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Mother's Little Stud ....(89k)    by Eric Jay

I

I WATCHED HER FEEBLE ATTEMPTS TO SWAY TO the music on the stereo. Her red hair fell nearly to her waist, and with its own swaying motion, about a beat and a half away from reality, it confused everything. From the way her feet stuck out from the Garbo-pants, like the roots of an oak tree, jumping around in her very own version of the "skate," I thought she might be a real gas as an animated character. That would be the answer to everything. Just put her in plastic and make an animated movie out of her.

"Eileen, dear, could I fix you another drink?" I asked. "Maybe it would calm you down. "

"Speak up, Rembrandt. What ails you?"

That is the golden voice of Eileen Yukrunovitch. She calls me Rembrandt because I'm an artist. And not even a real artist. Just a standard freak who sits at the studio eight hours a day, like all the other standard freaks who hang around the San Francisco business district, waiting for something new to happen. I'm waiting right along with them, watching my dear Eileen flutter in an attempt of seduction, something of which she is not at all capable.

"Would you like another drink?" I blew smoke from my cigarette at her and winced.

"I can barely hear you! Yes, I want another drink."

I quietly slipped into the kitchen, poured a scotch and water for her and lit a potent reefer for myself.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" She asked from the chair she had collapsed on.

"No, I'm trying to paralyze you."

"Oh, I see. You're what!"

"Never mind, you wouldn't understand it anyway." She was entirely too much like Mother. More attitude than anything else. That and the scatter-brained method they both have of trying to balance everything out; bank books, budgets, etc. Like the year that Mother had been sued, and a hold put on her checking and savings accounts, and she decided to share my account with me (my last name is different than her present one.) Week after week, I watched the returned check notices coming in, wondering when the police would be out to capture me and cart me off to debtor's prison.

Eileen has never written a record of a check she's forged my name to, and the same situation is always a step away. And I've chosen this two-legged reptilian beast to live with until the living is better with someone else. I've given it great depths of thought. I've figured up the system of positive and negative rewards that modify my behavior to one degree or another. I know what we both get out of the relationship. I know the games she plays, the ones I play. But I'm still living with her! The only question I have not been able to really answer is "why?"

I briefly focus to the figure of the woman slouching in the chair then slip back out to thoughts of the "good old days." Not only was I happy in those times, but I was away from Mother. Maybe there is some connection to that. I was three thousand miles away in New York City with a life that was not only pleasing, but a bit substantial at the same time. I did portraits in an East Village studio, supporting myself and a large, comfortable apartment and a warm relationship with Susanne. I would send out a letter once every month or so and explain that I had not been arrested for smuggling opium to the Chinese sector or running a bookie joint or something worse, and that was that. She answered my letters briefly and courteously, just as though she were a real human being.

Susanne would come to my apartment for dinner nearly every night and we would screw before dinner, after dinner, and two or three times before I went to sleep. Then she had to go to her Mother to keep the sour old bitch company during the frightening nights. But there was always plenty of time when I was with Susanne. Time for everything we wanted to do. We used to sit and watch television and drink wine.

I would become obsessed with some supernatural part of her body, pick her up and carry her to the bed. She slipped into another dimension when I took her in there; fought, clawed, moaned and jazzed like a forty-year-old whore who was a nympho on the sly. She would stretch her long blonde body out full length, grab my cock in her hot hands and yank and pull until I slipped it into her downy cunt. Softest cunt in the world; full mound covered with what felt like treated lamb's wool. When I climbed on her it was like trying to stay astride a wild horse, until she gave a great heave and a sigh and screamed just a little and sagged, spread-eagled against the bed.

I would slide out of bed, feeling much worse than she looked, stagger into the living room and drink wine to the tune of the Blues Project. She would emerge after each hour of rest, ravishing as ever, and incorporate a frustrated look that meant she wanted me back in bed. I would ignore her for another hour, then she would lure me back into her arms and we would have a repeat performance on the sofa. This game would go on until one in the morning, when she would slip away into the misty New York morning. I always watched her walk up the sidewalk to her car from my eighth-story window. She would start the car and disappear around a corner.

I could dwell on that period for the rest of my life, but Mother discovered a business opportunity for me in home town San Francisco, and I gave up my New York freedom for a deal which didn't go through. A ass deal and the close scrutiny of Mother peering into the fine points of my love-life, as well as my career. As if that wasn't bad enough, Mother had a fine image picked out for me to wear temporarily. She expected my hair to be a foot long, tangled and confused with twigs of the marijuana plant; thick, curly beard, reefer in my mouth, wearing a longshoreman's uniform of the day. When I turned the sputtering Volkswagen into the driveway and emerged with only a two day's growth, wearing Levi's and a sweater, sporting hair that only slightly needed a trim or a combing, she turned green. I could see the wheels clicking in her head, thinking of something to say, just something to tear my head off. Finally, it came.

"Jesus Christ, Ernest, look at his eyes!" My father peered into my eyes like a drugged rat and then looked back at her.

"They look the same as they ever-"

"There's a wild look in them."

"Of course there is," I replied. "I've been on the road for two and a half days."

Silence set in. The drugged rat was afraid to speak. Mother didn't know what to say. I was too tired. We stared at each other until I lit a cigarette. Their concentrated faces turned from the fire of a match. Moles, used to the dark, damp earth. I lit another match, touched it to the rest of the pack and held up my torch, waving it over their heads shouting like hell, and ran from the room to bring in my luggage.

So I had arrived. The next step was to get the hell out of their house. They were beyond the limits of my endurance at the first glance. If I looked at them again, I might die of exhausted depression.

She opened the door when I kicked at it, my arms full of suitcases, and a four-by-eight painting I had finished in New York and strapped to the roof of the car.

"What's that?" she asked, poking. "There in the canvas wrapping."

'It's a painting I did for the house. Oil."

"That's what you have to show for your stay in the big city. An oil for the house."

"I have me, Mother. I have my happiness. And I still have my Volkswagen."

"Oh, that thing!" A finger shot past my ear as she pointed at the tired gray bug.

"You still have that mothballed battleship! And you still haven't gone into the navy like your father suggested!"

"Dpn't you want to see the painting, Mother?"

"Oh, all right, open it up."

"You have to let me in the door first."

She grudgingly moved aside. I tracked a little mud on the carpet walking to the kitchen to unveil the artwork. They both followed me, looking down like robots at the mud and then together looking back at me.

"Am I on display, or is the oil?" I asked. "Is there an ash tray around? Smoke is getting in my eyes."

"Richard, do you have love beads?"

"Mother! What kind of a question is that? Do I have love beads? No, just a few needle marks on my ankles! Look . . . did you invite me back to San Francisco to have me executed at dawn in the fog or was it for a business venture?"

"I'm sorry, Richard. It's just that you've turned a little weird, that's all."

"Well, whatever." I put the oil down on the table and picked my bags back up. I didn't speak again until I was halfway up the oak stairs. "I'm going to take a shower. See you in a while."

I stopped in the first room, my old room and dropped the luggage. I kicked off my shoes and tiptoed on down the hall to tap on Yasaka's door. The daughter of Mother's oriental ex-husband. Nineteen years old and a beautiful woman already, probably burning incense, meditating, and drinking tea.

"Yasaka," I spoke softly. Sitar music drifted from the background. The door creaked open and a soft brown eye appeared.

"Richard," she cried. "Oh, Richard, you've been away so long!"

"Can you really blame me?" I asked, nodding downstairs. "Let me in from the hall.

Her room was a spectacle of lights, sound, and color. She closed the door and ran to throw her arms around me. I held her firm young body close to mine and ran my hands over her back. "Don't get me too excited," I said, laughing.

"Where is that at?" she asked. "The last time I saw you, there wasn't enough excitement in the world for you, and now you don't want to get too excited."

"There have been a few changes in me, I'm afraid."

"Impossible. No one ever really changes. You've grown a little, but that's all. Just like our Mother is her same obnoxious self, Father is the same mousy-type, nothing ever changes but the imagination." She snuggled closer into my arms, rubbing the jut of her cunt into my groin, grinding it in there until I was ready to throw her on the bed and have at it. Then the knock came at the door.

"I thought you were going to take a shower." It was Mother. I walked to the door, opened it and tried a smile.

"I was saying hello to Yasaka."

"Oh, I see." She paused. Long pause, trying to think of what to say next. She was always thinking of what her next little quip would be. "If you're hungry, come downstairs and have something with us after you finish your shower. Yasaka? Don't you have classes today?"

"Not until later in the afternoon."

"Oh. Well.. . I'd better get downstairs."

She left us and we resumed the embrace, much lighter this time, without the heated emotion of a few moments before. Then I kissed her lightly and went to the bathroom for my shower. I quickly undressed, wrapped a towel around myself, and turned on the hot water in the lavatory before running to my room to get my shaving bag. When I returned, the water was scalding, and I dropped the stopper into the drain, running a brew of soapy water for my face. I shaved, showered, brushed my teeth and smeared cologne over my face and body when I dried off. I wore a dry towel back to Yasaka's room, hair wet and uncombed, eyes heavy with lack of sleep, but with a huge "Pleased to meet you" smile that I knew would catch her off balance. I tapped twice on the door and walked on in. She started laughing as soon as she saw me, falling backwards onto the bed, rolling around like a puppy until she calmed down.

"You've been trying to learn to smile," she said.

"Haven't I caught it yet? "

"No. You still can't smile. It isn't a natural part of you. Listen. After you eat something, would you like to go with me to the hospital?"

"Hospital? What would I be doing at a hospital."

"I have Paul's car and I have to pick him up when he gets off work."

"Who is Paul?"

"You don't read my letters very well. Paul is my great friend. We're even lovers sometimes."

"Oh? I don't really understand."

"You will when you meet him. He works at the mental hospital. . . Well go to his house from the hospital and nap for a while. Can you stay awake that long?"

"I'm not sure, really. I'll try though."

"I could give you some dexidrine," she said. I looked at her huge brown eyes and long black lashes. They were smiling. So were her lips. "Or anything else you want."

"You could what?"

"Paul and I are dealing."

"Dealing what? This is amazing."

"Well, grass, mostly, but a little speed, acid, mescaline, what have you. What would you like?"

"Jesus! Will you look at her," I said. "I come home from New York (I pronounced it New Yok) and my little sister, step, seduces me. Then she offers me a shot of heroin!"

"I would like a joint."

She smiled. Her eyes flickered in the candlelight and she held a match to a fresh stick of sandalwood incense, dropped the match into the ash tray and pulled a machine-rolled marijuana cigarette from the pocket of the Pendleton shirt she wore. She lit it, handed it to me and slipped away to lock the bedroom door. We talked while we smoked.

"What caused you to get on this trip?" I asked, the joint plastered to my lips.

"It's a social thing to do here in the City. Like smoking is a social thing to do. But dealing! That's the ultimate social thing to do."

"What an obsessed society you have created."

"We have created," she corrected. "You and me and our parents and everyone else out there. You can't hide from the guilt, Richard."

"'What a thing to say when I'm spaced!" I took another hit and handed it back to her.

"It's all true. What have you been doing in New York? Besides painting people."

"I didn't paint people. I painted their portraits. Aside from having a long and wonderful affair, I haven't done much of anything."

"Are you happy?"

"Of course, I always have my happiness."

"That's true. You always did carry it around with you like some kind of shield. And when you went off for that one year of college, you took it with you, then came back completely unscathed by the freaky situation you encountered in Los Angeles. A little more excited about the revolution, but still happy. Richard, you're a lovable creature."

"Ajnd you're too goddamn smart." I grinned. "How did you know I wouldn't .object to your language?"

"I know dealers in New York. TWir chicks say everything. You are much like they were."'

"That's interesting. Well have to talk about it after you brave the kin folk below us." She pointed down to the floor. "You had better have one last hit and go to your room to get dressed. She'll be looking for you any minute now."

"Right. Why don't you come to my room with me to rap while I dress?"

"I could . . . let me get my sandals." She sat on the bed to pull the leather thongs between her toes and followed me down the hall. We left the door partly open and I reached into my suitcase for a pair of shorts. When I found them, I turned away from Yasaka, dropped the towel, and pulled up the shorts. I glanced over my shoulder; she was watching me, lighting a cigarette. "Could you light me one too?" I asked.

"Sure. I was going to ask you about your affair in New York. The long and wonderful one." She put a fresh cigarette in her mouth and lit it with her own. "Why did you only have one affair? "

"I can only take one woman at a time. This one lasted a long time. It would still be in progress if I hadn't left New York."

"Here in the City, we have lots of affairs."

"Here in the City? You didn't when I was here last and that wasn't too long ago."

"Long enough."

"Yes, like a year." I pulled on a pair of cords and laced up my suede shoes.

"A year ago you were wandering around like some strange case of Parkinson's disease wondering what the hell you were going to do for the rest of your life. Now you're in school again, with a semi-straight-ahead outlook on everything because you have the security of knowing that you have to be at a class tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's Saturday," she said. "I don't have classes on Saturday."

"That's not the point. Would you hand me a turtleneck out of that little suitcase? I'm not trying to bring you down or anything, but I wanted to refresh you with a little bit of your own memory."

"Where are you at, big brother? That's what I don't understand."

"Perhaps you never will. People aren't really meant to understand each other." I pulled on the sweater and dried my hair with the towel. "Are you going to say something?"

"I understand Paul,"

"Do you? Or is it your imagination. Do you understand your imagination?" I m not sure. "What is your 'thing'. "

"Dealing, I guess . . . "

"No, I mean artistic thing. Do you play the piano, do you write, do you paint?"

"I'm a student. I'm trying to learn my 'thing'! "

"Bullshit! You don't learn it there. You have to dig it our of the streets, pull it from beneath the bodies of dying people! You don't find it in the classroom. You can perfect it there, but they can't give it to you."

"There must be speed in the grass, the way you're rapping."

"Very likely. Look, I'm dressed! Hair combed, shaven, teeth brushed, ready to meet the Queen and her servant."

"Fine," she said. "Would you like that cigarette I lit you?"

"Sure." She handed it to me. "Would you like something to eat? Are you coming downstairs with me."

"I guess so. But we can't stay long."

"We have to pick him up pretty soon."

"Twenty minutes."

We soberly walked down the stairs to greet them. Mother stared at us with hostility. The old man was nowhere around. "Where's the Lord?" I asked.

"He had to go to work," she answered. "He was only here for his lunch break, but he has to teach a class this afternoon. Now, aren't you ashamed that you didn't hardly say 'hello' to him?"

"Mother, I'll probably be here for the rest of my life. I think we can all adjust." I took a drag on the cigarette, staring back at her. "I'm going with Yasaka to pick up Paul. Is lunch ready?"

"There are roast-beef sandwiches on the table. A place for each of you."

We sat at the table, facing each other and Mother planted herself on the end in the Captain's chair and began to ask me about New York.

"Did you have any girl friends there, Richard?"

"Yes, I had one."

"Just one."

"Yes, just one. Susanne was her name."

"What kind of a family did she come from?"

"I didn't meet her family. They all live in Florida. She lives in New York."

"You didn't go down there or they didn't come up, not once during the time you were in New York?"

"No, she doesn't see much of them any more."

'That's perfectly terrible!" She put a mask on her face to reinforce her statement.

"Not really. In fact, it's a gas!"

I watched her face for signs of the damage my sarcasm had inflicted, but there were none. She didn't lose her composure, but instead opened her mouth again.

"Why didn't this Susanne move back here with you?"

"She's a grad student at Pratt. She can't leave that."

The conversation continued. I didn't hear her questions nor my answers; it was all automatic. She asked, I answered. I just sat back and watched her steel gray eyes burning into the shadow of the dining room. Watched her head tilt as she talked. That shaky way past-middle-aged women have of talking when they get too involved in domestication. Turn from side to side, shaking dark hair that was probably turning gray under the dye, mouth fanning like an airplane propeller, little steel eyes looking here, there, then back again at the object they are supposed to be concentrating on. Not a bad looking woman for her age. Fifty-six and slim, with a tight figure. Not much of a face for all the beauty aids it had been through, but a nice figure. Men probably found something in that. Men over fifty. Or maybe sixty. And the conversation wound its way to the point where we said we had to leave, and I ran upstairs for a jacket. Mother stood in the doorway waving at us like a Nazi General saluting his troops, and we hurriedly jumped into Paul's four-door-sedan and retreated into the hills.

"It's a huge comedy," I said when we were on the bay bridge. "Professor Famington living with Motherbitch in the same house with Yasaka, Oriental opium salesgirl, and Richard the Communist Artist from New York. What a scandal it would make for Walter Winchell's column."

"Yes, I'm sure it would." She stopped to pay the quarter toll keeper and drove from there into the lane for the San Rafael bridge.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"He works in Sonoma. Don't worry, it's only forty-five minutes away."

"Where does he live?"

"In Berkeley. We deal to support his commuting."

