Steve, six years after we first met
I’ve been looking into the old journals and thinking how best to communicate this rich portion of my life, in many ways the richest in new experiences, on many levels. I’m trying to be linear in my chronology but have three lives going on at the same time. First, there’s my situation, my work, my material existence, easy to describe in a few sentences and the setting for all else. Secondly I have a rich new acquisition of friends, each deserving their personal description and brief history, as active players on the stage of my social life which now explodes in scope. And thirdly, (equally as important as my friends), my love life, for now it begins in earnest and my heart is transported, elated and often tossed on a stormy sea of affairs. Underlying all of these is my journal, recording these days, a fourth echelon, my own private ‘fourth estate’, a picture of my soul.
Until now I’d slept with a number of women, but never fell headlong in love. I’d felt a few pangs for Deirdre, for Suzanne, Vicky and Annie. But they lasted only days. I was too young, too juvenile for serious love and like any young child, my attentions were diverted in an instant from one bauble to the next.
Now, at twenty-eight, with several years of deeper reflection on the nature of life, women, society, social unions etc., filling many pages in my notebooks, I’d set myself up, unbeknownst to me, to fall madly in love with the first fair face that would throw me a kind look in return, and a few words suggesting the possibility of a relationship. And now, with my own place, job, money and a more mature self-confidence, it happened, repeatedly.
They say that women peak sexually at eighteen, men at twenty two. Whatever the numbers, (as everyone is different) it’s an accepted truth that girls mature into women years before boys mature into men, intellectually. That’s why La Bruyere, when he pondered the idea of the best existence possible said: “J’ai vu souhaiter d’être fille, et une belle-fille, depuis treize ans jusques à vingt-deux; et après cet âge, de devenir un homme.” “The best state is to be a man, but from 13 to 22, I would wish to be a pretty woman, then a man again.” He picked that span because women bloom in those years in every way, while boys are light years behind them. In my own maturation I was even slower, (or retarded) another six years by my intense focus on learning. But now, at twenty eight, I was ready for love.
Soon after I had my dining room table in place, the Monday night poker games that Bones had started and hosted for several years, now moved from his apartment to mine. It was just a move downstairs and to the back of the house and May felt relieved from hosting duties or having to disappear on Monday nights. In my place it became an all-out male affair, boisterous, loud, with unlimited freedom of speech and ridicule for all present, to the point of what comedians call ‘a roast’. The sound of beer cans opening and the passing around of joints was continuous. We laughed and gambled, insulted and swore at each other and dared the craziest bluffs. The bets were innocent. Typically one would be up or down twenty or thirty dollars at night’s end. A lucky night might bring in eighty. But fun was our main concern, and in that we were all winners, with everyone leaving in a glow of happiness.
All the players that summer were well known to me, except one. Bones, Eddy and Roy had been the original, core players, with Larry (the Lawrence of Berkeley), John F. (Fizz head), the red haired guitar player of our early Plough days, and now with me there, Chuck P. (more often called chuckles) became a regular, the only social event he had in his life, but a welcome and regular addition to our freak gallery.
I’m not sure how long this game went on before my place, but it continued a two full years with me, (in three locations) and another three after that with Bones again, maybe longer. It blossomed in size and fame at my place. The players increased to eight, the max for most games, and even spectators, guests, came to stand and watch us play. My door was always open, even drawing Ed out of his house on occasion, wondering what the hell was going on back there, and how people could be laughing so much.
One player I hadn’t met till then became a very close friend of mine, Steve S. He was about seven years older than Bones and me, a guitar player who had written two excellent songs and had played in a local band, (twisted kicks) for years. He was a rugged bicyclist and just as rugged a party animal. He was a house painter by day and lived just a few blocks from us on Essex street. He had a very rich and colorful past with many great stories to tell, of international fame. His older sister was one of the founding members of the Symbionesse Liberation Army, killed in that firestorm of police bullets one night in L.A., in the search for Patty Hearst, the kidnapped-turned-member of that group. But that was ten years earlier.
Now he was leading the simple life of ’wine, women and song’ and enjoying our poker games immensely, and we him.
He hadn’t been to university but was one of the best listeners I ever met. Soon we were spending late Saturday nights together, the first half carousing at the Plough, the second at my place or his talking away. When high I would sometimes go off on an historical angle and he would hear me out with his abundant curiosity, universal in its scope. I once suggested he read Herodotus and he did, the entire fat paperback I lent him. He was always the first person I thought of to invite to any party we had at my place and found several major, life-changing encounters at parties at his place.
