San Francisco Petal

Just another funny and pretty little runaway in San Francisco emitting her off-white answers to any questions you ask her: "My father's a gynecologist in Orange, that's Zip Code County, down south, and so busy with his patients. Also, I have eight what you might call siblings, and probably you do, so--

"Sometimes I wonder, I really ask myself how he takes the way I live my life up north here in San Francisco. But then I realize: He don't know." She giggled, shrugged and touched her pencil to her tongue, probably to wet it.

"It must have really bothered him, finding out about how I wasn't his innocent little thing and stuff; I mean, him being Catholic and all. But I guess I wanted him to find out, otherwise no call to have that kid in my own bed at home with me and everything, especially since Daddy used to come into my room sometimes to plant a kiss on my lips before he made early-morning rounds at the hospital. That's what he was doing that Sunday morning, I suppose. Wow."

She twisted her little head at me over her blue Mexican Marine shirt. "What you thinking?"

"From what you say and how you are, I suspect he knows about your life."

She gazed pityingly at me--that special pity of the 22-year-old countercultural star for a mere orbital astroid. She was slight, lithe, bendable, with freckles on her nose. The little girl in her dressed in a Mexican Marines shirt; the rest of her kept the top three buttons unbuttoned. She smelled of organic food when she breathed near me. She ate carrots for health and orgasmic potency. She dipped them in spiced oil and vinegar, low cholesterol, a shining example to all men. "Whatever he knows," she said, and she fell back into her soft accent for a cool final judgment: "He don't know."

Her temporary profession was waitress at the Natural (continued on page 251) San Francisco Petal (continued from page 135) Sun, soya and no-meat dining for philosophic dope dealers and their clientele. She wore washed-out jeans, of course; flower and butterfly patches, of course. Her shirt came from Goodwill. Those top buttons unbuttoned--good will, too. She may have looked 16, but she knew she was 22, too old to be a legal runaway, and had every right to be sexy, especially since her husband was a drag queen now. He hadn't always been, certainly not in Orange, where he had been the Sunday-morning instrument for imparting news to her daddy, but he kept trying to be more "in" in San Francisco than she was, and she was good at it. So this poor boy from San Diego State, who once planned to go to medical school, now danced and sang with the Cockettes and was the proud possessor of a terrific version of On the Good Ship Lollipop. Wilbur called himself Willi. It was so nice and Nazi and camp. Once he'd made it with a Hell's Angel. Linda shrugged. Willi was still searching.

"That's his problem," she said. "But I get along real good with his friends. They accept me. They love to fuss with my hair. Natch, I still don't know if the marriage will last."

I looked up from the menu.

"Oh, we're married legally and all. It happened when we decided to leave--a last act of ole family karma, pal. In a blaze of matrimony, and I wasn't even pregnant, nor ever intend to be. Hey, you like my hair this way, in a flip? They say it's early Fifties, but I don't remember back that far. I think I was bald then."

She was standing by my table. She was waiting to take my order for sprouts, avocado and soy paste on Black Muslim bread. As she talked, she licked her pencil at me; it was not an innocent gesture. I was charmed by her obvious desire to make me fall in love with her, whatever she thought that was, and part-way eager to oblige. I could see neither her father nor me denying Linda anything she really wanted, such as lollipops, spare cash or forgiveness.

Now she was a waitress in an organic-foods restaurant, but she was really busy trying to decide what kind of groupie to be--rock, legal, movie or money. She decided not to specialize and just be a celebrity fucker in general. It wasn't that she was a snob. She just felt turned on by power, and money and fame are power, and isn't that what it was all about?

Naturally, she had to have a sense of humor. Otherwise, why waitress in an organic, no, health-foods place, like a mere whole-grain groupie? Her sign was Capricorn. I told her mine was Exxon.

At this point, the teller of this history must stop to admit he is not merely a historian. He is connected. He has a certain responsibility. He was attracted to the girl in the Mexican Marines shirt who told cute stories of perversion, dope and troubles with her blue VW bus, and once lie found her crying in the windowless smoking room of the no-smoking organic eatery.

"What's the matter, Linda?."

"Wilbur."

"What about him?"

"That Hell's Angel. Wilbur wants to leave me."

"Well, maybe it's been heading this way, Linda----"

She was sobbing, her little heart was hurt. "Oh, I knew it would come to no good when he started to run around with Nazis. Oh, I knew it." She was bawling and there were red blotches under her eyes where, if she were older, permanent blue ones might form. "I knew those Nazis were no good, I was a history major, Frank----"

If she had been a journalism major, she'd have known that Hell's Angels are no good, either. Wilbur and his Nazi got married under an America Is Getting Soft poster that depicted two Angels soul kissing. The minister who performed the marriage used to be an Episcopal priest, and he gave lectures now on his mission to the Tenderloin. The band that played had never quite made it during the rock era; they were angry about this and played angry Frisco rock. The San Francisco Chronicle's porn editor covered the ceremony. He remarked that it might last as long as some of the marriages he used to cover for what was called the society, then women's, now people pages.