We traveled the freeway to the Valley of the Moon, and I took the wheel because the rain started to come down in torrents. She directed me over farm-roads through immense fields of grain, past grape arbors that ran for miles and finally into Sonoma, near the administration building of Sonoma state hospital and watched for Paul.

"What will he look like?" I asked.

"He will have curly brown hair, a little longer than yours, wearing a tan raincoat and smoking a cigarette, hunched over in the rain. That's how he always looks." And so he was. Rain matting the hair around his forehead, the cigarette protected by the shelter of his bent over face, sporting the posture and attitude of all mental hospital workers everywhere on their off duty hours, slouching into a shuffle that led him past the car without looking at it and into the administration building."

"Where is he going?" I asked.

"He has to sign out at the administration building. They all have to."

"Should I drive around to where he will come out."

"Might as well. Hell be out the door he went in."

I put the car in gear and eased around to the door. When he came back out, he saw us parked there and broke into a broad smile. I hopped out and shook hands with him, Yasaka introducing us from the car, and walked around to the other side to hop back in. Paul climbed behind the wheel and quickly drove us to a brick house with a garage door that was activated by a signaling device in the car. The door opened, then closed behind us. Paul climbed out of the car and introduced us to a dignified young man in a business suit.

"Glad to meet you, Brian," I said.

The man turned back to Paul. "You wanted a key?"

"Two of them." He walked around and opened the trunk. I watched him hand a check to the young man and load two small, cardboard boxes in the trunk. We waved good-bye to each other and Paul backed the car out of the driveway. When we were back in the country headed for

Berkeley, Yasaka pulled another joint from her pocket, lit it, and handed it to Paul. We passed it back and forth, talking a little, and I began to realize that Paul was an extremely quiet person, saying very little, very seldom.

"How was work today?" Yasaka asked after four hits on the joint.

"It was a real son-of-a-bitch," Paul said very softly. "But it's getting better now."

"It's good that you can get your head straight. My brother is an artist. He just came in from New York today. Have I told you much about him?"

"Quite a bit."

"I thought we could go over to your house and have some tea or coffee."

"Okay."

I interrupted. "Well, really, I think we should dump me at the house. I haven't been to bed in so long . . . and I have a meeting tomorrow."

"That's all right." Yasaka said.

"I don't need the car tonight and I have tomorrow off," Paul offered. "Yasaka can drive you home and you can drop me off in Berkeley. I'll bus over in the morning and have breakfast with you two over there."

Yasaka exhaled a lungful of smoke, "Sounds fine to me.

Another seventy-five cents took us back to Berkeley on the toll bridge, driving around in the flats near the bay, up to the freeway and into the city limits. Not far off of University onto Grove and Paul stopped the car. He lit a cigarette, said a soft "good-bye" and hunched on in the rain.

Yasaka, waving at him, scooted into the driver's seat and motored us off to the Bay Bridge, saying, "The rain isn't so bad now. You don't look like you want to drive."

"You're right. I'm too tired and too stoned."

"So now we're alone, and we go home again."

"Yes, we're alone like we used to be and going home to Motherbitch. How many times have we done that in our sweet short lives?"

"A million times."

"Yes, we go back home to Motherbitch and act polite and dignified and retire to our rooms to rest off the stone. My, but things change when you're away for a while. I had no idea you had even smoked cigarettes. I thought you were a beer-drinking New Yorker in your business suit and hat."

"Pleased to meet you," I looked at her form behind the wheel. "Do you wear a lot of suede skirts like that?" It was a short tan skirt with a huge suede belt on it. She looked very mystical in it, like something out of the dark ages or Robin Hood's days. Her black stocking-clad legs were spread nicely apart with the skirt rising well above the knee, and I couldn't resist leaning over and kissing her thigh. She quivered just a bit.

"Don't do that while I'm driving."

"Can I do it any other time?"

She looked at me and smiled. I sat upright in the seat and lit a cigarette while we stopped at the toll gate. She paid the man a quarter and I waited for San Francisco to come whipping up on the miracle ribbon of blacktop that weaves its way through the bay area. The huge body of water swept under us at fifty miles an hour. The buildings of the San Andreas disaster area appeared before our eyes. I started thinking about the prediction that the great earthquake would once again destroy San Francisco, and Yasaka turned the radio on to the sound of the Chambers Brothers singing The Time Has Come Today.

II

WHEN WE REACHED THE HOUSE, IT WAS magically quiet and empty. Motherbitch had left a note saying that she had gone to meet our father for a few cocktails. They would be in at dinnertime and expected both of us to be ready to go out for dinner. I shuddered at the thought. The safest thing to do would be for me to be asleep when they returned. The sleep of the dead, and she wouldn't be able to shake me out, and I wouldn't have dinner with them. After all, tomorrow would be the cocktail party and the introduction to the business venture, whatever the hell it would turn out to be, and I would have to be with her then-certainly I shouldn't be with her two days in a row.

I asked Yasaka up to my room to talk to me for a while. Clean thinking. I had no idea if she knew what I was planning for her, but things worked out well. When we went into my room, I took off my shirt and held her for a minute. Our bodies rubbed hard against each other, my hands fingering her hair and her cunt pressing sharply into my groin.

If she hadn't rotated her little box, I would never have been sure, but it was an open invitation, and I turned her face to meet mine in a kiss. Her mouth opened, and, as mine closed over it, our tongues met. She bit my lips and sucked on my tongue until I reached over her back to stroke the firm flesh of her ass. She dug harder into me with that protruding pelvic bone, and I reached for the zipper of her skirt. It fell to the floor with a little tug and a snap of the button at the top. She stood there in her turtleneck, panties and.sandals and pushed me away for an instant. When I released her, she pulled the sweater over her head and turned for me to unfasten the low-cut bra she wore. It fell forward and she turned to face me, her full breasts swinging into my view.

The next move was mine and I respected her knowledge; a woman never takes off her own panties. I bent almost double to kiss the soft flesh of her stomach, sucking here, tracing lightly with my tongue until I came to the elastic border of the waistline. I explored just beneath the band with the tip of my tongue, then slipped my fingers under the panties and pulled them down to her ankles. She stepped out of them while I admired her curly black patch, the way it shifted when she moved her legs to get out of the panties.

I planted a light kiss on the top of her slit, pressing gently against her clit and then stood to pick her up and set her easily on my bed.

"You know," she said while I undressed, "I've been anxious for you to come back for this very reason."

"Why? We've never done it before."

"But I knew we would this time. I guess something in your letters told me. You never did write with common sense and tell me what you were doing in New York. You just sent little lines about how you felt about certain things. I really didn't know what to think of those letters because they turned a strange side of your personality to me, a side that I didn't know before."

"I was never good at letter writing."

The subject was lost for a moment. There were more important, more sensual, more emotional, more sexual subjects. No one would trade those things for an academic discussion on letter-writing. My three-day siege was about to come to an end. She impaled herself on my throbbing lance and sat on me in a squatting position. I lay there, almost too tired to be of help, too tired to meet with an upward thrust, the pounding of her body on mine. I watched the expression on her face go through extreme elation to utter bleakness. She used my tool as though I had given it to her. She triumphed over it, over me, over the apathetic sexuality of a tired man. Then she collapsed on me as my organ withered within her and we both sank deeper into the soft mattress, together now, side by side, the warmth, the smell, the consciousness, all beginning to fade. My feet had begun to feel numb while we were screwing. Then it spread to my ankles and up my legs. When she lay next to me, warm and satisfied, my head was the only thing left that wasn't already asleep. My body had no feeling. It was no longer there. I had left it in New York, in Indiana, in Kansas, and the eighty hours it took to cross it. There was nothing left of me when I closed my eyes and surrendered the remainder of my life to darkness.

III

MOTHERBITCH TRIED TO WAKE ME FOR DINNER. I know she did, even though she was unsuccessful, because my sleep was disturbed at a time my subconscious registered as being evening. Did she have no respect? Had Yasaka gone off to her own bed, or was she still beside me? My subconscious couldn't tell me these things. I had to wait until the dawn of the next day when I opened my eyes, wondered where I was, what I was doing in the strange but familiar room and lit a cigarette. When I lay back to inhale the smoke, a rapping resounded from the hallway. "Come in," I said.

It was Motherbitch. She smiled at me. Motherbitch smile.

"Your eyes are full of hatred."

"They always are in the morning, Mother." I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. "It's later than I thought. What day is it?"

"It's a business day. A busy day. You had better get up and begin it."

"Is there coffee downstairs?"

"Of course. What would you like for breakfast?"

"Anything, really. I'm famished."

"You've been asleep for fifteen hours at least!"

"Yes, and I'd been up for eighty-five hours before I went to sleep. I'll be right down!"

She turned on one foot, using it like a ball-bearing swivel, and retreated down the hall. I stuck my legs out of the covers and tested the floor with my feet. Cold. I put my weight on them, stood up, and searched the room for a pair of pants I could put on. It was too much of a hassle . . . I threw a robe over my nakedness and slipped into slippers to go eat breakfast. My staggered way of walking around the room to put my head together was time consuming, and I had finished my cigarette before I walked into the hall. Going down the stairs, I remembered Yasaka saying something about going to Berkeley to take Paul's car back. But wasn't he planning to come down for breakfast with us? I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to remember what had been said. It happened so long ago . . .

The dining room wqs filled with the rounds of activity in the kitchen. And ni: else. Where was my father? Did he have classes to teach? I lit another cigarette, coughing violently when I took the first drag, and sat at the table.

"Are you out there yet?" It was the General, from the kitchen.

"Yes, is there any coffee?"

"There's a pot out here. Come and get a cup. Bacon and eggs will be ready in a minute or so."

I shuffled into her big kitchen, poured a cup of the syrupy coffee she always made, and shuffled back to the dining room.

"Where is everyone?" I shouted back at her.

"Your father is out at the golf-course. Yasaka called Paul this morning and drove over to Berkeley with his car."

We were alone. Shit. Why had I left New York at all? She stepped through the open doorway with a plate, service-ware and a napkin in her hand. They clattered on the hardwood table I sat at. It seemed crude. Breakfast is a delicate thing, and great care should be taken not to make noises or do crude things and upset a person before he is completely awake. Motherbitch was not sensitive to these needs.

Susanne had spent the night once when I was going grouse-hunting up-state the next day. She was up an hour before me, and when she kissed me a light "good-morning," it was still dark outside. The kitchen was one of the most beautiful things I could ever find at that hour of the day. She had set the table . . . completely. Silver, napkins, a woven place-mat, even a candle. Small pot of coffee sitting on a brick next to my cup and saucer. All that for me! I couldn't stop thinking about it all day long. In the cornfields, walking through the light snow near Utica, I closed my eyes and saw the table, all set up for a loving breakfast. That was it, then. Susanne loved me. No one who didn't love me would go to the trouble of setting my breakfast table with a candle.

Mother's eggs were greasy. And the bacon was too crisp. I never did drink the coffee, because the first sip threw a little nausea into my system and I accepted the warning to push the cup away. I poked at the eggs, breaking a yolk and filled the plate with the yellow liquid. The toast wouldn't absorb it.

Isn't bread supposed to be porous? Or is there some new way to treat it, cover it with plastic, and it isn't bread any longer at all, but just a square-shaped piece of chemicals, reinforced with vitamins that in no way reinforce the appetite of the consumer, but slowly poison him with a cumulative effect that kills him off at age thirty-five.

Dead, with glassy gray eyes and blue lips. Lungs turning hard at the corners with traces of emphysema, but cigarette still in the corner of the mouth, smokeless now, just an ash without a flame.

I was afraid to eat it, but there was no choice. You don't ask someone what is for breakfast, and then tell them you don't want any after they've fixed it for you. Even when it's Motherbitch at the stove. One bite at a time, and everything would be gone from the plate but the toast. I refused to eat that toast.

"Well, Richard, isn't it nice to be back home in San Francisco?"

"Oh, of course. Away from the hustle and bustle of New York City."

"Your Father and I are very happy to see you back at home where you belong. I'm sure Yasaka feels the same way."

Yes, yes, everyone is glad to have me back at home where I belong. Where do I belong? Not at home. No one belongs at home, really. They should visit once in a while, but even if they have the most beautiful parents in the world, they should not be at home after they leave high school.

When you suddenly discover that you are of the age of responsibility, you also discover that the responsibilities are new ones, financial ones, concrete ones, and that you have to sacrifice other responsibilities to handle the new ones. You have to sacrifice the responsibilities to your parents because those are only superficial responsibilities, designed to teach you to be responsible. If you stick around, it's like dwelling on the twelfth grade: One step away from adulthood, but far removed from it because the step is such a giant one.

A student, employed full time at a supermarket, is over committed. If you over commit yourself, you won't be able to handle any of the commitments at all, and you will fall along the roadside, empty of love, empty of responsibility, the responsibility to yourself that makes you an adult human being. Just ask Thomas Wolfe.

Mother wanted to know how I felt about opening a gallery! Maybe that's what becoming upper-middle-class does for a woman, makes her want to have art galleries and things. I was shocked-was this what I had come from New York for? To hear some psychotic and aging woman tell me that she wanted to open an art gallery? I was ready to hop right back in that old Volkswagen and drive right back to New York. But no, it wasn't my paintings she wanted to display in the show, not even paintings at all, but she wanted to open a sculpture gallery! That left me out completely. My breakfast stopped going down my throat with the constriction of muscles. It just stayed in the first part of the throat it hit and lodged there. I shook my head in disbelief. It couldn't really be happening to me.

"But it could make both of us rich if we went in as partners," she tried to continue.

And that was it. I didn't answer her. I didn't say a thing. I just ran upstairs, dressed as quickly as possible, stopping to buzz my whiskers off with a razor and brush my teeth, and ran out the front door of her house to the VW, screw the world! I climbed behind the steering wheel, started the motor, threw it into first and I was off. A wonderful feeling came to me of being on the road again. Like in New York, or going back, except that I wasn't going that far. Just to Berkeley to have a cup of coffee and think things over. Maybe breakfast, if I could eat yet. Motherbitch s breakfast, at least the majority of it, was still on the plate in the dining room. I crossed the Bay Bridge, paid the toll, and drove to the University Avenue exit from the freeway. I turned off and drove away, from the ocean, heading up toward the University and the Berkeley hills. Into a parking spot near Telegraph Avenue and into the Espresso Forum with the early morning crowd. Not early for the rest of the Bay Area, but early for this gang of dissipated-looking university students with armloads of books, bloodshot eyes and high grade averages. I sat alone at a table far in the back, keeping a naturally wary eye on the front door and windows.

Then it occurred to me that I'd really been away. I had forgotten how to be served in the restaurant, forgotten that I had to order at the main counter. People forget everything about a city if they're given time. Not everything, not things like the lights on Main Street and the cobblestone bridge, but the important things seem to be lost. Like how to get into the suburbs, or to catch a highway north . . . where is the highway north?

I walked back to the counter and ordered a corned beef sandwich with a pot of jasmine tea. I stood nervously as the man sliced the beef and put a sandwich together and poured the scalding water into a pot full of tea leaves. I paid him, started back to my table, then changed my mind and decided to sit out on the little New Orleans-style dining area one the street. There was one empty table, separated from the street by a black iron fence, and I sat at it.

The day over Berkeley was ominous-looking. Clouds blocked out much of the sunlight, coloring everything a cross between copper and gray. So Motherbitch had screwed everything up again. A museum! Now I was out here. Should I stay or go running back to New York like an early pioneer afraid of the Indians? I don't know how I made the decision. I'll never understand why I decided that way, but I wanted to stay. At least a change. And a change never hurt anybody.

A couple stood up from the next table and I put down my sandwich to reach for a newspaper they left. The Chronicle. I opened it to the section of want-ads, first for jobs, next for an apartment. The newspapers in the city usually have giant sections of want-ads, full of everything. Not today. No jobs for someone like me. What can I do? Paint posters? Houses maybe . . . that would be best. But nothing like that available. No artists needed for a portrait studio. Have to go around to those studios and put in my application. Whatever. First thing to do is to find a place to live. That was easy. After finishing breakfast and having a cigarette with my tea, I filled the VW with gas and headed for addresses in the East Bay area listed in the paper.

The fourth stop I made was to look at an apartment that appealed to me. Three rooms and a bath. Second floor, overlooking a little bit of Berkeley residential, and sort of quiet. Eighty a month. Furnished. I gave the landlord five twenty-dollar travelers checks . . . the fifth one going for the cleaning deposit.

I pocketed the key and stepped inside to have a look around. It was furnished nicely, not too extravagantly, but with a little bit of .taste. Nice bed, organized kitchen. Mother would shit when she found out. I would miss her little party, and the works would fall away. At least I had enough money to last me for a month or so while I found a job. There were boxes of household belongings packed in the VW, and I unpacked them right on the spot.

