Dale
“Next Wednesday, after a hard day of work at a restaurant in San Jose, Bones and I bounce back into the Plough at seven p.m.. Dale is sitting at a table with Maggie and her child (a little girl, four years old) and two men. She comes to the bar between Bones and me. We all talk for a while. I go to the bathroom and she tells Bones she likes me much. He tells this to me a few minutes later as she goes to the bathroom. Then he leaves, telling me I should ‘go for it’.
She returns, sits by me and we begin to get acquainted. We talk of France (where we’d both been), music, our shared interests, the ‘Talking Heads’. We drink three pints each over one and a half hours and set a date for next Saturday.
Hard work through Friday, pensive on Dale. She is beautiful in body and face and carriage, a little shorter than me, not quite petite, small arms, tan, very lady-like mannerisms, language and voice, (she had the most beautiful and feminine voice of any woman I ever met, complimented even more by her Southern accent. She grew up in Pensacola, Florida), charming smiles and glances, polite. Perhaps ten years older than me with some aspects of her face verging on a look of middle-age, yet still eminently pretty. She has a refinement and consideration for others of someone in middle-age, yet a grasping after youthful sprees and parties and drugs, even more than I, who am somewhat disenchanted with that scene at present though I seem to continue in it prodigiously”.
Now comes the description of the Saturday night and Sunday which I’ll copy verbatim, though it contains a great deal of ellipsis, as if written in haste. I’ll fill it out where necessary.
“Sat. night, a half gram of speed, a new electric bass, (my ‘Dan Electro’ six string bass) and amp, bought in the afternoon for four hundred and thirty dollars. We practice instruments 4–5. Then me him and Laurel to Bone’s party. (It was Mike who convinced me to buy it, but bad timing in retrospect) I stopped at the Plough at three. Dale was on the back-roof sunbathing. (She had recently moved into one of the two one-bedroom apartments on the lower floor behind the Plough), with Dan and two other girls. Dale says she has been ill, cannot do powders, but will drop by later. Party at Bones’ dull, with old country music and no chance for me and Mike to play, but we are all high on speed. Me and Mike and Laurel somewhat rudely leave to my pad. Dale calls at 9:30. I pick her up in my car. Brigitte and Laurel are at my house. I offer Brigitte speed before getting Dale and she accepts to party. (her first time. Ed, her husband being away on business) Dale and albums are picked up, we return, and Dale does drugs right away, no restraint, beer, music. Steve comes over and then John Fyzer, (both very talented guitarists with great original songs). A great party, teaching music to Brigitte and Dale, intimate talk with Brigitte on French lit. I lend her my Amiel and we read some together, Dale sitting beside us listening. All this while Steve and John are playing songs by turns on their acoustic guitars to five or six others in the room (Dan, Mike, Laurel and others), and they’re sounding great that night. I show my child’s poem to Brigitte and Dale then the three of us sneak off to Brigitte’s apartment, (forty feet away) to listen to a David Bowie album and do more lines and have glasses of a bottle of Ed’s fine whisky, which he kept for special occasions. (Dale had actually dated David Bowie in her youth, in London) Steve comes in and joins our talk. I put on Rachmaninoff album, 2nd symphony. More lines for all, then I’m sitting on floor on pillows in Brigitte’s living room beside Dale and explaining to her Brigitte’s dilemma, and my purely neighborly concern for her”.
Brigitte had been living next to us a year now, watching us party and have fun, our doors always wide open. Ed rarely drank. He would sometimes come over and watch us play poker, drink one beer and leave. Brigitte was happy with him but younger by eight years and thought she might be missing out on youth. So this one night, and one night only, she let her hair down, so to speak, and joined us. If she had just one party to join, she certainly picked the right one. So I was just trying to make her feel comfortable and a part of it all. Dale had whispered in my ear earlier that I seemed to be paying a lot more attention to Brigitte and Laurel, and that she thought she was my date. But she accepted this explanation and was sympathetic, and even made good friends with Brigitte that night, which soon paid off in favors.
“Mike and Laurel come over to Brigitte’s and we do more lines. A ‘Dire Straights’ album is put on. The talk is not very good, I wishing for solid talk with Dale. John F. and Dan Burman are still back in my pad playing away. They split at 3 a.m. We go back to my place, some music playing, some standing in the courtyard. Dale and I decide as dawn breaks to go to Mt. Tamalpais and the beach for the day. We talk and decide to go alone. Laurel heads off to work. We do more lines. It’s 7 a.m. and time slows, the others, (Mike and Steve) still playing music with Brigitte their lovely audience.
