Ditch Out in Berkeley - 1973

May 30, 2024 Scan Production was screening our movie OCTOBER CROW. More than fifty people, mostly young fans or Brigette Lundy-Paine aka Jack Haven were spawl across the large third floor apartment, I told the crowd we were waiting for a friend and related my tale of abandoning him in Berkeley for a ride in a Pinto with Marilyn and her daughter. Making hippie love on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Waking with the dawn. Covered by the brine of a dead sea. Dropping me off in Cheyenne. Her coming to Boston and Ann Marie cockblocking me. I spoke of over a half-century of friendship.

Several minutes later I introduced Neil the audience, who responded to his entrance with a rousing applause as my medical saviour and legendary traveler.

Honor To Doctor Nick

My longtime friend Doctor Neil Nepola was honored for his service to Staten Island.

We met in European History 101 back in 1970.

He married a beautiful wife, raised a loving family, and remains one of my dearest friend.

Back in 1973 Neil and I were standing on University Avenue in Berkely. A Ford Pinto driven by a comely brunette stopped to offer one of us a ride. Her daughter was asleep in the back. Neil said go and I went with Marilyn. She and I made love on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

He is a true friend.

October Crow Screening

Dr Neil Nepola.

Three nights ago an audience of fifty young peple showed up for the first screening of OCTOBER CROW. The crowd were mostly tgere for Brigette who is a star. But my dear friend of fifty-four years was drivinf from Staten Island. He was running late.

To stall tge impatience of the young, I regaled the audience with a tale of how Neil and I had hitchhiked across the USA in late August 1973, ending up trying to catch a ride to the East Coast on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Scores of hippies bound for colleges across America after another Summer of Love in the Bay Area competed for a lift. Cars and vans stopped every thirty minutes to pick up a traveler. Once a math major in university I calculated our waiting time. At least a day. My first economics class at Boston College started in four days. Getting there on time looked unlikely. I only had $23. Neil, could have flown, but he hadn't wanted to abandon me.

A few hours later a crapped out Pinto driven by a frazzled mother with a young daughter crammed in a backseat packed with what looked like all their possessions stopped and asked if one of us wanted a ride to Denver. Neil shrugged and said, "You go. You have to finish college."

"Are you sure?"

Neil was leaving the States for med school in the Phillipines two weeks later.

"Yeah, I'll see you in Boston,"

I jumped in the Pinto and we drove East. Marilyn had left her husband, a dancer in the Cockettes, a transvestite dance troupe. She had a friend in Denver. I took over the wheel. Her daughter was quiet in the back. Once she fell asleep, Marilyn joined her and I drove through the night, stopping once for gas in Reno. When we reached the Bonneville Salt Flats, I stopped at a desolate rest area. Neither had anymore drive in us. Her daughter asleep in the Pinto, we crashed in my sleeping bag. That night we made hippie love. At sunrise we awoke veneered by the dead lake's brine. Hours later we showered in Little America. Later that afternoon Marilyn dropped me in Cheyenne and turned south to Denver, saying she'd meet me in Boston.

Doctor Nepola showed up a day later at my house in Bug Village.

"So?"

"Yes."

"Good, because I would have been really pissed if you hadn't."

Forever friends.

ps Marilyn showed two weeks later.

With her daughter. I thought hell yeah. Instant hippie family, except my next door neighbors called her name. They had gone to college together. Shocked she and her boyfriend Andy was there. Shocked was I when she accepted their offer to crash with them, realizing I had been cock blocked. The young audience were gobsmacked by the tale.

Last night Andy's son was in attendance.

Neil was greeted with a standing O.

A small word and a long life.

ps the screening was a success.

Several minutes later when I introduced Neil the audience rousing applauded as my medical saviour and legendary traveler. Then the lights dimmed and the screen filled with the image of Alex standing by a grave.

The first seconds of October Crow.

Seventy nine minutes to go.

ps everyone loved the movie. Even Doctor Nepola. Then again what was there not to like.

August 11, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

83 BY PETER NOLAN SMITH

You peple, you know who you are Ersatz poets,neo-anti heroes Micmicking serpents and lizards With your black leater skin. Importnat that's how you feel Making the scene in your bars CBGBs, Max's and any dive with $1 beers. Your fans enjoy your standing against the bar They jerk off your ego. They fistfuck your Id and they love pissing on your super-ego. Freud knew you like it that way He had no idea about all the rest.

Your nights possess neither intelligence, courage, nor heart According to the 'Silent Majority'. We are smarter than to vacation at malls Braver having left your towns without any light at night. We are staying here until here is not here any longer.

This East Village is not for forever. The streets have seen Jazz, Beats, Hippies, Glitter The sidewalks crowded with the 'Us' of now and then. Our shadows covered the pavement.

The tide will ebb

When will be not soon but not long too. We dregs, we blights, we unwanted will be washed away By the rising waters of the economy And pulled from our lives to live as the 'not us'

Except as memories And rotting leathers in the closet Black jeans the color of coal All to say we stood here once.

FOTO BY EDWARD GRAZDA 1970S

Most of those people are dead or exiled from the city by choice.

A few of us wander the streets. I see them from time to time at museum or gallery openings, dinners, and rarely at bars. We keep to ourselves, although we are often asked by young people about that Era of Errors. A few years ago I attended the Mudd Club reunion. Scores of old punks and New Wavers shambled unsteadily through the crowd in search of a long-lost face. Enrico from Springfield Mass was holding some blow. I inhaled a rail and he arranged an interview with my hillbilly ex-girlfriend Alice, Michael Holman of Grey, and myself. The filmmaker asked, "Did you think those times were special?"