Have to stay away until she was at her little party, shortly after noon, then creep in, get my clothes and split. Leave a note that I would discuss it with her in a week or so, after I had found a job and settled into my apartment. Then there was Yasaka. I didn't want to get into a real situation with her, but she would want to come and visit, and I would enjoy that.

I spent the rest of the morning doing light shopping for things to decorate the flat. An artist is often a comfort seeker. His real work is done in his home, whether he works on the side or as an artist on the side. His home has to be comfortable as a residence, as an office, and as a studio. I bought tapestries from Cost Plus in the city. Chinese lampshades and an old rocking chair from a junk shop. I had paintings enough of my own, already packed into the house, but there were other items I needed. A coffee table, made from the hatch of a ship, attracted my attention. Fifteen dollars. I took it.

That was the end of my shopping. As it was, the VW had a table and several packages in the back seat, and the rocker, almost preventing me from driving in the front. I drove back across the bridge to Berkeley and unloaded the booty. When it was scattered through the apartment in a disorderly manner, I went to the trunk of the car for a hammer and a box of small nails. Within an hour, everything was put in temporary place, dishes, silverware, furniture rearranged. I sat to enjoy a cigarette and look at the decor I had nailed to the walls. I looked for an ash tray. None in sight. I flicked the ashes into the cold air return vent and threw the butt into the toilet. Beauty is.

Afternoon came and I was back in San Francisco. Yasaka was there, laughing almost hysterically, to tell me the story.

"I came home," she began, drinking from a cup of coffee, "and she told me everything you have done to make her miserable since you were five. All tins in half an hour!"

"But she went ahead on to the meeting."

"The cocktail party? Sure. She told me she was going to go ahead and do the museum thing herself. All by herself. Isn't that a gas? Maybe it will give her something to do and make life bearable until I can afford to move out of here without dropping out of school."

"Well.. . I don't know. I got a place in Berkeley today. Want the address?"

"Can I go back there with you today? You're going now, aren't you? Or do yow want to stay and talk to Mother?"

"I wasn't thinking of staying. But you can come with me if you want. Come up and help me get my suitcases down to the car. I'll write her a note while we're up there." We walked up the stairs to my old room, and I threw the clothes into the smaller bag. She closed it while I wrote a note.

I carried it in my teeth with a suitcase under each arm, Yasaka bringing the third one. The note fell nicely onto the little table by the door, and we walked out to the beetle.

It took no time at all to get to Berkeley; the noon rush had ended and there were only the scattered leisurely afternoon drivers on the road. I drove straight to the apartment on Essies and we unloaded the car. Yasaka ran into the flat, dropping the suitcase and skipping from one room to another. "It's beautiful," she cried, "Something real instead of that loosely connected society I live in, held together with the plastic liquid that comes from Mother's mouth when she speaks." She looked into the bedroom and noticed that I had only stacked the boxes of sheets and towels in the closet. "We could smoke a joint and start putting things away," she said.

"You smoke a joint and put things away. Things are too jammed up right where I'm at now. If I get high, I would end up in a vast depression."

"You shouldn't be upset. Things are really in good shape. You're away from Motherbitch and free again. How are you going to support yourself?"

"That's one of the problems. I'll have to get a job doing something. Probably some horrible job in a commercial art studio in San Francisco."

"It wouldn't be too bad. Here, why don't you smoke some of this and forget about it? " She pulled a joint out of her purse and lit it.

"No, I really don't want any, thanks."

"What is it that ails you?"

"What I miss, little sister, is my woman."

"That seems sort of peculiar to me."

"Why?"

"Because yesterday we made love, and now you tell me that you miss your woman."

"That's peculiar?"

"Yes, because you have such a strange way of accepting the fact that you balled your half-sister and it doesn't interfere with your feeling for your woman. I presume it's your New York woman you're talking about. Or do you have a new one here already. A chick you haven't seen for forty-five minutes and miss already?"

"No, it's my New York woman. You see, I don't think you have a very good grip on my emotionality."

"Funny about that. No one does. You were sort of secretive about yourself and your traits. I never knew what pleased you and what didn't."

"Susanne knows. That's why I dig her. We understand each other. When we have a disagreement, it's out in the open. She knows what I like and what I don't."

"With all this honesty, will you tell her about me? "

"When I write her, yes."

"That won't mess up her mind?"

"A little, but that happens to people. Better to hear it from me than to worry that I'm getting hung up with someone here, and that I'm going to forget about her."

"I guess that's true. I've been faithful to Paul."

"Susanne has been faithful to me."

"And you haven't been faithful to her?"

I was until yesterday. But I'm away from her, and she is away from me and probably doing the same thing."

"She'll last longer than you did. Women do, you know."

"You're trying to tell me that women are more faithful than men?"

"It seems to me that they are."

"Bullshit! I learned how to make love screwing married women in the Bay area when I was just out of high school. That's faithful?"

"The Bay Area is a big place. There are a lot of women. Can they help it if you are irrestible?"

"You're kind," I said, and stroked her hair where it fell over her left shoulder. "I could become jealous of Paul if I let myself."

"That's absurd."

"Everything is absurd . . . wouldn't be much fun if it wasn't." She had smoked about half the joint and stubbed the roach out on a saucer I brought from the kitchen. I watched her movements; she was stoned. Just like that! No long hours sipping away at a glass of something or other, just a simple cigarette! There she sat, grinning like she was the most wasted gypsy dancer in Western Europe and was about to do a striptease act for a horny American Marine.

"Christ!" I lit a cigarette. "Why don't you get into the bedroom and unpack the sheets and things. I'll try to straighten up my clothes and put them away."

"Okay, master. Anything you say."

I grinned. She grinned back, and I followed her into the bedroom.

I wasn't impressed with her ability to do things stoned. She seemed to drive all right the day before, but now she stumbled around, giggling about the sheets she couldn't spread right and the bedspread with the fringe that kept getting caught up in her fingers. I had to laugh occasionally at one antic or another and she finally finished with the drudgery and fell backwards to sprawl, legs spread wide apart, on the bed. Her long black hair fell in wisps over her eyes and a long expanse of creamy thigh stretched out from under the short dress she wore. I walked into the living room for the saucer, snuffed out my cigarette, and walked back to the bedroom.

She was giggling and rolling from side to side, just a few inches, touching one breast to one side of the mattress and the next breast to the other. Her dress came higher and higher on her legs until I was looking clearly at the dark mound of pubic hair beneath her beige panties. I softly moved onto the bed next to her and pushed the dress up above her waist. The soft flesh of her belly was a flat silky texture, like the sand of the desert stretched out in gently rolling dunes, soft, pure, creamy.

My lips pulled at a mouthful of skin, and I sucked on the spot until she began to moan. Then I reached for the waist band of her panties and pulled them just below her crotch. With my thumbs, I spread the lips of her vagina slightly apart and gently sucked the swollen little clit. She shoved her bushy cunt hard against my face, grinding her sensual nerve-center into my lips and tongue. I pulled my face away and eased the panties on down to her ankles and over her feet. She spread her legs wide apart, and when I shoved my face back in the direction of her sweet twat, she raised her legs up over my head and clenched my neck in them.

My fingers felt their way under her back to unclasp the lace bra while my tongue darted in and out of her cunt. My upper lip pressed against the clit in a grinding rhythm while I shoved my tongue back and forth until she was squeezing my neck in a fashion violent enough to break it. I kept up the pace and soon she was moaning in rhythm to the grinding of my face into the most soulful part of her body.

The bra came loose and I ran my hands up under the front of it to pull at her nipples with my fingers. Another rhythm came into being, the rhythm of my tugging at her breasts, speeding in tempo until with a final convulsive shudder, she relaxed and sank to the depths of the mattress. I traced the tip of my tongue around the lips of her cunt, causing her to jerk in little spasm?. Then I released her breasts and moved my face up from her cunt.

I thought she was completely satisfied; from the expression on her face, I could assume nothing else. But I was raging with desire, an erection I thought would burn off if I didn't let it cool itself in the soothing atmosphere of soft flesh. I reached for her shoulders, pulled her up to a sitting position and unzipped the dress she wore.

When she pulled it over her head, the bra fell from her shoulders and she sat completely naked before me. I pulled her back on top of me and covered her mouth with my own. We kissed a long flaming kiss and she drew back to undress me. I waited through an anxious rest while her delicate fingers found the buttons to my shirt, pulled it over my shoulders and off my arms. Her smooth hands flowed over my chest and stomach to unfasten my Levi's and zip them down. Then the belt came loose and she slipped everything, shorts and all, flown over my knees to my ankles. I kicked them off with my shoes and she pulled the socks off by the toes.

Her soft, full body folded into a kneeling position, and she tent over to place her lips on my cock. Her thick lips stroked the length of it, over blue veins to the throbbing head. I felt the pressure building in my groin almost instantly, a sensation of a boiling inside, to come spewing forth, raging with passion. To be spent in seconds, returning my system to normal. The vacuum she made with her mouth sucked and drank the milky sperm, swallowing the first gush of it and sucking the rest out by the drops. Then she collapsed on me, a hand reaching for my deflated prick, holding it, fondling it while she lay with her face inches away from it.

My head was spinning from the excitement of orgasm. The blood vessels in my brain pounded a roaring signal into my ears, telling me that my blood pressure had reached its peak and was on its way back to normal. My muscles relaxed against the support of the mattress. I was still weary from the trip west. The moving and shopping had made me weary. I wanted sleep. I wanted to dream. I reached under Yasaka's arms and pulled her to me. Her lips were parted and glistening with moisture and her eyes were half shut with thick, heavy lids. Her face rested on my shoulder, my limp cock still in her hand, and her eyes closed entirely. I watched her face, watched the constant expression until her breathing became regular and heavy. Her fingers twitched slightly, gripping the instrument she was becoming emotionally attached to. When they were still, I managed to go to sleep.

IV

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, THERE WAS THE shadow of a figure standing over the bed. A woman's figure. I looked at it for an instant, wondering if she saw the glitter of my eyes in the darkness of evening. She must have, for she spoke.

"And you don't even have the sense to lock the door!"

"Mother . . . " I said in quiet desperation.

"My, but that does look like your sister in bed with you, Richard! Let me turn on the light to have a better look!" She started across the room for the light switch.

"My half-data, Mother!"

The light came on in a blinding flash and there she stood, afternoon formal wear, looking first at me and then at Yasaka and her slender hand and the object which it clutched.

"Yasaka! Wake up!"

"Don't shout, Mother. She's asleep."

"Well! Aren't you going to make any attempt to hide yourself?"

"Why? I was born of your flesh."

Yasaka's sleepy eyes opened slightly. "What's going on? Mother! "

"Yes, you little bitch! A bastard and a bitch I have for a son and a daughter!"

Yasaka s hand released my cock, which had shrunk to nearly nothing at the embarrassment of being discovered. She quickly reached for her dress and pulled it over her body for cover. I got off the bed and walked quickly into the living room for a cigarette. When I came back, I pulled on a pair of shorts and sat on the bed.

"Well, Richard, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"The way I look at it, there is nothing to say. You have seen what you wanted to see, and so I guess you got your final reward. The next step is up to you. Do your thing."

Her face burned bright with rage and she shouted, "Yasaka, I want you out of the house tonight!" Then the hulking figure turned its back to us and stomped to the living room and out the door. I heard the family Continental roar up the street and squeal around a corner.

"Well, what do I do now?" It was Yasaka, and there were quiet tears in her eyes.

"I guess you'll have to move out."

"I guess so. Father won't stick up for me. But what will I do about school?"

"Why don't you and Paul move in together. You can get a part-time job and what you can't afford for school, I'll loan you. You can pay me back when you get the chance."

"What chance will I have to pay?"

"That's a chance I'll take. Try and dry your tears." I touched her face with my fingertips and wiped away a tear. "Everything will work out. Do you think Paul will go for it?"

"Sure. We've been wanting to live together for two or three months, but couldn't because of school."

"Well, you have no choice now. I guess well have to move you out tonight. Do you want to go to his house now? He's probably back from work."

"What time is it?" She reached for one of my cigarettes. "He has a delivery to make at five-thirty."

"It's nearly six now."

"Oh, hell be freaking around alone in his house. He always gets ripped when he makes a delivery. It's part of the game."

"Well, get dressed and let's go."

I watched the mini-dress slip over her head and fall slowly over her slender body. She put her panties and bra in her purse, took a drag on her cigarette and said, "Let me get my sandals, and we can go."

There was a small bit of terror in my heart when I thought of the possible reactions Paul would have, but when we drove over to his small house and discussed the situation with him, he was very cooperative, very understanding, and had no apparent reaction to the thought of my sleeping with his chick. He only offered an explanation. "She must have gotten hold of the newspaper and called every goddamned ad in the paper to find your apartment."

"Yes, that's about the only way," I agreed. "Unless she hired a private detective, which is very unlikely, considering the amount of time she had."

He wanted to come and help us move; after all, Volkswagens aren't really likely candidates for moving vans. Besides, he wanted to say a piece or two to Motherbitch if the occasion presented itself. We climbed into his car and drove over the bridge to San Francisco. As usual, Paul was silent until we stopped in the driveway of Mother's house. Then he made a comment on how it was a screwed-up thing to have happen. He climbed out of the car. The three of us stomped into the house and met Mother in the living room.

"So the three of you have teamed up," she said. "Doesn't surprise me one bit."

"Where is Father," I asked. Paul was silent and calm. Yasaka was nervous.

"Your Father is taking his nap upstairs. I would appreciate it if you did not disturb him! He suffered shock when I told him what you two did!"

"Let's not discuss it any further," I suggested.

"Well," Paul began, "if she wants to discuss it further, I have a few things I'd like to remind her of about the nature of human beings. She has obviously forgotten what it is like to be one. Should I demonstrate in some verbal way what it is like?"

"I don't think that will be necessary, Paul!" Mother glared at him.

"Well, then, if you think ignorance is bliss . . . just do your thing, woman!"

We stomped up the stairs, all but Mother, kicking at the thick carpeting and banging into the walls, hoping to awaken the old man. It was impossible. Even if he did come to life with the noise, he made no sign. On the other hand, if I were someone's step-father in the same situation, I wouldn't come out of my room either.

We made short work of packing. AH there was to load into the car was the closet full of clothes, which we just threw into the back seat, and the things she had bought for her room or received as Christmas presents at one time or another. The stereo, a large jewelry box, paintings people had given her, and her bookshelves of fiction. In half an hour, we were out of the house completely. Motherbitch was still standing in the doorway, watching us wait.. . wait, to decide what to do.

"Where to now?" I asked.

Paul looked at the two of us, then straight ahead, i guess back to my place. That seems to be where Yasaka will be staying." My half-sister kissed him lightly, and he backed the car to back out of the driveway.

People are all hung up. Most people. Paul is the simplest and most direct of us all. Not that his life is essentially less complicated than the lives of any other people; in fact, his is more complex than most. But he looks at it simply.

If Motherbitch looked at things from Paul's eyes, she never would have gone to the trouble of finding my new apartment. If I looked at things through his eyes, I never would have come back from New York. If Yasaka looked at things through his eyes, she would have moved away from Motherbitch when she was eighteen . . . if she had waived that long.

Paul simplifies things with logic. If your hand is hot where it sits on the stove . . . move it! There is no more to it than that. If you don't worry about all the emotion that creeps into things when pain strikes, you become logical and simple about the event and the trauma that would normally upset everyone will not even present itself.

If something upsets you about the country you live in-political, moral or otherwise-you make a decision. Leave the country, if that is what your logic tells you to do. And don't complain. At least not bitterly. Bitterness is a development of over-used emotions. You can't hate a person if you look at him or her logically and say, "Well, he or she is hung up." That is a forgiving statement, because everyone in the whole world has the right to be hung up, most people are, those who aren't will be, in a short while, so why hassle with it?

When we reached Paul's house, we rushed everything inside in three or four short trips, piled her belongings off to one side of the living room and sat down to relax and have a joint. Here we hit Paul's way of doing things again, and why his way works so well for him. Marijuana is not a narcotic. It is not a pain killer. The euphoria it produces is psychedelic or hallucinogenic.

The more you smoke, the less you need, as time goes by. Alcohol or narcotics are exactly the opposite; the more you consume, the more you need, to reach the desired effect. So Paul sits quietly down to have a non-addictive puff of weed, forgets about all the emotional problems that are confronting him, and thinks only of the logic. Sitting on the sofa with a joint in his mouth, he could win an award for the most relaxed man in America. No hang-ups.

"Wow!" he said, halfway through a joint. "Now you're away from her. That's sort of a gas, Yasaka."

"Well, it is, and it isn't," she answered. "Now I have to worry about the money to support myself and get me through school. That will end up being a hassle."

"Well, one hassle is the same as another. I was doing that for a while, if you remember. I worked to put myself through the first four semesters . . . two years. No big thing, really. You just have to gear yourself for the work."

I took a big hit on the joint and passed the roach on to Yasaka. "Here," I said. "Relax your mind."

