her my number.
“I’ll see you in Boston maybe.” Some of her college friends were living in Brighton.
“Sure.” I watched her drive away thinking I’d never see her again. I was wrong. One month later Marilyn and Merlyn showed up at my apartment building. She was friends with Andy's girlfriend. I had told him all about the episode. Marilyn had her daughter sleep with them. We shared my bed. She fought off my every move. It had something to do with her period.
Nick was surprised to see us together at a bar.
"Nice."
"Indeed." It looked good, but we never had sex again. Much as I wanted and I’ve never been to the Bonneville Salts Flats again either, except in my dreams and in those I am still 20, for your youth lasts forever when you were young and that's something I never intend to forget.
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