I was surprised to heasr them both said the late-70s and early-80s were the same as now and swifuly interjected, "Not special? I agree that the city was dirty and broke and dangerous, but it was out city and it didn't belong to the bankers, investors, and police likenowadays. We were free and that's why we came to places like the Mudd Club, Tier 3, the Club 82. To be us and I'll always be grateful for those years. They weren't the best of times, but they were far from them.

Later I apologized to Alice for all my wrongs.

"That was a long time ago." She was a TV actress and I was working at a metal shop.

"Yes, a long time ago."

Reading these journals a long time ago is almost today.

LITTLE AMERICA IN HOT WATER by Peter Nolan Smith

In September 1973 Nick and I stood on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley with a horde of other hippies flocking home after a California summer. Nick was headed to Oklahoma, where his BMW had been repaired after a crash in Tulsa. My destination was Boston to complete my final year of university.

I sat on my bag and surveyed a road map of the USA.

Our paths would separate either in Cheyenne or Denver and I pointed that out to Nick.

"Wyoming is one-third the way across the country." Nick glanced at the map and lit a cigarette.

"Looks a long way from here." No one was stopping for the hippies.

"We can crash in a hotel."

"I don't think so." Staying at a hotel tonight was out of my budget. "You want to lend me $50."

"Not right now." He had about $100. "But once we get to Tulsa, sure."

"Tulsa's out of my way."

"Not yet."

"You're right about that." I stuck out my thumb, hoping to get a ride coast to coast.

A battered Ford Maverick stopped at each set of hitchhikers. Each one shook their heads. A woman with long brown hair was behind the wheel. A young girl sat beside her. The small car was packed with bags. It rolled up to us and the driver said, "I'm going to Denver. I have space for one person. Either of you want to come with me? I need someone to help with the driving."

"Nick?"

The woman was attractive.

Her daughter looked scared of me.

"You want me to take the ride?" Nick's girlfriend was waiting in Tulsa. Vickie was a tall blonde. He didn't have to be anywhere for two weeks.

"Not really, I have to start school in four days. There's no way I'll make it, if I go to Tulsa."

"So you want to ditch me?"

"I only have $20." The cross-country trip took at least four days and $5 a day was starvation rations.

"Go. I'll see you in Boston." His smile was a green light and I threw my bag in the back seat of the Maverick.

The woman's name was Marilyn. She told me her story within ten minutes. Marilyn was leaving San Francisco, because her husband had joined the gay dance group THE COCKETTES.

"He's more a woman than me."

"Mommy didn't like his boyfriends." The daughter had seen too much for an eight year-old.

"We're going to see a friend, Dorothy, in Denver, then stay with her for a month before heading out to Boston."

"I'm from Boston." I had a cold-water apartment in Brighton's Bug Village. "If you need a place to crash, then you can crash with me."

"Cool." The daughter liked my hair.

We drove over the Sierras and crossed Nevada at the car's top speed of 92 MPH.

That night we stopped at a rest area in the Bonneville Salt Flats. A few semi-trailers were parked in the desolation. The salt pans stretching in every direction shone under a crescent moon.

Marilyn put her daughter in a sleeping bag, then took out a joint. We smoke the weed and admired the stars. Trucks

"Weren't you scared asking for someone to share the driving?" I traced Orion with my finger. The belt was easy to find in the cosmos.

"I was scared, but I spent the last two years with a man who didn't want to be with a woman, because he wanted to be a woman and ended up looking like Peggy Lipton."

"From MOD SQUAD." Everyone wanted her.

"Yes, and no one touched me in that time. San Francisco is going gay. They made me feel ugly. Am I ugly?" Her voice warned of tears.

"You're not ugly." Her face was kissed by the beauty of starlight and I touched her shoulder. I knew how gays treated women. The 1270 in Boston was my secret pleasure. The boys at that gay bar passed me off to the fag hags as 'on the fence'. I stroked Marilyn's neck. "You're beautiful."

"You're only saying that for one reason." She was thinking that reason was sex and shivered under my touch.

"Two reasons." I pushed her down on my sleeping bag and looked over to her daughter. She was dead asleep.

"Which are?" Marilyn hadn't resisted my slight show of force.

"That you want it as bad as me." I unbuttoned her shirt. Her nipples were hard. I licked them.

"More," she moaned under the blessing of the stars.

And I gave her more.

The next morning I woke with the sun rising over distant mountains. I pulled up my jeans and tapped her on the shoulder.

"It's time to go." Sleeping in the open wasn't safe.

"Give me a minute."

She got her daughter up. Marilyn understood the danger. We were in the Mormon lands.

Later that day we stopped at the truck stop in Little America Wyoming. Marilyn and her daughter went into the ladies showers.

The men's section was filled with truckers. Some of them were not straight. I stepped into a shower stall and turned on the hot water. It came out cold and then hosed my back with a scalding outburst.

I hit the wall like spam chucked from a catapult.

The man in the next stall asked, "Do you need any help?"

He was only wearing a smile and suds. His cock was enormous.

"None." I had been in a hot shower before and I knew that his smile was an invitation.

I exited from the showers without toweling dry.

"You ready to go?" Marilyn and her daughter were sucking down a milk shake.

"Whenever you were."

Cheyenne was only three hours away.

Marilyn dropped me on the highway.

"See you in Boston."

"See you then."

She drove south and I headed east.

I never expected to see her again.

As usual I was wrong.