'That's easier said than done." She took a hit anyway and passed it on to Paul. We went on like that for two more joints, getting farther out there by the second, and when we were halfway through the third, my half-sister stood up, put her hands on her head, and told us that she was going to put things away. She walked over to the pile on the floor and began to carry things into the bedroom. Paul and I finished the stub of a roach and he pulled out another joint.

"You must want to really get spaced," I said.

"It was a hard day at work. And then this." He gestured to Yasaka. "I guess I should help her, but she won't be satisfied unless she has things put away the way she likes them. I don't do that too well."

We talked about a great number of things that night. After all, it was our first real meeting, and Paul wanted to know where I was at and vice versa. I asked him all about the hospital, having a slight interest in psychology myself. He explained in length his position, what his day was like, all about the staff members, the patients, everything. His way of speaking was precise, pleasant and smooth. If I had recorded the conversation, I could easily transcribe it into manuscript form and mail it off to a publisher. Call it The State Hospital in America, and sell it for a couple of thousand plus royalties. He just talked like that. Like he had long ago studied up on how to say everything so it sounded very literary, yet factual at the same time.

"Do you think you'll eventually marry Yasaka?" I asked.

"I don't know, man. We have a strange relationship. I don't know how much she told you about."

"Not very much," I interrupted.

"Well, you know that we sleep together occasionally."

"I gathered that, but it didn't seem to hang you up about today and Mother."

"No, not at all. I understand that. Like, why she went to bed with you, and why you went to bed with her, and if I had been in the position of either of you I would have done the same thing. So it ain't no hang-up on my time, if I know what I mean."

"That's a good phrase-ain't no hang-up on my time."

"Sure, and that's the way everything should be. When it isn't, there is something wrong with things. Like Yasaka. Young chick, she's got a lot to learn. She'll go through any number of hang-ups over this situation with your mother. Fortunately, although it'll be bad enough for her, I understand the situation. I'll try to help her through it. But it may leave an emotional scar."

'Do you think it's for the best that she is living with you now?'

"That's a hard question to answer. I think it is, but from a personal theory. As far as I'm concerned, it's the happy kids in life, the middle-class children, who grow up to become the norm. They hold the lid on everything. Without them, there would be no one to run the supermarket, do the road-work, collect the taxes, and run the government. Those people are beautiful in their own way. I don't have many people like that for close friends, but they're still beautiful.

"The people who got all hung up about those things when they were in high school, bad citizenship cases and all, are also an important group. That's the group I came from. A few finish college, but out of that minority, come the people who say, 'Look, I don't care what anyone says, I'm going to become a poet.' So this cat either works at it or he doesn't. He is one fo the groovy people just because he decided that there is more to keeping the world alive than doing the functional things that make it work."

"You're in a functional position right now, aren't you? I mean, the hospital."

"Sure, I'm a teacher. I teach the sick how to be well. That's functional. I get a little bit of glory out of it, but basically it's functional. Why? I had a bad childhood, bad adolescence, everything went bad. I decided I was going to be a jazz musician. Piano, that was my bag. But, I eventually found out that I didn't have what it takes. So I'm on two trips. I teach the sick to be well, from a society-oriented point of view, and on the other hand if you looked from the same point of view, I teach the healthy to be sick. Not really, or at least I don't look at it that way, but the psychiatrists I work with . . . if they knew what my bag was, they would think I'm sick."

"Jesus," I said. I didn't know what else to say.

"Now Yasaka's still young. We don't know, and she doesn't know, what her bag is yet. It may take some time. But there's hope for her to be something other than a cop-out-lid-keeper-onner. Maybe she will be something.

What do you think?"

"Shit, I don't really know. You can't know about someone until it happens."

"But we already know that she's unhappy. That's the start of everything. When she works things around so she's not unhappy anymore, it will be in an anti-social way of thinking. She will have to develop her own social way of thinking. She will have to develop her own social characteristics, and that is where a person becomes real. She'll scramble everything together, turn the world upside down and shake it for a couple of months or even a couple of years, then she'll put it back together. If it fits, shell be happy, creative, prosperous. Even if it's all in her head. She will be beautiful then. If it doesn't fit, she'll probably blow her brains out."

"That's pretty harsh for my little sister. I hope it will be less complicated than that."

"It can't be. It was that rough for you, whether you know it or not. It'll be that rough for her. But if things weren't so bad for you or me, then we can expect her to come through all right, too. She has at least the capacity you or I have, so chances are she'll come out just fine." He stubbed the roach out and sat back against the back of the sofa, just staring at the wall.

"Well, I guess I should get on back to my apartment."

"All right, we can handle everything here. Do you have a chick in the Bay Area?"

"No, the only real woman I've been able to find is still in New York."

"That's a real hang-up, isn't it? Being alone . . . "

"It's a drag for me because I don't adjust too well. I was alone from the time I was fourteen until the present, barring six-week or six-month stretches here and there, and I still don't find it comfortable."

"Well, if it gets you down, come on over. Well straighten you out. And there are a lot of chicks here off and on. They come to score, you know? Dope. Come on over anytime."

"They come to score? What kind of chicks are they?"

"Oh, all kinds. You would be surprised to grasp the psychology of marijuana. People from all walks of life turn on down here in the bay. Doctors wives, even a couple of doctors. All kinds of students and professors from Cal University, all paranoid as hell about being discovered. Too bad they have to be that way."

"Very many people my age?"

"Your age and older. Some much older. Come on over. How about breakfast in the morning? Tonight is shot to hell, I guess."

"Okay. I'll be over in the morning. What time?"

"Well. I have tomorrow off, so III sleep until about eight. Come on over about eight-thirty. Well have some grits on the stove."

"I'll see you then." I stood up, searched my pockets for my car keys and shouted to Yasaka, "I'm going to split. Be back in the morning."

She came running over from the door of the bedroom and threw her arms around me. "Thank you for sticking up for me." I thought of her holding me in front of Paul and looked down at him, a little embarrassed. He was smiling. I shrugged it off, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and started out the front door.

Outside, the fog had come in from the ocean and covered the streets of Berkeley with its maze of swirling patterns. I drove carefully through them, trying to remember where I was and where I was going. Funny, not seeing policemen.' In New York, they're everywhere. On every block, every corner, you find a paddy wagon, a patrol car, or a beat cop. Thoughts came to me just before I pulled up in front of my apartment. Thoughts I didn't know what to do with. Complex thoughts about what I felt, what I should do, what had become of me, and other, simpler ones, like thinking that summer was gone and winter was coming on. New York would soon be covered with snow. The Bay would get a little rain. Christmas would be here. Then New Year's. What would I be doing when the New Year came in? Standing at a bus stop in Berkeley, waiting on the public transport because my VW was out of commission and I hadn't found a job and couldn't afford to fix it? Where would my head be at? Would I be sad and lonely, or would I have found someone, somewhere? I lit a cigarette after parking the car, took a couple of drags before I climbed from behind the wheel and walked into the apartment.

Inside, things were even lonelier. I walked from one room to another, finally settling in the bathroom to take a shit. Things were bad all over. I even had a few pains in my guts, probably from nervousness. I flushed my cigarette down the toilet, turned off the light and stumbled into the bedroom. I threw back the covers on the bed Yasaka and I had used only hours before, tore my clothes off and climbed in. My arm snaked out from under the warm blankets to snap off the bed lamp. When it went out, leaving only the small amount of illumination from the street, I closed my eyes.

A realization immediately flashed into my mind. It was dreaming grass. Like opium, only it wasn't. Just good grass, cut from the top of the plant. I opened my eyes to see if everything in the dimly lighted bedroom was real, or if I had become too obsessed by the dream. Everything was in its place. Just like it should be. I closed my eyes again and saw Susanne. Just like a movie. Not like a screen, but the same effect. I saw her in the sense that people see things when they have visions. I saw her not as a real woman, but as a visionary woman, possible only with the relaxing powers in the grass. My mind was able to wander without my really controlling it. I just let things happen, and lay deeper into the warmth of my bed to watch. It was the way she moved, heard her speak. I opened my eyes again.

I didn't really want to dream about her. I missed her. That was enough. I thought about her often enough in my conscious world. If she were to enter my subconscious, it might destroy me. But I would have to have her back. She would eventually win out, and I would get her back. Perhaps I could talk her into flying out for the holidays. If I could afford it, I would send her the money.

I stepped out of bed and lit a cigarette. There was no way to stop from thinking and remembering the way she made love. That had to be the real substance of her life. It wasn't really substance, but when I was around her it was. Something completely compelling about her sexuality. I dragged on the cigarette and walked to the closet to pick out my brief case full of magazines. I always was a great magazine subscriber. Liked to see what was going on in the world-from everyone's point of view. Then the subscription ran out, and I forgot to renew it and I would have to start all over again, usually with another magazine. From Life to Look to Time. What was this one? I held the cover toward the light from the street. U.S. News and World Report. I went back to bed, turned on the lamp and leafed through the pages. Excellent way to pass the time. I came to a picture of a knarled old man with wrinkles like craters on the surface of the moon and his wife, looking almost the same. It reminded me of a play I read once where the old man and old woman were trying to make it and couldn't.

"Now look here, Henry," she would say. "I'll stick these pins in the foreskin of your tired old prick and maybe that will get a rise out of you."

"No, Maybell-"

"And if that doesn't do the trick, I have this little medicine bottle full of red ants and I'll shove a funnel up your ass and pour them in!"

"But I got it up once this week!"

"And you're going to get it up again. I can't go on masturbating like this."

"But my heart-"

"Oh, to hell with your heart, here, I'll straddle your nose while I rub this canned heat on your leathery old sac." She smeared his balls with the stuff while he groaned and rolled his eyes in rhythm to the bossa nova they played on the old Victrola and she kept rubbing more of the shit on him and he groaned louder and louder. She bent forward and clamped her false teeth on his foreskin and pulled like hell until his dead weapon started to grow a little with his blood pressure and then she sucked on it, trying not to tickle him with the hair that grew out of the wart on her upper lip, and it got bigger and bigger until she thought it was big enough to fit into her smelly old cunt. Then she turned around to see that his face was turning a sickly blue, and he had a heart attack and died.

Moral? When you can't get it up, don't get it out.



V

WHEN I AWOKE, IT WAS FROM THE CHILL OF early morning; the heat hadn't been turned on yet. I reached for my clothes, pulling them under the covers to dress.

Seven-thirty. Shit! A coffeepot in one of the boxes in the kitchen, but no coffee. And an hour before I would go over to Paul's.

I went into the bathroom, found my toilet gear, and ran water for a shave. I went to the bedroom for a towel and washrag, while the water ran scalding into the basin. I turned the faucets off and pulled off my shirt to brave the cold. It hurt to shave, probably because I didn't take the time to get my face good and wet. I looked into the mirror and watched myself wince when a cut would appear on my face and trickle a drop of blood over my chin. When I finished, I quickly brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth, and finished washing my face. Dry, with my shirt back on and after-shave smeared over my face, I felt much better. I sat in the living room for a few minutes, smoking my first cigarette of the day, and decided to go to Paul's early. I had to have some coffee!

I pulled on a sweater and a coat over that and went outside to start the car. As soon as the engine came to life, I opened the heater valve and turned the wipers on to clear away the fog. The motor coughed when I revved it so I sat to wait while it warmed up. There were many people on the street, going to work, to school, to the University. I watched them with drooping eyes as they walked or drove past me. Then the motor sounded better and I could feel a little heat coming through the vents, and I drove off across Berkeley, through rows of beautiful old houses with green lawns and trees. In front of Paul's house, I found a parking space and pulled into it. He opened the front door when I was halfway up the porch.

"Say, Richard?" he asked.

"Good morning, Paul. Are you well?"

"Oh, I'm all messed up, man. Got up at six. Out of habit, I guess."

"I came over early because I woke up and didn't have any coffee."

"Shit! Come on in, I have a pot brewing."

I walked in, feeling the warmth of the gas heater and smelling the coffee.

"Yasaka awake?"

"No. She and I smoked some more shit before we went to sleep last night. She was all worried and upset after you left. You should have stayed and rapped with her all night. That would have straightened her out."

"Oh, I don't know. Couldn't you calm her?"

"Only with a joint. See, she has this thing with you, looks up to you. She understands me and has faith in me, but she knows I'm just as hung up as she is, only I don't say much about it and don't let it bother me. What can I do for her?"

"Well, a good sleep will help her a little."

"Yeah, come on to the kitchen. I think the coffee's ready."

We sat in the kitchen exchanging glum thoughts, smoking cigarettes and drinking the strong coffee he made. When he finished a cup and put out his cigarette, he got up, started rattling pots and pans and asked me if I would go wake Yasaka. "I'm going to fix us some breakfast."

"Sure."

I walked from the kitchen to the bedroom and found her wrapped in a sheet, tightly stretched over her figure, quiet stimulation to my morning madness. I looked at the nipples, stretched tightly against the material of the sheet, and gently shook her by the shoulder. "Yasaka. Wake up."

She turned over, letting the sheet drop over one breast. "Jesus, you must be kidding. I'm so tired." She opened her eyes. "Oh." She covered herself up. "Richard . . . good morning."

"Paul's fixing breakfast in the kitchen."

"Oh, I guess I should get up then." She pulled the sheet over both breasts, down below her waist. "Could I get a morning kiss?"

I covered her open mouth and thrust my tongue in. She responded, pulling me down on top of her. Blood rushed into my head, and my hand slipped down to her cunt. I caressed her pubic hair while we kissed, and when I pulled away I stood up, I said, "What does Paul think of all this?"

"Paul is strange. If he thought about it, graphically, he would get uptight. But he just doesn't think about it. Doesn't want to, and he doesn't."

"That's weird. Let's go on into the kitchen." I turned my back on her and walked into the kitchen, hoping Paul wouldn't look down and see my throbbing erection. When I walked in, I knew he wouldn't. He handed me a fresh joint. I took a toke, handed it back, but he refused it, saying, "Take it to Yasaka." I walked in to find her wearing only a pair of bikini panties, brushing her hair.

"Here," I said.

"Wow! What a way to start the morning." She took the joint, puffed on it, and I dropped to my knees to kiss her soft stomach. The warmth came through to my lips and I could almost taste it. "Hey, not now! Take this back to Paul." She smiled. I took the joint and kissed her again before walking back to the kitchen.

Paul was finished with the sausage and just turning the eggs in the skillet. "Over easy okay?" he asked.

"Yes, fine." He nodded at me, took the joint and finished turning the eggs. Yasaka emerged from the bedroom dressed in tight Levi's and one of Paul's sweaters. The three of us finished the joint and sat down to breakfast and more coffee. Yasaka was happy now. She had gone through a miracle adjustment. Maybe it was just that she was stoned. We talked while we ate, laughing at little funny things you don't see unless you are high, and I gathered everyone's plates to stack in the sink. Paul poured more coffee and broke out another joint. By the time we finished it, we couldn't do much but sip coffee and grin at each other over the table.

"I just realized something," Yasaka said, finally. She looked at me. "You shaved and brushed your teeth already this morning, but you forgot to comb your hair!" We all laughed at that. I was a little embarrassed at my absent-mindedness, and wondered how I would manage to get some groceries in and find a job at the same time. It's very difficult to face an interview when you're stoned.

"Yasaka, how would you like to do something for me today?"

"Well, I suppose I could. I wasn't going to do anything today except relax."

"This'll give you something to do. I'll give you some money and you can go do some shopping for me . . . if you will. Groceries, like to last a week or so. Coffee, sugar, salt. I left everything back in New York. And I have to find a job today."

"All right, I'll do it."

"Good idea," Paul said. "Best that you have something to occupy your mind."

"Settled, then. What a relief!" I lit a cigarette and smiled at them. "I've got to run home now and get ready to find a job. Do you have a newspaper?"

"I've got yesterday's Chronicle," Paul reported.

"I read that, but it didn't do me any good."

"Well, you can pick one up on the way home," he said.

"I'll see you later then, if I can find my way out of the house."

"Later, Richard."

"Good-bye," Yasaka said. "Come back this afternoon for your groceries."

"I'll see you then." I walked through the living room, looking at the hospital literature scattered on the coffee table, and out the door. My first stop was the nearest newspaper stand. It took me ten minutes to get my change out of my pocket and find a dime, but I finally managed. I put the paper on the passenger seat and drove on to the apartment.

Once inside, I felt a little more secure; a sense of paranoia had pursued me in the streets. The first thing I did was to comb my hair. Imagine if a policeman had stopped me, noticed that I had shaved and not combed my hair! lie would probably arrest me and take me to the mental hospital where Paul worked.