They all floated in their various highs in a meadow far up on Mount Tamalpais, the magic mountain, where the ghosts of extinct Indians--measles? syphilis? drink?--watched over the peacefully browsing Harley-Davidsons and BMWs. Insects thrummed. Birds twittered. Couples coupled.

Although her heart was broken, Linda attended the party afterward. That was brave; it was good form. Her friends expected it of her, and Willi suspected she might. OK, so what? So although her heart was broken, she didn't want to miss the party. She had rejected an offer to be matron of honor, since she was an Orange County girl, raised in the tradition of decorum, where a girl doesn't preside over her ex-husband's marriage to another man, but she wished the new conjugation well. However, she remarked to the leader of the band: "My heart is broken, man. Say, you know I worked as girl Friday for John Lennon when Yoko and he were holed up in the Miyako Hotel. Say, some people think she has like big hairy hands, but they aren't; they're just strong. I really liked her, man. I used to take them fresh o.j."

No matter; the red splotches under her eyes remained; broken heart leads to broken capillaries. Her nostrils were red, too, so if she was up, she wasn't really up, just sniffing a little coke so as to make it through the pastoral afternoon in a meadow on the heights of Marin, nearly 30 motorcycles plowing around, noise, distraction, the full 1973 Angels' Nazi production. There were no human sacrifices today, for the message they brought was love.

I was her date for the afternoon, with hopes of keeping her from despair even if her heart was broken (that's only a mental thing, it heals). I had to get used to the fact that she was completely confident of me but needed a little coke to make sure.

To enjoy the music of 30 motorcycles tearing up a meadow, driven by wild greasers stuck all over with swastikas, leather and metal, you might tend to ask a little chemical aid. I made do with only a deep-seated masochism. I suppose there was a time when I imagined joyful tumblings with Linda, because she seemed to be cute, essence of cute--quiddity of essence of cute--but now I traveled with her in a state of bemusement, merely surprised most of the time, and settling merely to find someone to surprise me. Finally I understand why girls resent men who grab at them first off, demanding bed as the reward for passing their valuable hours. The reason is that they suspect a man can be happy with a Linda, too: just because it's fun to be in her company; or, if not fun, lively; and every man seeks easy friendly funning, too, although he may settle for the distraction of a sweaty rollin the sack.

I didn't give up the idea of sex. I was merely willing to postpone it.

I wondered if I had postponed our lovemaking past its natural moment. I was willing to think of her as a friend first, but maybe she required an immediate kink. The kink who waits becomes a paternal figure--too bad for me.

Or maybe, I prayed, a paternal kink.

It wasn't all one-sided: She gave me a kind of wake-up generosity. As we were leaving the meadow, one of the Angels throomed up on his hawg and grunted, "Hey, Linda. Jump on." Ungh, ungh, ungh.

"I'm with Frank here."

Ungh!

"Dump that creep. Jump."

"Frank's my new old man," she said, hugging me.

He stood there with his eyes bulging as if the leather thong around his neck were too tight. Probably that's why his eyes were bulging; that, plus a little deal with thyroid his metabolism had going; plus maybe the fistfuls of pills he swallowed to inspire his endeavors. He was still leaning there with one pointed hoof prodding the ground.

Linda said sweetly, "You'd have to grab and rape me, and I'm sure Frank wouldn't stand around for that. So you'd have to kill him, too. I know I'm nice, but am I worth it?"

The Angel stared morosely. I could see the motes swimming across his eyeballs. The eyes seemed nearer my head than his.

"Well, I never rape a girl unless she wants to be raped," he said.

"Well, see you, then," said Linda, and she turned, still holding my arm.

How is it not probable that one would be charmed by a girl with such marvelous logic?

Ungh!

"Hey, man." The Angel was calling me. I stopped. Always polite. Linda took my elbow like a school guard and moved me across the daisies.

"Hey, man."

Even she couldn't move me now.

As I looked back, the Angel was smiling and touching himself. "Hey, hear the news? The one-star final, man? Someone died tomorrow."

We went back to her place for a drop of tea, herbal tea, rose hips for a possible nasal congestion. Linda sat down with two chipped mugs and asked nobody in particular: "I wonder if he ever kills a dude even if the dude doesn't ask to be killed?"

"You think they did in that dealer from Texas?"

"I didn't know him personally, Frank. Actually, he was from Oklahoma, if that's where Tulsa is."

"The jury cleared them."

"Then they must be innocent, Frank. I believe in the American judicial rip-off system, don't you?"

Her eyes, if you could see them, were filled with faith. Perhaps it helped to know I was devoted to her, too, just as she was devoted to the jury system. The teller of this story was devoted to Linda because she enabled him to tie in directly, without paying tolls, to the lower levels of his brain, where he smelled girls, sent the blood to sudden anatomy lessons, knew that his throat would fill with blood because of the mental stroke of love. She gave me reality because she was so strange. She kept me in touch with triviality. She dispersed a regular dose of crisis. I wanted to be a disgrace to the life of the mind. Perhaps a good therapist would also receive the hint from all this: Often I just wanted to die. It wasn't just in the middle of the night. It lasted whole weekends or perhaps a whole year.

