Something like my little room
By choosing this small room everyone could tell I wanted to be alone. And it worked its magic. I had none all summer, except one, the proverbial John Seebach, (like the prodigal son). He visited me one afternoon there, sitting on the bed that sagged under his weight while I had the only chair. He wanted to go to Sweden for two months. He had friends there he could stay with. He, like me, had been doing too much speed all Spring, (which I’d given him to sell and support himself). He looked haggard and in need of a break.
I immediately agreed to provide him the necessary cash, feeling guilty but also glad to help my best friend. I gave Louie the money for the round-trip ticket which he handled and handed him the cash as he got on the plane. To do it any other way he might have changed his mind and spent the money on some binge. He was gone within a week and had a great trip. Unfortunately, he came back with Hepatitis, (he never told us how) which took months for him to get over before he could even sip a beer again. But he did recover, which we saw as his drinking and drug use slowly returned over the next year, to bullish new heights.
Bones too was worn out with overindulgence. Our trip to L.A. a few weeks earlier in a rented, red convertible was like ‘Fear and Loathing’, a week-long binge. It took Larry at the Plough one night to point this out to me, the hurtful side of my ‘largess’. And I did retract after that from giving freely to every request. My other friends like Bruno and Jim and Louie self-moderated themselves and never asked me for anything. We partied every few weeks, just like in former years, when we felt like it.
What a noble quality it is, when one of a group suddenly becomes rich, never to ask for anything and live on the same terms of comradery as when we were all poor together, even when knowing that to ask would be to receive. Then again, when John or Bones asked, our friendships were so rich and close it wasn’t a request, it was allowing me to return the favor, which made me happy.
I became myself again, much happier and woman-free for the next seven months. All my dealings with women in that period were dates or trips. There was ‘M’ and Dale and even Lindsey, (and a few other late night, barely remembered girls, mostly picked up at Bone’s after lots of drugs) but no strings attached, lasting one night, and enjoyed it to the fullest. It was sex and mutual respect, with our heads above water, not under it.
How easy it is to fall into exaggeration when summing up one’s life. I label one period ‘miserable’ and another ‘happy’, when the truth is there was a median to both, when you add up the good and the bad, into a nearly straight line that was and is the whole tenor of my, and most people’s lives.
With the four months at Dave’s, I have to admit a remarkable decline in social visits (two in fact). But then a short, crazy, wild-eyed roommate in dirty long johns holding an automatic Uzi was not at all conducive to social soirees. But even in those months I drove off once or twice a month to my old haunts. In the three months with Lindsey on 14th, we had more visitors. My closest friends paid a few visits. Part of that infrequency was due the five mile distance from Berkeley.
Looking back through my journals, (which only recorded fragments) I see that in March alone I spent an all-nighter at Bruno’s with John and Lindsey. Martin visited twice. I met Louie at the Med, Bill too, more than once. I did an electrical job with Bones and went to an all night party in S.F. with Steve and his sister and friends. These are just the recorded events. John Seebach and Jim H. stopped by several times, staying the whole afternoon. Then finally Mike with his two, one minute visits.
And then there was May, strikingly attractive, kindly, and wanting to get high with us in a social way, wanting to talk, with her many 48 hour long stays. But I think she visited us so much at that time because she saw we were in trouble and needed help. She talked to us both, separately and together, for hours and calmed us down in our over-heated arguments. The fact that she never stopped by after that, when I was alone, I take as an act on her part, of ‘complicated virtue’.
She knew we weren’t compatible as lovers. We were too different. But she also knew I would do anything for her, supporting her as one of my dearest friends. I could never have turned her away from my door if she’d knocked. One glance into her imploring eyes and that would be impossible. I was mesmerized by her lovely presence and she knew it. I just hope she didn’t spend too many nights in some dark room, crying for hours and without a friend. But I think she did, like many other fair ladies, ill-treated and abused, in part because of their beauty, throughout history.
When I finished the affair with Lindsey, my old journals come to life again. It was as if they were a surrogate to women and love affairs, and they were.
“May 17th: I was sitting with John Seebach one mid-day at the breakfast nook in Mike H.’s house. We fell into a spirited literary conversation with all sorts of ideas and examples popping into my head when, all of a sudden, Margaret comes by wearing heavy perfume. Our conversation immediately ends.
“How fickle and rare great thoughts are (both solitary and those born in company). They need just the right environment to come into one’s head and we never sense a thing when they don’t. I often surprise myself with at least one good thought when I sit down and push myself to fill a page in my journal — and how odd it seems that the good phrase might never have come into existence if I hadn’t pushed myself. Then I thought it equally odd, with this knowledge that I didn’t write more often.
“The very nature and heart of any journal appears to be an exercise in greater and deeper honesty, basically a window into oneself. And those that try to limit this window’s view or tint the glass rosy or curtain off sections, will only mangle and limit the journal and scar its portrait, ultimately deceiving themselves”.
I go on to equate a journal to a mistress that steals time from one’s social hours and friendships so much so that others can even be jealous of it, as Boswell’s wife was jealous of his journals. Then I compare it to a court of law, where the writer and his friends are put on trial, questioned and stripped in no friendly manner and then judged and sentenced. I even mention that some of my friends told me I was too judgmental, too much that is, for their comfort and perhaps even mine. But I was used to it in my own case and thought if I might lose some over-sensitive friends, those left would be harder and more valuable ones.
It’s been this way all my life. My friendships have been intense and honest. Those I’ve met and either scared off or offended have come and gone and, as far as they affected my feelings, are non-entities, faces from a long-ago scene I remember without emotion.