When I finished, I quickly put on a "businessman's" suit, dark brown with a conserative cut, and a white shirt. Wingtip shoes made me fit the part perfectly. Armed with my new appearance, a pack of cigarettes and a glass of water, I was prepared to go out and find a job. I sipped the water and smoked a cigarette, looking out the window of my little dining room. I opened the paper, spread it out and pulled a pen from my pocket to mark anything that looked at all interesting. There were two. A commercial artist wanted, and an ad for a detail painter, experienced with antiques. The second one really sounded more interesting. The first would pay better.

I went to see about the detail painting first. What a gas! Painting antiques all day! And it was even on the Berkeley side of the Bay, in Oakland.

The little old man looked me dead in the eye when I stopped in front of the huge antique shop. "Pay's two an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week," he said. "How much experience have you had with antiques?"

"None," I answered. "But I'm a professional portrait artist."

"We don't need you here, then," he said flatly. "We don't need you here, then." I turned and walked away from him. Two ads in the paper. One a goofy, old man who turned me away because I hadn't made a profession of painting used furniture. What would the next one be? A professional commercial artist would probably interview me and tell me that he wanted a man with twenty years experience in commercial art.

I drove across the bay to the city and found the big employment office for the studio. Parking across the street from the office, I walked in and was surprised to meet a friendly young man who shoved a pad and pencil at me and said, "Sketch my secretary." He left me alone with his ugly secretary and said he would be back in five minutes and that I should finish it by then. I went right to work, scrawling lines all over the paper and connecting them until they made up ? sketched portrait. I looked at it. Not bad, really, especially for the short length of time. The young man came back. "I forgot to introduce myself. My name is David Jorgensen. '

"Richard Goldstein, i said. "Here." I handed him the sketch.

"Very good," he said, right away. "Can you do caricatures?"

"Yes. I last worked in a portrait studio in New York."

"Good. You'll fit in fine here. Have to train you a bit, but you'll work out. What did you work for in New York?"

"Three an hour."

"I'll give you a hundred and a quarter, starting out."

"What about raises?"

He smiled, "Like fat on a snake's ass."

"Seriously?"

"Well, you'll get a raise in about three months up to 150. Next raise in nine months . . . if you stay."

"Really sounds great. When do I start?"

"Be here next Monday morning at nine. I'll take you to the office and hand you over to personnel over there."

"Any equipment I will need . . . should I bring anything?"

"Just yourself, the applications I'm going to give you, and a smock you can wear over your shirt. Don't be too casual."

I stuck my hand out. He shook it. "A pleasure meeting you," I said.

"Certainly a pleasure

I left the office with a completely changed attitude. Everything was well again. I had work; a way to support myself. Everything was coming up roses. I jumped into the car and drove straight to Paul's house. Everything was becoming bearable once again; I had to share the experience with someone who would appreciate it.

Yasaka was doing my shopping with his car and he was sitting at the kitchen table doing tiny ink sketches of weird little people. They were good. I looked at him and said, "I didn't know you were into an art thing."

"Oh, I'm not really. How did your day go? Sure went fast."

"Well, there were only two places in the paper, and the second one hired me at $125 a week. Commercial artist thing in San Francisco. I'm just coming from there now."

"Yes, you look like it. Well congratulations! Looks like you've found a good job."

"Yasaka been gone long?"

"No, just left. I presume she's getting your groceries."

"I hope so."

"Great idea," he told me, "sending her out after them. I'm not much help to her alone in this house. It gets sort of depressing."

"You've been with her for a day and it's been depressing?"

"Well, I've really been with her for a long time. Not living together, but we've gone a lot of places together, like Los Angeles and Big Sur, then the Monterey Jazz Festival."

"Too much! How did you get away with that?"

"Oh, you mean her mother? We just sort of planned around her, you know what I mean?"

"Yes. Well, how has your day gone?"

"Pretty mellow, just sitting around doing this thing," he said, gesturing to the ink-sketch. "Have any trouble maintaining in your interviews?"

"Not really. I was pretty wasted when I saw the first little old man. He needed an antique painter. But the second man, when I saw him, I was down."

"An antique painter! Wow! That would be a real trip."

He pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket, lit it and took a puff, then handed it to me. "Here. Do you have the time?"

I looked at my watch. "Sure. It's a quarter 'till twelve."

"Oh, I have someone coming over at twelve. Some woman in the art department at Cal."

"Oh, really? What is she like?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just a woman. I don't really know her. Never had an interest."

"Is she good looking."

"I'm not really sure. You'll meet her."

"Yes, I guess. Here."

She came in early, and we were still smoking. Paul didn't bother to turn around when she walked into the room, but just sat there, doing his sketch.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello," I returned.

"Oh, Eileen. You're early." Paul swiveled in his chair. "Richard, this is Eileen Yukronovitch. Richard . . . "

"Goldstein," I said. "Pleased to meet you."

"Well, Paul," she said, almost ignoring me, "are you dealing today?"

"Yes, what would you like?"

"Do you have any grass?"

"How many lids?"

"I want two."

"Can I interest you in any Mescaline, or maybe some acid?"

"No, just the grass today."

"I'll put it together." He stood, stumbling over the chair a little and walked in into his room. I thought it odd that he took the joint with him and didn't offer some of it to her.

"Paul mentioned that you were in the art department."

"Oh, did he?" she asked.

"Yes, just before you came in. I'm just returning from New York where I was a portrait artist.. . what field of art are you in?"

"Well, I'm not an artist.. . I'm a ceramics teacher. But that's in the art department at Cal."

"Oh, I see."

"Were you originally from around here?" she asked. "Yes, I was born in San Francisco."

"And you're just coming back from New York. What are you going to do here?"

"Well, I just went to work for Commercial Studios in the

City. I guess I'll stay there. At least until I come up with something better."

"You don't like commercial art?"

"No. I'm sort of a traditionalist.. . or trying to be."

"I would love for you to bring some of your things by my place. Could I look at them?"

"Of course. Where do you live?"

"Well, here . . . " she reached into her purse and came up with a card. "This is my card."

I looked at it. Her name and address were on the card, along with a pretty flower design. "Very nice," I said. "When do you want me to come by?"

"Try eight tomorrow night."

"Paul has your merchandise," I told her, nodding toward Paul.

"In Christmas wrapping!" she said, "and it's only December first!"

"Well," Paul said, grinning at us both, "I would much rather have you leave my house with a wrapped package than two lids of dope!"

"Very well," she said. "Are they fifteen each?"

"Special. Two for twenty-five."

"Good." She reached back into her purse and pulled out three bills. "Here." She put the package in her purse, zipped it up, and looked at me, smiling. "Nice meeting you, Richard . . . and do come by. Then to Paul, "See you again."

"Later."

"Good-bye," I said.

She walked out the door. I looked at Paul. "What is she really like? I couldn't see through her at all."

"Shit, Richard. She's all screwed up. Doesn't even smoke the shit herself. Lives with this artist who's even more hung up than she is, and she comes over to score for him. He came with her a couple of times."

"Oh, really? She just invited me over tomorrow night. Wants to see my work."

"Well, in that case, she probably made a deal with the cat, like for two lids of shit, he would leave her house. She's supporting him completely."

"No kidding . . . " I looked at him. There was a freshly lit joint in his mouth. "She's not a bad looking woman."

"She's a real drag, though. You'll see when you go over.

"Maybe so."

"She's a Sagittarian, man. Couldn't you pick up the vibes? There are a few good saggies, but not many. She's one of the bad ones, and they're really insane."

"She must really be a bitch."

"Really, man, shell mix your head up for sure."

"Oh, well. Won't be the first time."

He handed me the joint and we smoked the rest of it in silence. The only sound to be heard was made by the deep lungfuls of smoke that we inhaled and exhaled. Then we finished smoking, I lit a cigarette and watched Paul go back to the sketching. He sat at the desk as if to work, but turned to me and asked, "Would you like some sounds? "

"Music?"

"Yeah, I could go turn on the FM station. You know, KMPK."

"I haven't heard of it. Go ahead and turn it on."

The radio came on with a flick of his fingers and guitars boomed through twin speakers he had set up in the kitchen.

I was listening to a slow blues song when Yasaka walked in.

We heard her banging at the front door, yelling that she needed help and cursing because she had stubbed her toe on the doorstep. I ran out and Paul sauntered along behind me. She had one bag in her arms. The other two were still in the car. Paul and I each carried one to my Volkswagen and threw them inside. When Yasaka had carried the last one to me, I told them both that I would have to go home and get out of the suit. I thanked Yasaka and told her that I had found a job. They walked slowly to the house after saying good-bye and I left them.

The rest of the day was warm and sunny. The fog lifted and I opened all the windows and went through the motions of cleaning my apartment. Motions were probably all they were, because I was really too stoned to be serious about cleaning anything, but I eventually finished the job and went into the kitchen to fix a very private dinner of steak with mushroom sauce, topped off with a bottle of wine I bought coming home from Paul's. Dinner was completely filling, and I went to sleep just as the sun was setting behind the Bay Bridge.

VI

THE NEXT DAY WAS USED ALMOST ENTIRELY BY the purchasing of new books. I had left my small library in New York, and I didn't have anything to read. I went to City Lights in San Francisco, The Tides, in Sausalito, and the whole host of stores on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. It's easy to spend time in Berkeley. The two hours I had left after shopping for books, I spent just kicking around, looking in the shops and having a couple of beers. The sun went down and I still was drinking. I decided to stay in town for dinner. Nothing expensive. Just a reason not to go home to the empty apartment. I walked a couple of blocks toward Oakland on Telegraph. Robbie's cafeteria came into view. I turned in.

The line was short, and there were lots of empty tables. I managed to get my order before I could light a cigarette. A little Chinese man filled my plate with egg rolls, fried prawns and rice, and a tall black man looked down at me and asked, "What would you like to drink?"

"I'll have a draft."

He swiveled on his feet to pour the draft and then turned back around. "That'll be a dollar fifteen, Napoleon." It was then that I remembered him. He always called me Napoleon when I went to the cash register. Maybe he called everyone Napoleon, or maybe he had a thing about puns. I paid him a buck and a quarter, and he handed me the dime change.

"Thank you," I said. He looked to the next customer while I chose an empty table. I found a large booth in the most quiet section of the cafeteria and sat down. The food looked good on the tray, and the beer was cold and dry.

All the time I ate, a group of blacks sat in the front of the diner and joked and shouted. I jumped when I heard them, thinking of the Black Panther party and how they look at Honkeys; they kept me a little edgy throughout dinner. A street-cat came over and asked me if he could ass a quarter. I gave it to him and watched him walk to the line. I hoped he wouldn't sit with me. He didn't. But a young girl came through the line and sat at my booth, talking very little, but staring at me a lot. When I finished eating, lit a cigarette and got up to leave, she said, 'Thank you." God only knows what for . . .

The car groaned and whined a little before its air cooled motor fired up, but once it started, it ran well, and I hurried on to San Francisco, thinking it high time I went to see Eileen Yukronovitch. I drove to the freeway, paid my quarter, and motored across the bridge. Her house, on Divisadero Street, was difficult to find because I had forgotten my way in the City, but I finally came up on the white frame monstrosity that she lived in. Alone? I wondered if she had thrown the other guy out or if they were in there balling right now. I turned off the car and its headlights and walked up to the huge front porch. There was a choice between a brass knocker and a doorbell. I chose the bell. A white face appeared behind the curtained glass and the door opened.

"Richard!" She opened the door and motioned me in. "You are a little early. It's only seven thirty . . . "

"I thought it was later. I like your house."

"Thank you. I'll show it to you. Did you bring your work?"

'There is some of it out in the car. Shall I go for it?. "

"Oh, come into the living room and have a drink first. What could I fix you."

"Bourbon and water."

"I'm not quite finished dressing," she said. I had noticed. "I just threw on this robe when the door rang. But I'll be right down in a minute, just as soon as I fix you this drink."

She went to the bar and went right to work. In the space of a few seconds, she stood up from behind the bar and slid a drink across it. I took the drink, thanked her and sipped it. Good bourbon.

"Be down in a minute," she repeated. "I'll still be here."

She ran barefoot up the stairs, unfastening her belt at the top and letting the robe flow out behind her as she walked across the balcony. I caught a glimpse of the snow-white body she had covered when I arrived.

I sat at the brick bar and sipped the drink. Around the living room I found a giant television-hi-fi combination, the most comfortable sofa I have ever seen, and a nice old-fashioned fireplace, big enough to roast a hog. She came down the stairs just as I found a bossa nova and put it on the record player. I turned and stared at her. She wore a net mini-dress that revealed most of her flesh at a glance. A bra and bikini panties enabled her to wear the thing in public. I whistled softly and smiled at her.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"It looks great!"

She finished walking down the stairs, took my empty glass from me and went to the bar to refill it. "Do you live here all alone?"

"Of course!" she said from the bar. "I came by the house in a very peculiar way. Would you like to hear it?"

"Love to," I said, cautiously.

"Well, a couple of years ago I married this man, a middle-aged attorney, and he died a year after we were married. He bought this big house because he wanted lots of kids to fill it. He had a heart attack one night and I inherited everything."

"You don't seem to be in a state of despair about your husband."

"Ha! You can get a husband anywhere."

I turned up her collar and she laughed at me. "So you've been having a great old time for a year now."

"Pretty good, yes. I have my fun. And I will for a while longer, too." She came back to the living room with the drinks and sat next to me on the sofa. The sounds of Cal Trader came from the hi-fi. I took the drink and watched her curl up, legs tucked under, to face me. The dress came up a foot over her knees. "And what have you been doing?"

"Not exactly prospering. I've been working in a portrait studio in New York. It makes a living."

"That's right.. . I was going to look at some of your work, wasn't ! ? "

"Yes, I could go . . . "

"No, that's all right. Well see it later." She moved a little closer to me, nodding at the fireplace. "Would you like to make a fire? There's wood in that red box next to it.

"Okay," I answered. She turned out the lights in the house while I built a fire. "This should be going in a minute," I said when the last light went out.

"Fine," she whispered from the darkness behind me. I struck a match to the newspapers and kindling, and the flame slowly crawled through it. I stacked a couple of logs over the kindling and returned to the sofa where she sat.

"You remind me of that artist I was just living with."

"Oh, really?" I reached for a cigarette. "Tell me about him." I lit the smoke and sat back with my drink.

"He had the same kind of optimism you have. Like when you said, 'not prospering,' you didn't sound particularly depressed about it. Not prospering would put some people I know into a bad change."

"I guess it doesn't bother me so much."

"That's just the thing. If I ever fell into a position where I wasn't making enough money to live the way I do now . . . I just don't know what I would do. I wouldn't be happy about it."

"Well, there's good in everything. I'm not that interested in money. As long as I can make a living, I get along fine."

"Will you remarry then?" I asked.

"When my money starts going down. So far it hasn't."

"What sort of work did this guy do?"

"His favorite thing was woodcuts. That's different from you, but he did very good ones. Some of them were very traditional, but others were out of his own feelings."

"I like woodcuts," I said, "but I don't know how to do them. I never had a class on them."

The conversation was a long one. She told me about her husband, what he was like, and all the other cats she'd lived with in the past year. And that was quite a crowd. There was Freddy the med student, knew all about the body, and Larry the shoe salesman, who was a part-time erotic poet but didn't like to make love. Mike, the bearded anthropologist, John the taxi driver, and Dennis the Olympic swimmer. And now there was me, Richard the commercial artist, who was also getting drunk.

After her head slipped down to my lap and she lay there looking up and talking to me for a while, she reached up and pulled my head down to her own. We kissed, clumsily at first, but later it grew to a fiery passionate embrace with us both lying on the sofa. Her hand found its way to my pants and she slipped it inside, fondling my erection long before I reached for her breast. Then I unzipped the back of the net dress and pulled it over her head. Her bra had become unfastened, and her breasts fell out, heavy with big nipples. I pulled the garment the rest of the way off and she stopped me at the panties.

"Why don't you let me undress you now."

"Alright," I answered. She slowly undressed me, pulling my shoes off and my socks slowly over my ankles and off my toes. My shirt and sweater came next and finally my pants. My cock stuck out of my boxer shorts in an angry erection, and she laughed at the way it protruded.

"Is that so funny?" I asked, pulling her panties down to her ankles. She stepped out of them and I stood to pick her up and carry her upstairs. "That is where the room is, isn't it?" I nodded at the stairway.

From her place in my arms she answered, "Yes," and I started in that direction. Once up the long climb and down the hallway, I dropped her on the bed and pulled my shorts off. She lay with her legs slightly crossed, head just between the two pillows on the queen-sized bed. I climbed in beside her, and she immediately rolled me .over on my back and began to squat on me. So that was the way she liked it. A lot of women do. I reached up and pulled on her nipples while she squatted with my cock inside her and bounced up and down on it. She smiled and reached behind herself to pull on my balls in rhythm to her pounding. As soon as she touched me there, I began to feel the orgasm grow within me. I began to worry that I would come too fast and ruin everything, but I noticed that she was easily as far along as I was and that we would come together. She kept jumping up and down and I thrust my hips up to meet the downward pump of her cunt, increasing both our excitations, and, after doing it for no more than a minute, she began to moan loudly. She was turning pale and sighing louder than before when she started jumping as fast as she could, and I thrust upward to meet that pace. The color turned to a bright red when she finally slowed her rhythm and relaxed her cunt muscles on my gushing cock. She fell forward into my arms, my limp prick still inside her, and put her mouth over mine. She thrust her tongue deep into my mouth and I sucked on it while she ran her fingers lightly over my sweating face into my hair.