He.

All this happened to him.

Next thing he knew, they had spent a night together. They; we. He discovered groans within his melancholia that no one had told him about. He discovered an ache of desire, and her chilly jokes only made him laugh, they did not discourage him, and he felt very powerful. He smelled the bed, the mattress, her arms. He sniffed and followed his nose. He levitated. He sighed. So now he was a man. He had taken charge. There was no doubt she would love him.

He took her home in the morning. There was an ache of exhaustion, but that made no difference. He slept. He had won something. He telephoned her and there was no answer.

He kept calling and her phone kept on ringing.

Nobody. Nothing.

She disappeared.

Nowhere.

In three weeks, when he had almost given up trying to find her, he discovered that she was living with Van Dixon, the guitarist, in Mill Valley. A redwood house that had been featured in Rolling Stone, along with its dripping eucalyptus and mass bathing in the redwood tubs.

He didn't feel jealousy. He was still a different man. No jealousy. He only felt a terrible loss, a blackness of loss; not even desire; just failure, dread, loss, grief.

• • •

When he finally decided she was never going to call him he tried one more time. Finally, she spoke with him. She didn't seem embarrassed. She was fine. He was fine. "I'm OK, you're OK." They were cheerful together. "I just came to the conclusion," she said, "a few days in the country would improve my color. I was kind of pale. I should get my energies together. You know, it's kind of freaky, paranoid, in the city. There is a living space out here. Not just the trees and all. The aura, man, it's different. So the days just run into the weeks, man."

She didn't mention that what she was running away from in the city was him, was love, was his ignorance. She was talking and confiding how she liked the country and she never seemed to remember that he had driven her out across the Golden Gate Bridge; this being-in-love thing, that great night together, they were what finally wiped her out and made her discover a distressing paleness.

At that moment, he knew no other way to be than icy.

"I hear you gave him the clap," he said.

In fact, he had heard they came to the city only to get a shot of penicillin, Van and Linda, together in his Mercedes sedan, both bending over for the needle.

"What?"

"I hear you gave him the clap."

Her sweet laughter. "That's not true," she said. "I didn't give him the clap and he didn't give me the clap. It just happened we both had the clap at the same time."

• • •

When next he heard of her, she was carrying orange juice to John and Yoko again when they returned to the Miyako Hotel--temporary help; and then she was the girlfriend of an actor who used to be a star, three years ago, and now was only the lead in a TV series, shooting mostly in San Francisco--she was his San Francisco girl; and she had given up organic waitressing.

He saw her having dinner in the Natural Sun, where she used to serve. She had lost 20 pounds, her nose was red and she was just smearing the avocado on her plate, making green tracks with her fork. "I can't eat in this place," she said. "He ripped off my customers."

"What're you selling? Speed?"

"Oh, no, a dirty rotten lie, speed kills. Coke."

"You need to eat. You're sick."

"He ripped off my customers. This place is just a front for coke. I told him about my customers and he ripped them off. I can't eat here."

"You don't look like you're eating at all."

"I can't eat anyplace. They all rip me off." When she smiled, her teeth were yellow, her gums were showing, there were spaces as if her teeth were subtly shifting. He remembered those perfect doctor's-daughter teeth. But the smile was the one she used to dazzle him with and make boredom unboring with. "I'm sorry I ripped you off, Frank," she said. "I gave you a bad time. I don't know how I could, since I'm not worth it, but I guess I did."

"You did," he said.

She waited.

"That's all right," he said, "you're worth it."

He meant he was willing to be ripped off.

"Brave boy," she said. "It was still fun, wasn't it?"

Finally he didn't like being played with. These were words from a scenario and he didn't like them. Not liking them stifled pity. He just got out, leaving the rose-hips tea on his table and the girl who couldn't eat still not eating.

The next time he saw her was in response to a telephone call. "Frank, he's killed me."

When he got there, she was lying on a bed that hadn't been made in months. The place looked as if six Angels had been camping in it, but there was only one, the friend from the wedding, standing over her and holding a glass of water. It was the friend who didn't rape a girl unless she asked to be raped. He looked wobbly. Linda looked as if she were fading in and out of shock.

The Angel glared at Frank with that leather shoelace still tight around his neck. He said: "I tole her to call you."

"My father's a doctor, I know what he did to me," she said. "He broke some ribs."

"She was comin' through all over me. She was, I was tryin' to stop her, what she was doin'. Listen, man, it takes a powerful woman to make me so mean--you calling the pigs?"

"Doctor," Frank said.

He stood there till the doctor came. She would probably be OK if a rib hadn't punctured a lung. When the buzzer rang, the Angel's eyes gave a little extra bulge and he went out the window, just in case. OK, better that way. Frank could handle the explanations.

Linda was finished as a pretty little thing. Whatever came next, it wouldn't be pretty. Frank could go back to saying I about himself.