Dale and I leave. We drive across the San Rafael bridge and my car breaks down right on the other side. The transmission fails right near a large empty parking lot at Larkspur landing, on the water next to a marina. We’re able to coast into it and park just next to some benches and a telephone booth, (an amazingly lucky place to break down). The whole area is deserted and beautiful in the cool morning sun. The fog has just lifted.
We call my house and Steve answers. He and Mike and Brigitte are still there. (Another piece of great fortune, as it was an hour later and they could have easily left or gone to the more comfortable living room at Brigitte’s, which was not so improbable, as they were still totally ripped on speed, we’d done so many lines). They agree to come and rescue us in Steve’s truck and also bring bathing suits. I’m not upset about the broken car, taking it lightly and happy to be with Dale. We stroll about Larkspur landing and talk intermittently for an hour, sometimes just standing and admiring the views”.
It was here that I really began to fall in love with Dale. We were walking hand in hand beside the bay, in a park like setting we had all to ourselves. She praised me for not being upset about the car, as most men would have been. She said this endearingly, heartfelt. (And I think this same hour she truly began to fall in love with me, or at least admire me, for my rising above petty concerns and enjoying a Zen-like moment). Of those who read the Classics very few take their Stoic lessons to heart. But I did and practiced their precept of calm in the face of adversity. She saw this with wonder and realized how rare I was.
I was truly happy that hour, alone with her and Steve and friends on the way to rescue us with no inconvenience at all, in fact an improvement to our plans. I told her I’d taken to heart the philosophy I’d read, that I considered possessions like my car as accessories to life, the main point of which is to supremely enjoy the moment. I’m sure I was eloquent because I could see the admiration in her smile, which all the more entranced and enchained my heart.
“Steve arrives, the five of us drive up the winding road to mount Tam. Dale and I stroll alone. It was a beautiful early morning, with far, clear horizons, no crowds yet on Tam. The others sunbathe, Mike ranting and raving, drinking wine, very burnt. Dale and I sit and talk another half hour. Then we set off for the beach and luckily discover an obscure one”.
I’m not sure if we ‘discovered’ it or Steve knew of it. He knew this coastline intimately from his Patty Hearst days, when he sheltered her for a year and hid her from all the world looking for her, and they fell in love. He told us this crazy story that he and her were rescued from the rising tide on a similar cliff-enclosed beach by park rangers, dropping them a rope ladder to climb up, and the rangers helped lift Patty up by hand at the top, and none of them recognized her, though her face was all over the tabloids for months. She had dyed her hair black, Steve said, but it was still ironic to be helped by rangers and let go with a ‘thank you, have a nice day’.
But on this day, being a sunny, holiday Sunday, Highway One was thick with traffic, all beach goers, in both directions, almost to a crawl. Yet Steve pulls the truck over in what looks like a long row of steep cliffs.
“We walk a long path, a steep climb down and find a small cove beach, all to ourselves, wonderful swimming, exploring the cliffs and sunbathing. At 2 p.m. we leave for the long drive back to Berkeley through S.F. Dale is now feeling very ill with the ride and we make numerous stops for her. In S.F., when she’s feeling worse, worried about her heart and breathing, I hold her hand, under pretense of taking her pulse, and she squeezes mine, tightly. Across the bay we go to ‘Kips’ outdoor patio for pizza and beer, then home. Steve and Dale and I go to the Spanish restaurant beside the Starry Plough, ‘La Pena” for some empanadas. We drink three pitchers of beer, one at the bar and two at the table. We get very bombed and all talk well, I exchanging smiles and touches with Dale. Then to her place for half a bottle of Tequila at nine p.m., I talking Roman history, perhaps impressively, though I don’t recollect. Then home with Steve driving. He’s very high and happy, slamming his fist hard on the dashboard like a kid and driving fast, from the pure happiness, 'the best day of his life' he says to me”. I'm pretty sure it could be summed up as the best day in my life also. It was miraculous.
As I write this account of Dale thirty-two years ago, (it's now forty years) it’s amazing how clearly I can see her in my imagination and think of her as she was then, that special day. Writing the past is truly reliving the past.