She drew her face back and pulled her cunt away from me, releasing my cock. Then she bent over at my waist and went down on me. I was exhausted, but I knew she would easily arouse me. Her lips closed over my cockhead, and her tongue ran a circle around it. I shuddered, and the blood pressure began to build itself back up for another erection. I half sat up and ran my hands over her smooth, bent-over form. Sort of a fetal thing, her face over my cock, still close enough to her knees to bend her double.

When my cock was throbbing with stiffness, I pulled her over on her back and stood on my knees between her legs. I bent forward, spreading the legs farther apart and traced a circle with the tip of my tongue around the perimeter of her cunt. The wet clitoris was enlarged with her own pulsing blood, and I ran my tongue the tiny length of it, up and down, up then back down to the vagina and all the way in. Her legs squeezed at my shoulders and I shoved my tongue harder and deeper into her cunt. When I reached as far as I could, I pulled it out, ran over the clit once, and back in again. Using that as a rhythm, her breathing became heavy again in an instant.

She was just about to begin an orgasm when I quickly pulled away and stretched out to lie on top of her. Her height was the same as mine, and when her face met mine, my cock found its mark and slipped into her pussy. She thrust her cunt up to me, and I pounded into her. I had been pounding for about four minutes, and kept shoving it into her until she started sighing and moaning. Her body went taut, then relaxed and she just breathed heavy for a while.

I kept pumping, feeling the orgasm arise at last within my loins and feeling Eileen convulse under me. My sperm finally gushed into her, and I collapsed into the warmth of her body. She released the grip her fingers had dug into my flesh and ran her hands the length of my back and up to my neck again.

After lying that way for several minutes, I pulled away from her and walked down the stairs for my cigarettes. The coals glowing in the fireplace were the only illumination in the living room, but I found the cigarettes and took them back up the stairs. She had gone to the bathroom to clean herself when I re-entered the room, and I lit a cigarette and sat down to wait. She came back in, and I kissed her once before running to the bathroom myself. In the flower-wallpaper John, I turned on a light and looked at myself in the mirror. My face was flushed with exertion. The stairs, probably. I used the toilet, flushed it, and ran cold water over my face and hands at the lavatory.

Back in the bedroom, she had taken one of my cigarettes and was sitting cross-legged on the bed. "Why don't you stay the night?" she asked. "Please stay if you can. I don't like to be alone."

"I gathered that. Freddy, Larry, Mike, John . . . "

"I like you better than I liked them. I even like you better than I liked my husband."

"Oh, I didn't know you liked your husband at all."

"He was a good lover. I liked the way he screwed."

I began to laugh at the absurdity of this new discovery of mine, took a drag on the cigarette and answered, "ill stay. I don't like to be alone either."



VII

IN THE MORNING, WE AWOKE AND DROVE immediately to Russian River for breakfast. She brought along a couple of quarts of wine, salami, cheese and French bread for a California winter picnic. After breakfast at a small restaurant, we drove to a secluded part of the beach and, after opening a bottle of wine and drinking part of it, I talked her into swimming nude in the chilly water. She agreed in sort of a doubtful tone and we draped out clothes over the windshield of her Porsche convertible.

The water was horribly cold, and it shrank my cock up to a pigmy and shriveled Eileen s nipples to a rock-hard texture. I pinched them when we were in shoulder-deep water and rubbed my frozen cock against her cunt. She responded with a kiss and a grinding with her hips that brought my cock back to normal size and eventually to an erection.

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and curled her legs around my waist to allow me to enter her. I had to reach down an feel the way for my cock into her cold, tight cunt. I managed to get in it, but she got colder in the water and her cunt got tighter until I couldn't get it out. I stumbled around, helpless for a few minutes and then decided to walk back ashore. It was difficult to move with her like that, but the stubborn lips of her pussy wouldn't let go. The water level went down to my waist and then below it, and I could hardly keep my balance. But when I got to ankle deep water her cunt began to loosen up, and as soon as I reached the shoreline, I knelt down with her legs still wrapped around me and her back in the sand.

I started banging her and she kept her legs that way for a while and then untangled them and spread them along mine. The feeling was coming back into her cunt and she groaned with each thrust I made into her. We both came quickly when the circulation came back into our bodies and lay crumpled and broken in the sand. I was still on top of her, but drained and unable to move.

"You'll have to get off," she told me. "I've got sand in my slit." So I crawled off her and managed to find my feet. She washed her cunt in the water while I walked back to the car for a cigarette and some more wine. I looked back when I reached the car and she was squatting in the water washing herself. "Sand in her slit!" I said, pulling the cork out of the bottle.

She finished and returned to sit naked in the car with me after I had lit a cigarette for both of us. "Did you get the sand out of your slit?" I asked her.

"Not all of it," she laughed, climbing into the seat beside me. "Do you want a sandwich."

"Sure. I always want a sandwich." I handed her the cigarette and watched while she opened a picnic bag and took out the salami. She cut it with a hunting knife that was in the glove compartment and spread mustard over the Russian rye bread. I threw out the cigarette and hungrily ate the sandwich, washing down the bites with a swig from the wine bottle. She prepared three more sandwiches while I finished my first one and savored the taste of the thickly sliced salami.

She ate like a man, taking big bites and washing them down with my bottle. I watched the muscles in her stomach move when she swallowed a bite, and after I finished my first sandwich, I leaned over and sucked on her nipples for a few minutes. She returned the affectionate move, holding my aroused prick in one hand and her sandwich in the other. Then I removed my lips to eat another sandwich, she kept on pumping my cock with her hand. I ate as fast as I could and when I finished the second sandwich, took a gulp of wine and belched loudly and buried my face in her lap, spreading her legs apart with my hands.

We finally managed a sort of weirdly arranged suixante-neuf around the gear shift and in spite of the bucket seats. She lay on her side with her legs in a half lotus seat, my face buried in her pubic hair, and I folded my legs behind me, lying on my side with her lips rubbing up and down my cock. I came in her mouth and she drank me; she didn't come for several minutes, but I kept on lapping at her sopping cunt until her body was wracked with orgasm. We smoked cigarettes and drank more wine for half an hour or so, and then ran back out to the water to swim around. Back at the car, we dried ourselves this time and put our clothes back on.

Eileen felt uncomfortable and a little cold, and she wanted to go back to San Francisco. After combing the sand out of her hair, she asked me to open the other bottle of wine so she would have something to drink while I drove home. I fired the hot Porsche engine to life and motored back up to the road.

"Don't you want to put the top up?" she asked.

"Not particularly. There's a blanket on the floor if you're really cold."

"It's my car.. . I want the top up." The childish statement she made enraged me.

"All right, bitch, I'll put the top up." I pulled off the road with an angry squeal of the brakes and climbed out of the car to put the top up. She helped me, trying to humble herself after the obnoxious behavior she had displayed, but I ignored her. We finished, hopped back in the car, and I roared off. The sky was clouding in front of us, and in the time it took me to smoke a cigarette, we had run into rain.

"See? It's not a good day to have the top down." She laughed and tried to act friendly. Her hand reached for my knee and I stiffened up when she touched me. "Can't you forgive me?" she asked.

"Well, all right," I sighed, "I forgive you." I lit another cigarette and looked from the road back to her. "But that doesn't mean I'm not mad at you. What you said got on my nerves."

"Well. . . I'm sorry it happened. I apologize."

I stared straight ahead and didn't speak, using the time it took me to smoke the cigarette to organize my thoughts, so as not to be mad at her. When we came to an intersection with a major freeway, I turned up the ramp, snuffed out the cigarette, and reached for her knees after shifting gears. I smiled at her and everything was groovy for the afternoon.

We spent the rest of that afternoon and the next two days together. She had a weekend and I had two days before I went to work. We drove around San Francisco to Sausalito on Saturday and had a few beers in a fish and chips restaurant. The British call them "chips" because "fries" is a word associated with the French in "french fries." They don't want anything to do with the French. Shit. We ate fish and chips and drank beer and went shopping at the Village Fair. She bought a leather skirt, much like the one Yasaka wore, and I bought a two-inch wide leather belt. We drove to other cities near San Francisco, and when we weren't in one of the little beach towns, we were at home, making love and getting drunk.

Monday morning, I got out of bed at her house and dressed for work-three hours early; I wanted to stop by and see Yasaka and Paul and tell them where I'd been. Yasaka worries about me when I'm within driving distance from her and don't drop by every day. I dressed, shaved, brushed my teeth and groomed my hair before Eileen came into the bathroom to shower. I kissed her good-bye and told her I would see her at the end of the day. She seemed perfectly satisfied with this, probably because we had screwed half the night away. I left her to drive across the bridge to Paul's. Kind of a drag, driving across the bay to Berkeley then back to the city all in the same morning, but I didn't want to do it after a long day at work.

I knocked twice on his door and walked on in. I knew they would be up because he had to go to work. I found them in the kitchen, Yasaka making breakfast for a stoned-looking Paul who offered me a hit on the joint he was smoking. "Where have you been, man?" he asked.

"Yes, where have you been?" Yasaka echoed.

"Oh, out with Eileen."

"Jesus," Yasaka began, "she'll tear you to pieces. She's tough."

"Sure Richard, we know a cat who did a thing with her. This cat professed to be a writer, and he stayed with her for six weeks. Ended up splitting to Morrocco out of paranoia."

"Yes, he was a nervous wreck when he left here, wasn't he honey?" she looked at Paul.

"Well, Hell," I answered, "we just drove around for a weekend."

"And banged a lot," Paul said. "She has a tremendous appetite."

"Just don't get hung up," Yasaka cautioned.

"I won't." I took another toke on the joint and handed it back to Paul. "Could you fix me some of that, little sister."

"Sure. How do you want your eggs."

"Over easy; where's a cup for coffee?"

"Here." She handed me one and I filled it with Pauls coffee. I sat down with Paul, and he and I finished the joint, getting me good and high for my first day on a new job. The coffee woke me a little and the grass tended to put me back into a subconscious state of mind. It was a real hassle just to wade through the breakfast that appeared through the miracle of Yasaka s cooking, to eat the unreal-looking eggs and crunch the bacon. Bacon and eggs; didn't they ever grow tired of the same thing for breakfast? The three of us ate, talking about much of nothing, but talking blue streaks just the same. I finished my toast and poured another cup of coffee.

"Have you been home this weekend?" Yasaka asked.

"No, not that I recall . . . you mean my apartment, don't you:

"Yes, well there's a note on your door. Mother wants to see you. Immediately. And the note was put there a couple of days ago."

"What could she possibly want?"

"Lord only knows . . . probably something to make you upset. She thinks you're getting too happy, and she can't stand it. She'll think of something to bring you down."

"I'm sure she will. Has she hassled you since you moved out?"

"No, I think she has relinquished all holds on me. I'm not even of the same race as she is; that must make a difference to her. I'm glad she feels that way about me."

"Maybe if I changed my color to black, I could tell her I don't look like honkeys much." The three of us laughed, and Paul took out another joint to celebrate. I didn't want any, and Yasaka never smokes heavily until evening. Paul just sat there and consumed the whole joint while Yasaka and I drank coffee and smoked my cigarettes.

"Don't you ever get tired of being wasted all the time, Paul?" I finally asked him when he finished the joint.

"No. As the matter-of-fact, it makes things much more interesting."

"You see," Yasaka defended him, "Paul doesn't really want to work at the hospital . . . but it saves him from the draft."

"Yes, I have one year, two months and twenty-eight days left to work there, and then I'll be free from the whole mess."

"Oh, you must be a conscientious objector."

"Right. I registered when I was eighteen."

"What would happen if you got busted for dealing dope?"

"I would lose my CO. job and probably get drafted right away."

"Jesus, that would be a drag."

"Wouldn't it though? But I don't plan on being drafted, busted or otherwise." He stood up, dropped the dead roach in the ash tray, and walked on into the bedroom to finish getting dressed. I turned to Yasaka.

"So what are you up to?"

"Same thing. School, etc. I'm looking for a part-time job to help things out."

"How is your money holding so far?"

"I won't have any expenses until the next quarter ends. Then I have to pay for my books and tuition."

"Well, I'll see what I can do for you if you're in a pinch then."

"Thank you. We were telling you the truth about Eileen, though."

"Well, it gives me something to do . . . just like smoking is Paul's favorite pastime."

"I think his pastime is less harmful than yours."

"Really? What can she do to me?"

"Well, nothing, really. But she'll bug you over."

"I guess that's something I'll have to put up with. Thanks for fixing me breakfast."

"I'm glad you liked it."

Paul came back into the room, ready for work, and kissed Yasaka good-bye. "I'll see you later, Richard," he said. "Why don't you come back tonight for dinner?"

"Eileen invited me over, but I could call her and tell her I'll be late."

"Oh, she's a drag! Well, call her and come on over. I'll see you then. Good-bye, Yasaka."

I listened to his footsteps through the living room and out the door. The motor of his car came to life and idled for a few minutes before he rushed off to work.

"What time do you have to be at work?" Yasaka asked.

"Nine."

"That's a wonderful time to go to work. That's my earliest class. But I remember when I used to have a seven o'clock class . . . what a bastard it was, too, getting up at six in the morning. Of course I do that with Paul, to fix him breakfast, but I can go back to sleep after he leaves and get up in time to get to my class."

"How are you getting along with him?"

"You mean Paul? Just fine, I guess. I get a little irked at him occasionally. Usually for the stupid little things he does when he's stoned."

"Which is all the time."

"Well, that's not what bothers me. Just little things Uke . . . well, he gets too stoned to make love to me. He climbs in bed and just lays there, looking at the ceiling, and I want him in me."

"I thought grass was a sexual stimulant-it is for me."

"Not when you get as far into it as he is. The only time he is really a pleasure to be in bed with is when he first wakes up. He's down then, almost all the way, and feeling rather normal."

"Won't this shorten his life? "

"Probably not. It would if he never stopped, but he's in a bad depression now. Have you noticed?"

"No, I guess that's why he's the way he is . . . no one notices, I'll bet."

"Well, I do, but that's only because I'm so close to him. He's all hung up about the hospital, and he wants to get into his real bag-photography. Have you ever seen the things he's done?"

"I didn't know he was a photographer."

"He's been working at it since he was fourteen. I'll go get some of his things." She jumped up and ran to the bedroom, returning in a few seconds with a stack of matted photos.

"Here," she said. "Look at these."

I took them from her and began to sort through them. They were all beautiful, well put together, with sharpness when it was required and double images when he wanted them. Perfect tone. In every way the marks of a professional. I stopped on the fifth one. "Listen, I don't have time to look through all of these now, but I would love to tonight. They're all good, at least the ones I've looked through."

"I told you he was excellent. I model for him quite a bit. I'll show you some of the pictures he's done of me."

"Tonight."

"Okay."

"Well, I'm going to go on to work. Won't hurt anything if I'm a little early. Maybe I can drive the long way down there and come down a little off this grass."

"Good idea." She leaned across the table to kiss me lightly on the lips. "See you tonight."

VIII

WORK WAS, IN MANY WAYS, A PLEASURE. I LIKED the people I worked with, and they were very patient in teaching me what was expected of a commercial artist with the company. It was a long day, especially considering that I had started it so early, and I was glad to leave the office at five in the evening.

The rain had begun to fall by the time I went out to the parking lot and started my car, and I rolled the windows down so I could smell and feel it on the way back to Berkeley. The wipers weren't working properly, and the windshield fogged and constantly required wiping, from both the inside and out.

I stopped the car in front of the house on a rainy day in a city famous for its rainy days, and rolled the windows up, shut off the motor and leaped out into the rain.

I sloshed a bit of mud from the street onto the front porch, but noticed when I crashed through the door that none tracked on the carpet. "Is that you, Richard?" Paul's voice came to me from the kitchen. I suddenly realized that the kitchen was his home. Rarely did he ever venture out into the living room and probably only to the bedroom for brief lovemaking and sleep.

"Yes, it's me."

"Groovy, come on out to the kitchen." His face appeared around the doorway, and I returned his honest smile.

"Hello," Yasaka said from the stove. "I'm just slaving away."

"And you love every minute of it," I qualified. Paul was sitting at the table, working on the same ink-sketch he had been working on the last time I saw him. "What? You don't have a joint in your mouth?"

"No, I'm all smoked out. How did your first day go?"

"Oh, it was a long mothah! But not too rough. Nice bunch of guys I work with."

"There aren't any women there?" Yasaka asked.

"Only the secretaries and such. They're all up in the front office."

"Well, that's a drag."

"Not really. I can't work with women. They make me nervous."

"Yeah," she returned. "You act like some little French poodle, chasing after some little mongrel in heat. Lose her and you run around sniffing under bushes, thinking you see another bitch in heat under every bush. I don't think you've ever gotten enough in your life."

"Oh, I forgot to call Eileen. Can I use that phone?"

"Sure, go ahead on. It's in the living room."

I lit a cigarette and walked into the living room, searching my wallet for the card she had given me. I found it, sat on the sofa and dialed the number.

"Hello, Eileen? This is me. Yeah, I made the day all right. How was your day? Fine? Well, that's good. No kidding? That's funny. Well listen . . . really? Now listen for a minute! I won't be over for a couple of hours. Got hung up at my sister's for dinner, and I can't turn her down. No, she's living with somebody. No, she's my half-sister. Yes, yes, I'll see you in a couple of hours. Later." I hung up the phone, took the first drag on the cigarette, and started back into the kitchen. I pulled up a chair and sat across from Paul.

"Everything okay with Eileen?" he asked.

"Sure. I told her I would be over in a couple of hours."

"You know, Richard," Yasaka started in, grinning, "there's an expression for you. Do you know which one it is:

"No, I'm afraid not." I looked at Paul, who was trying not to smile.

"You're pussy-whipped," she said.

"Well, not really," I answered with a slight blush.

"Sure you are. You may not know it, but you're pussy-whipped."

"Listen, Yasaka," Paul said, "let's not make his evening too heavy. Here, Richard, would you like a joint? Supper will be along in half an hour."

"All right. I'll split one with you."

He pulled one out of a small wooden box in the table and lit it with a match. "Did you do okay at work this morning when you were ripped?"

"Oh, sure. I forgot my name a couple of times, but that's only normal for someone on his first day at work."

"That's out of sight. Here." He handed me the joint. I took a toke and handed it to Yasaka. After the first toke, I began feeling very relaxed, and I sort of collapsed into the webbing of the chair. Paul talked to Yasaka, handed the joint to me, and went on talking. I handed the joint to her and listened to her rap. When we had smoked it down to a tiny roach, I could hardly move. They still talked, and I closed my eyes. Then one of the voices was directed at me.

"Say, Richard, are you feeling all right?" It was Paul.

I opened my eyes. "Sure, just a little tired, that's all."

"Do you want to lay down on the sofa until dinner? That should give you a break from work."

"That's a great idea." I staggered into the living room, pulling off my sweater and shoes and fell asleep as soon as I hit the couch. Thirty minutes of a feverish sleep washed over me and did some sort of an embalming of my dream processes. When Yasaka came in and kissed me on the forehead, si opened my eyes and looked at everything through sort of a haze.

We sat around the table to feast on a huge roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, but I could hardly taste a bite of it. I wasn't sure whether the meat needed more salt, and I couldn't tell the difference after I had held the shaker over it for five seconds. I spoke only when spoken to, and that was only about ten times throughout dinner. After we finished dinner and had cigarettes and coffee, I announced that I would have to leave for Eileen's before I fell asleep again.

"Goodnight, Richard," Paul said.

"Pussy-whipped," Yasaka quipped, "see you later."

I mumbled and stumbled out the door. The fresh air brightened things up a little, but not much. I drove down the highway in a daze until I almost ran over one of the toll-takers on the bridge. That brought me back to my senses enough to face San Francisco traffic, and I drove on into the night. Eileen was waiting impatiently for me, even though I was earlier than the two hours I had told her to wait. She stamped her foot and told me that I shouldn't have accepted the dinner invitation if I wouldn't keep it.

"Well," I said, spiritless, "there is such a thing as over commitment. I told you I would have dinner here, but my sister asked me and she has a little priority."

"Priority! Why, that's absurd! Your sister has priority over me? What are we discussing? Some sort of military maneuver? When I ask you to dinner, I expect to see you at six."

"Well, shit! I had a long day at work, and I want to go to sleep. Do you want me to go home?"

"In your present, condition, I think you should. You would be of no use to me here!"

"Goodnight, then." I turned around and started back out the door.

"Richard?" I turned back to look at her. "Would you come to dinner tomorrow night? On schedule? Well have the roast duck we were supposed to have tonight."

"I guess so. See you then."

"Just a little kiss?"

I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a cool kiss. She responded, ever so slightly, and pulled her face away.

"You've been smoking pot," she said flatly.

"Yes. Didn't you score a couple of lids the other day?"

"Those were for that guy who was living here. I still have one. You can smoke some more tomorrow night, after dinner. I don't like it, myself."

"Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight, Richard."

I walked down the porch and through the mist to my car. "Pussy-whipped!" The thought was repulsive. Best that

I get away from her for a night, though. I would feel better prepared for my second day at work, and I would have some time to think about myself rather than Eileen. I drowsily drove on across the bridge to Berkeley and up the University exit to my neighborhood. I had left the bathroom light on in my apartment, and from the street I could see the note Mother had pinned to the door. I read it when I stomped up to the porch. I want to see you immediately.

Mother.

I crumpled it up into a little ball and unlocked the door to the apartment. I would get over to her in a couple of days.

I turned the living room light on, went to the bathroom and then to the bedroom to undress. The apartment was cold, and I left it that way. Within minutes, I was naked and in bed, trying to get warm under the covers. I smoked a cigarette, thought about the clash with Eileen, and turned out the lamp. The living room light illuminated the bedroom, but not enough to bother me, so I closed my eyes and went out very quickly. No sooner had I gone under, when I became aware of a dream.

I was standing in a yard goods store talking to a couple of Jewish women behind the counter. They were telling me that all the young people were going to have to become more moderate about the things they did, and I told them that moderation was a far cry from what the world needed. As we were talking, I looked out the window, and there was a refrigerator hanging up in the sky. I tried to tell the women it was there, but they wouldn't believe me. I kept staring at it until the white refrigerator became an ugly black tornado and swept into the store. The women kept right on talking, completely ignorant of the black whirlwind, tearing from one room of the store to another, turning over bolts of cloth and throwing yardsticks shattering into the walls.

I opened my eyes, barely conscious of a gray light peeking into the window, and realized that it was dawn. It took several seconds to see through the time warp that occurs when you are very tired and unaware of your early-night dreams.

I jumped out of bed, turned on the heater and ran into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. The heat came pouring out of the copper-colored fixture in the living room, and I stood right in front of it to absorb the rays of warmth. When the house was warm enough for me to go into the bathroom, I poured a cup of the fresh coffee and carried it in to drink while I shaved.

It was a good day. Best I had felt in a long time. Slept from ten to five thirty. Very refreshed. I hacked off the rough whiskers and drank half a cup of coffee before brushing my teeth. I finished the whole mess off with a quick shower, then smeared my body with cologne. I cooked up a pan of bacon and eggs, wearing a towel and happily smoking another cigarette. Hearty breakfast for a good day. I ate quickly, drinking another cup of coffee, craving the caffeine that would start me off to a fast-moving morning.

After I finished everything, I washed the few dishes in the sink, dressed in my work clothes and sat down to drink more coffee and think. Those are the precious hours, the early morning ones. If you get up early enough, you can be completely alone-something that is uncommon to the usual life. Being alone, I can usually think about the problems of getting along. At work you don't think. It's an eight hour escape.

You come home after work and you can't think, because the wife and the kids are busy preparing dinner and watching cartoons on the television, in that order. You have a beer and join the kids at the tube. It's difficult for most people to become very involved in a thought when they have a mouthful of nourishment, and after dinner there is the short "family" talk. If your wife leaves you alone after the kids are in bed, you can think then, hut she usually doesn't. "Harry, when do you get your next check? Do we have enough prophylactics? I can't have another kid, you know. It would be too much to bear." And the eleven o'clock news, when you can see if there is going to be a world for you to go to work to in the morning.

You can't think in bed, because if you lay there with your eyes closed, you'll fall asleep. If they're open, the wife will say, "Harry, is there something wrong? You can tell me . . . I'm your wife." So you have to get up early with the birds in the morning and think it all out.

But I couldn't think Tuesday; there were so many thoughts I hadn't thought of in depth for so long that my brain waves turned into a sprawling modern painting of deep purples and reds, and I couldn't get a tangible thought out of the pile. After wasting the two hours that could have been used getting more rest, I cursed myself and drove off to work. It was a snap. Being unstoned and refreshed, I responded quickly to everything everyone said, and, within the limits of the morning hours, I was producing commercial material. Very easy, really. A talented man could probably land a job in commercial art without any art training whatsoever . . . if the other artists would be willing to help him. At lunch, I ran into the man who had hired me at the local Hoffbrau. He sat at my table, ordered a beer for me, and asked how things had gone for the first couple of days.

"I'm producing," I said.

"That's really great for the second day. Do you like it."

"Well.. . "

"Be truthful."

"It'll slide. I really like portraits."

"Some of the most beautiful paintings have been portraits. I wish you a successful career. But I think you could learn to enjoy the commercial thing for a while. It will give you some money to work with."

He said a quick "good-bye" and disappeared. I thought about his words briefly, but decided there was nothing significant about them and stared blankly at the television over the bar while eating pastrami on rye.

I had very rapidly found a routine to follow. Perhaps that is the sure sign of an insecure person. One who blends in with the scenery well and quickly, or someone who immediately adjusts to nearly anything. The people who wander around aimlessly when they go to a new and frightening city, or even an old one that they have tried to forget; those are the secure people. They brave the emotional dangers of rejecting security to find what they are looking for.

I could have held out for a cheaper and better apartment, or a job in a portrait studio. In a place the size of the Bay Area, it would take a couple of weeks at the most to straighten that out. Even Eileen. She was like the first car an adolescent looks at on the used car lot. I saw her, turned her on, and saw that she responded. That was enough for me. In a few days, I had managed a job, an affair, and a place to live. The unfortunate part of it is that I would not stay with those tilings temporarily, until something better came along; I would stay with the existing conditions until some profound shock would come along and distrupt everything.

If I were the President, I would probably be conservative, although I am far left of that scale at present. But once in the White House, I would be like a sixteen-year-old kid in New York City for the first time, scared shitless, run away from his folks or something, paranoid as an African Mini-cat. And I would lean down from my marble podium to some Senate freak with slightly long, curly hair and little square-frame glasses and say, "Listen, motherfugger-don't rock the boat or I'll have a nervous breakdown."

So life went on, with me nursing my routine. What else can a man who lives a schedule say about a certain period of time. I put in my time at the job, came home to Eileen, screwed her before dinner, ate some exotic dish she dreamed up.

Then it was fun and games time, where she would sit around and watch me get high on grass or she would join me in some booze. Usually, she just sat on the little bat-winged chair and sipped at her scotch and water, smoking a cigarette through a long, sexy holder and watching me toke on the huka she bought as a present for me. The purchase of the evil instrument was a mystery, because she didn't want me to enjoy it, but instead wanted to enjoy watching me get stoned . . . with a sadistic sense of humor to cross the wires of my stoned wits.

"Richard," she would say, "you are going to end up like that Paul you told me about who is wasted all the time. You're really getting out of it. You probably won't return to normal again." Just what I wanted to hear after I smoked half a handful in the huge water pipe and sat around watching little spots grow on the walls then pop like little soap bubbles and disappear.

"Cool it," I would sometimes weakly say.

She would come back with, "Did you know that some recent tests have found that if you smoke this stuff every night for so many months that your brain cells start to deteriorate?"

"Look. I'll tell you when I start to get dumb . . . or you can tell me."

"You're starting to get there already. You just aren't as sharp as you used to be."

'That's just because you always see me after a hard day of work. I'm always tired and fuzzy in the evenings."

'That's right. The only time you in any way resemble a human being is when you get up in the mornings. There's a slight haze over your eyes, but you can still see, and you laugh when something is funny and cry when something is very profound or sad. Like when Silent Night was played on the radio, you know, by Simon and Garfunkle; you cried when you heard the newscast that was played in the background about the war and Lenny Bruce dying from an overdose of narcotics. But then you toke a little on that pipe or have a joint before you go off to work."

"Well, I've learned to go to work stoned. It's very relaxing really. And by the lunch break, I'm down, and everything is just mellow for the rest of the day. Then I come home."

"You would never be able to discipline yourself to be an artist. If you had nothing but free time, you would never get anything done. You would just sit around and get stoned on that damned pipe. Hasn't that grass run out

"No, and I've scored another lid from Paul besides. Look. Why do you always hit me with this when I'm spaced? Couldn't you find a better time?"

"Not except the mornings, and you wouldn't want me to ruin your day, would you?"

"Oh, anything but that. I do my best work when I'm stoned. When I was back in New York, I didn't have grass except at parties, but I would stay up for four or five days on Bennies and then drink some Canadian Club and start painting. That's the only way I get really far-out perceptions on things."

I thought you were a traditionalist."

"Well, I am. Does that mean I can't have far out perception on things? Does that mean I can't, bring a few things with me from out of the past? Like my generation, who sat around and smoked dope and dropped out? They did some wonderful things in that generation, in literature, art, you name it. You're a member of it too. You should be proud."

"I'm only twenty-seven. I'm not even in your generation. How old are you, anyway?" , "Let's not get into that again. My age has nothing to do with the subject that you think I'm getting screwed up."

"It has a lot to do with it. For instance if you were one of those spaced-out eighteen-year-old street cats in the Haight-Ashbury, I could understand it. But you're not. You're a semi-respectable, semi-straight commercial artist who gets a haircut once in a while and drives a paid-for car. And you're also supposed to be having an affair with me."

My friends: The married to, or living-with emotional rut syndrome. There I sat, with my beloved Eileen, who, as I mentioned was not only a bad piece of ass, but reminded me of Motherbitch. Need I say more? It's a long way down to get into that rut, even after the glories of freedom. And once you're down, it's an even longer way back up. On semi-nightly occasions which arose, I usually carried Eileen upstairs, brutally removed her clothing and leaped on her, humping like an amphetamine gazelle, until my blood-pressure forced me to fall off, lay back listening to my heart, and finally fall asleep with her groaning for more beside me. I had to face the fact that when I kept stoned, I wasn't a good lover. Tender, yes, but not long-lasting. Ironically, however, stoned was the only way I could live with her. And I had to live with her. I had moved in my clothes and my records. Or most of them. And there were no groovy women at work. Only the two college freshmen in the front office. And they were too young for me to be interested in. I didn't meet anyone, anywhere. The situation was hopeless.

I managed to get letters off to Susanne every couple of days, usually hurriedly written on my lunch-break. And she mailed a few to my Berkeley address. I saw Yasaka and Paul a couple of times during the first few weeks of living with Eileen, and even found the time to drop in on Motherbitch. All she wanted was for me to suffer.

"The insurance papers for your car," she said a minute after I had walked in the door. She held the papers out to me. "Have you changed the plates on your car? If not, you should do so. We don't want to be arrested."

"Good strong advise, Mother," I said. "Much stronger than your museum thing. How does that go, incidentally?"

"I'm having a grand opening next week. You are not invited, and neither is your sister.

"I have worked hard on the project, as you would know if you read the society column. I suppose all you read is the Berkeley Barb."

"I do read it occasionally. But you aren't in their society column."

"Thank God I'm not. Well, run along. That was all I wanted to see you for. Tell your sister I said 'hello.' I haven't made much of an attempt to see her, but her father misses her terribly."

"I guess that's one of the rewards he received when he married you. For better or for worse, and you have made it as bad as you can."

"Good-bye, son."

"Good-bye, Mother." I stomped out of the house, papers in my hand, and stormed off in the Volkswagen.

Typical Motherbitch move. Call me over for something I would just as soon forget.. . moralize for five minutes and tell me to split. It gave her a feeling of power when she could manipulate me so. I always came when she beckoned, and left when she commanded. What an ego trip she was on!

I drove home to my red---haired bitch, a few short blocks away, realizing for the first time, the similarity between the two. Motherbitch worked over my step-father with her criticisms, just like Eileen did to me. Only Father's thing was drinking. Drinking and taking those pain pills the doctor prescribed for his back. And when he was in a depression, all sloshed out on pain-killers and five or six beers, she would attack him. He would just mumble, and nothing would come out of his mouth except unintelligible gibberish. Amazingly enough, he didn't get hangovers from the weird potion, and in the mornings he felt fine. I parked the car behind the Porsche convertible and turned off the motor and the lights.

I went into the house, interrupted the woman's first words of criticism, ignored the huka in the living room and carried her upstairs to bed. She dug it, and that brought me down. If there was anything I didn't want at that time, it was for her to enjoy it. I tried to come as quickly as I could, but it was a long wait. Meanwhile, she enjoyed every different internal rub I came up with to stimulate myself, and she started to really grind that cunt into me like she'd decided that I was a good Joe after all. Father probably didn't have that kind of guts, but I found that it straightened Eileen out for a few days. I came home from work, ate dinner, balled her once on the living room floor and lit up the hooka. She didn't say a word, except to ask me if she could have a few tokes. I talked her into smoking more and more of the easily inhaled smoke. With a hooka, you don't realize how much of the drug you are getting because of the coolness of the smoke. I think it was the first time she had really been stoned on good grass. Maybe she had had a joint of California-grown, given to her by one of her freaky lovers, but she had never smoked strong

Acapulco Gold from Mexico. She became very incoherent, babbled gibberish for a few minutes, and then decided that she was a frog and should go leaping about the room going "Croak." All this with a smile and an occasional crawl to the hooka for another lungful of smoke.

Trying to talk to her was completely out of the question because she made no response to verbal stimulation'. I finally reached over, pushed her to her back on the floor and held my face close to hers. "Hey," I said, softly, "I like you tonight. Why can't you be like this more often?"

Her dilated eyes rolled a little, but all she said was, "Did you remember to put the garbage cans out, honey?"

"No," I answered her. "I don't put them out for four more days. Do you want to go to bed?"

"Bed?" she queried like a little girl about to be seduced by Santa Claus.

Instead of trying to talk any more, I picked her up and carried her up the long but familiar stairway and down the hall to her bedroom. "Our" bedroom it had become. Up there, she was still too freaked to undress herself, or even make an attempt to do it, but once I had popped the buttons on the one-piece pajama outfit and pulled it over her shoulders, she turned into a real leopard. With stabbing fingernails, she pulled on top of me and into her, shoving her cunt as hard against me as she possibly could and digging her breasts into the muscles of my chest. Her cunt squeezed on my cock, something someone must have recently told her to do, and it actually felt good. For a change, I wanted her to enjoy it too, and I hoped she was able to feel me inside her under the effects of the drug. Some women . . . and some men, too, don't feel a thing when they try to ball stoned. Others, and she was one of them, feel every little movement of every little muscle in the body. She felt my cock slide into her wet cunt, and she felt my pelvic bones crush against her up-thrust ones. She felt my lips on her nipples and my hands running the span of her flat stomach. As I pumped her, I rotated my prick against the walls of her cunt in a circular motion, the way an Indian woman rubs a stone around the perimiter of a crock of grain she is grinding. The hot skin of my cock rubbed the wet walls of her vagina with a forward motion. She was surprised at that, and responded with a slower, but more sensual pace. All I could think of was cool jazz, and I wanted to hear some after I finished laying her.

Perhaps it was just a lowering of her inhibitions, but after we came together once, she sat alone on the bed and went through obscene poses in front of me while I smoked a cigarette and sipped on a glass of water. I watched her, fully excited again, until the cigarette was dead. Then I climbed back in bed with her and shoved my tongue up her cunt. She pulled her legs up and over my shoulders, wrapping them around my neck and shoved her cunt harder into my face. I forced the muscles of my tongue, probing against the tissue of her vagina, then nipped lightly with my teeth at her bulbous clit. She squealed and clasped her hands behind my head and pulled me even harder against her nerve-center. I settled down to sucking on her clit, running my tongue occasionally back into her cunt and out again, until she folded her chest forward, and kissing the back of my head and what she could reach of my neck. She burst into a convulsive shudder of orgasm.

I kept lapping at her until she was completely relaxed, and then I slid up, straddling her chest, and rubbed my cockhead against her relaxed nipples. They hardened after I drew circles of lubricating love-juice around their perimeters and bent nearly double sucking on their tiny little peaks. She sat up and leaned over to take my cock in her lips, and stretched out to where I could get another oral shot at her newly excited pussy. I went back down on her in a semi-sixty-nine, with her sucking on my cockhead a little, jerking her hands up and down on my stiff prick. Smart woman. Some men and some women can't come in a sixty-nine. Some women don't want oral sex, don't want to put 'that thing' in their mouths, and don't want to drink a fluid that was seemingly intended for the other end of their anatomies. It's just as difficult for some men to thrust their tongues into a delicate, sensitive mouth full of strange tasting liquids and not always the most pleasant-smelling place in the world. But if a woman masturbates a man and blows him a little at the same time, while he eats her cunt, he will undoubtedly come under the pressure of masturbation and have his face buried in a snatch at the same time. Operant conditioning. The same thing works on women. It works, if you make the situation rewarding enough, and what can be more rewarding than a bursting climax?

When I came, she drank me right down and sucked on my cockhead while stroking her fingers the length of what was left of my erection. She didn't come and apparently wanted to, because she continued sucking me until I had my final erection of the night.

It was sort of a half-hearted affair for me when her legs straddled my hips, because I was going numb, with sort of a half-erection. Nevertheless, she guided it into her with one hand and jiggled my balls with the other; then she started grinding up and down. I lay back, unable to cooperate with more than an occasional shove up to meet her downward bump.

"You have to get it harder," was her only comment through the night of screwing. I tried and tried, but it remained soft right up to the point of ejaculation, when I forced it to stay hard enough for her to finish off on me.

She came and fell on me, throwing kisses on my sweaty forehead and shoving her tongue in and out of my mouth, but I finally told her I had to get up in the morning and put my arms around her to go to sleep.

We both overslept and were late to our jobs. No breakfast that morning, no coffee, just a hurried cigarette and a quick tooth-brushing, and we were both off to work. I returned at five-thirty, feeling pleased with myself and happy to find her in an amiable mood. It was as though we had just met again, and everything was fresh and we were trying to be nice to each other. For the rest of the week it lasted. For three days, with my coming home, happily eating dinner with someone who was dressed to please me and had prepared a beautiful dinner with a candlelight table setting in my honor.

Then Saturday morning came, and I had planned, without really telling her, to go up to Mount Tamalpaias for a stoned picnic. And when I broke it to her early in the morning mist, she decided on the spot that she didn't want any more dope; that it was messing up her intellectuality (her most prized possession) as well as her emotionality (something she rarely identified with but usually acted according to.)

"I don't want to go to the mountain and get stoned with you. I don't even want to go and watch you get stoned. It's too depressing. I know how this stuff has affected me in the last few days, and I know what it must have done to you by now. Mount Tamalpaias is full of people just like you, and I don't want to watch you go up and join them."

"All right, then I'll go by myself."

"Split, then. I guess I'll see you tonight."

"Do you want to see me tonight?"

"I don't know for sure. You'll have to give me time to think about it."

"Don't suppose you could give me a hint, do you? After all, my clothes, my records, my shaving kit, my books, my magazines . . . everything is here. If you don't want to see me tonight, you had better tell me now so I can take some of these things with me."

"Well, I guess I want you to come back."

"Thank you. It's more convenient."

Tears welled up in her eyes and began to trickle down her face, running the remnants of last night's mascara. "Is that all I am to you? A convenience?" She began to cry audibly.

"Listen," I said, "stop the tears. There's no reason for you to feel that way. I won't go if it's going to blow your trip. I'll just go over to see my sister. I have to find out what's new at home anyway. Maybe I have some mail."

"Well, as long as you don't get too wasted at your sister's." She threw her arms around me and gave me a wet French kiss, sloppy with lots of juices in her mouth that transferred to mine and made me nauseous. Her face was wet with tears and that got mine wet, and I was thoroughly disgusted when I left the house and drove off to Berkeley. Another game. Make him feel sorry for me. Perfect Motherbitch strategy, and that upset me all the more. They both knew that I was an easy mark for a sympathy march. I can't stand to see people hurt and crying. Anything but the tears. I haven't cried jn many years myself, and I can't really relate to anyone who does. It's like an alien emotion, something I can become upset by, but never understand or empathize with.

Yasaka and Paul were just on their way to see our old bat of a mother. My sister grinned at me as she announced, "We're going to see blessed Lovey."

"You must mean Mother by that."

"Yeah," Paul explained. "She called and wants us to come over. She wants to see you too, so if you want to come over with us . . . "

"Sure. This way, we have the numbers. There's nothing that evil she can do to all three of us without one of us taking her down with the ship."

"Right!" Yasaka chimed in. "And if she gives us a rough time, well draw and quarter her and hang her on the steps of Sprous Hall to frighten off the faculty."

Paul gave me three tokes on the joint he was smoking, to, as he put it, "Relax your mind with a reefer." I toked away, feeling a slight relaxation and the slight buzz of a minor hallucinogenic.

"Are you ready?" Yasaka asked.

"Oh, I'm ready now, yes," I said, exhaling the thick, potent smoke across the living room. We climbed, into my VW because I insisted on driving in the splendid late-morning weather, and we buzzed off in the direction of the Bay Bridge Freeway.

IX

MOTHER WAS SLOPPY THIS TIME, WHICH STRUCK the three of us as being out of character. She wanted us to forgive her for being such a rotten mother at a time when Yasaka really needed her. Coming from someone I didn't know, I would have trusted that apology more than I trusted it from the woman I knew only so well. Interpreted into quasi-technical language, Paul explained later, her statement was an act of menopause manipulation, a very childish, almost bordering on senile, form of controlling people for her own interest. Someone had probably asked, "Don't your children come by to see you any more? I've only seen your son once since he's been back from New York, and I haven't seen Yasaka at all." That was enough for her to realize that we took away her front of being a well-to-do housewife of a University professor, who ran her life and the world around her as smoothly as a Swiss watch. I almost vomited at the thought, trying not to look too conspicuous in the presence of an expert of what intoxicated people act like.

She fixed us a nice lunch of ors d'oeuvres with wine and tiny turkey sandwiches, and reminded us all that the holiday season was almost on us and that we should have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year in spite of our differences. She invited us to dinner, which we all three declined. I had to eat with "that woman" and Paul and Yasaka had been invited next door. "But can't any of you break the engagements?" she asked us. When we all answered, "no," she commended us on our loyalty to our friends. Then she clicked the gears of her computer-like emotional system into action, coming up with another idea.

"Would you come to my New Year's Eve party? There will be several of our old friends present; the Willoghbies, Mr. Kaminske-Paul, you're a photographer, you'll love him. Please come."

"All right," I said. "I have an idea things aren't going to be too wonderful for New Year's anyway. I may as well really suffer like a true American man. I'll probably get drunk though."

"Oh, son, I would expect you to get drunk on New Year's. I would think there was something terribly wrong with you if you didn't. And bring a date with you if you want. I'm sure she will be adequately entertained by our evening at home. There should be forty people all together. Yasaka? Would you help me decorate? "

My sister looked at Paul, who nodded, then back to Mother. "Sure. New Year's Eve Day? We always decorate for New Year's on that day."

"That's fine with me. Paul, you can come to the decorating if you want, although I'll tell you now that it won't be much fun."

"No, thank you. I'll accept your invitation to the party though, and I'm sure Yasaka feels the same way about it."

"Thank you, Paul. You have made me feel very proud of my daughter. Thank you."

"Well, listen," I jumped in, "I have things to do today and we had best run along." I wanted to end the soap-opera dialogue of forgiveness and bullshit. We said our humble good-byes to each other and the three of us piled back into my car, Yasaka in the back seat this time, with Paul and me splitting a joint.

Motherbitch had won. She had gotten back her lost commodities, and now she would use us in every way she could think of. I could hear it now at the party. "Well, Mrs. Bennington, you haven't seen Richard since he came back from New York. You know, he's a commercial artist now." I shouldn't bother to tell her what I'm doing. Yasaka didn't, and I could keep her wondering if I hadn't become a heroin pusher or a pimp.

"Well," Paul began, "how do you guys think round three went?" Referring to the three times we had faced a crisis with her or because of her when we were together.

"I thought it was all right," Yasaka said. "It's the same thing she always does. She's never thrown me out of the house before, but on every move of hers that turns me off, she comes up with a forgive and forget attitude when I ignore her."

It was true. She and I had both developed a defense mechanism against Motherbitch of getting really pissed at her then not speaking for a couple of weeks. Probably a manipulatory maneuver we learned from the old battle-axe herself. "Well, I'm sure well have a depressing New Year's."

"What about Christmas?" Paul asked. 'The three of us should get together for that one. You can spend the night with us, Richard, and we'll stay up all night and get real spaced and open our presents at dawn."

"Yeah, come on, Richard. Leave that old bag of an Eileen for Christmas and come stay with us. Paul will get a couple of days off and we can really have some fun. That still doesn't change the New Year's thing, but I couldn't say no to Mother."

"Neither could I," I admitted.

"Well, Richard, what do you say?" It was Yasaka, again.

"All right, I'll do it. I don't think things are going to work out much longer for me and Eileen, anyway. I'm getting a little far into the grass thing, and she doesn't dig that very much."

"Yeah, I wanted to caution you about that," Paul lectured. "If you don't want to get really messed up, stop smoking for long periods. Yasaka says you've not been into much shit, and I'm concerned that you might really screw yourself into the ground."

"It's true," Yasaka agreed. "You've stuck your feet all the way in the water now, but you have a long way to go before you'll be swimming. Before you go all the way in, like by losing contact with things for a while, you should decide if you're able to swim and not drown. Just relax on that lid Paul sold you. It's awfully strong. I get nauseous when I smoke it."

"That's weird, doesn't bother me at all. But I know what you mean about the dope. There's not much difference in the overall effects of dope and alcohol, and I've been into the alcohol scene, with pills on top of all of it."

"I remember that," my sister recalled. "You used to always be taking pills and drinking out of a bottle of cough medicine. I asked what you were doing, guess I was about fourteen, and you said you were sick. But you looked just fine . . . happy all the time."

"Yes, that was the time I was referring to. But it sneaks up on you. First, you're all paranoid and everyone, especially the police, are out to get you for looking outrageously weird. Then you can only relate to a group of people you are used to when you're strung out; anyone else can't really talk to you, anything more than surface conversation."

"Well," Paul sighed after the word, "maybe I shouldn't bother to tell you at all. You must be aware of where you're at on the freak scale."

"Sure I am. I'm just below the zone where I don't know if I can handle any more of anything."

"Instead of getting stoned with that Eileen," my sister urged, "come and get ripped with us. I know how she treats her stoned friends, and its frightening! Come over with us and be in a good climate for smoking, at least. Otherwise you'll get more screwed up than you are now."

"Thanks, Yasaka. It's a strange switch to hear words of advice from someone so much younger than myself."

"Paul has been into a lot of dope, and he knows the problems and the pleasures. He told me he was getting worried about the last lid of shit he sold you. And he is just concerned."

"Thank you, Paul."

"No big thing, man," he said. "I just don't want you as a patient. I wouldn't be able to handle that."

"Well, worry no more. I'm getting straight-ahead just talking to you two."

"Groovy. Say listen. You didn't really have anything planned for this afternoon, did you?" I looked at his form beside me.

"No, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. It brings me down."

"Good then, would you like to go to Big Sur with us? Be back late Sunday night. Or maybe early; depends on how-well our visit goes."

"Where would we stay?"

"Oh," Yasaka grunted an interruption. "Well stay at the Big Sur Lodge. You'll love it. They have these rooms with rustic old furniture that doesn't match anything. You can even get a room with a fireplace in it. Is there anyone you could take except that Eileen?"

"Not really."

"Well, then you could meet someone there. That would be good for you."

"Hold on! I haven't agreed to go yet. When would we leave?"

"As soon as we get everything together," Paul answered. "What would I tell Eileen?"

"Tell her you're going to split for the weekend; that'll be the best way to handle it. If she says anything, just hang up on her."

"She has all my clothes, my shaving gear, my . . . "

"You can borrow my shaving equipment. Just run into a dime store to buy a toothbrush and you'll be all set. You Lave some clothes at home, don't you? I mean your apartment?"

"Yes, yes, I guess we could stop there."

"Agreed, then," Yasaka said, happily. "Well go to your hi use, and you can pick up some clothes, and then well go to our house. You can call her from there and straighten things out."

"If they will be straightened." I stopped on the toil-plaza to pay my fare. "It'll probably screw things up worse between us," I said, rolling the window back up. "Shell probably put all my things out on the front porch and shriek at me when I come to pick them up."

"Well, why do you want to live with a chick like that?" Paul asked, half serious.

"I don't know," I answered, and motored over the ribbon of concrete past Oakland to Berkeley.

Having two other people in the little apartment changed things, made them happier. It was the first time Paul had seen it, and I gave him a stack of my matted portraits to look at while I rounded up some wearables. He shouted into the bathroom that he hadn't seen work like it on anything under a Ph.D. scale.

"Thank you," I said. With my short stay in college, I think that was the richest compliment I have ever received.

I crammed clothes and a toothbrush I found in a box full of toilet articles into an old, zipped leather bag with cuts and scratches marring the once-handsome finish of the hide. We smoked a joint to christen my apartment and drove on over to Paul's house. It took the two of them fifteen minutes to pack everything and they waited, standing over me at my telephone conversation which lasted throughout the time we were in the house. It was a real hassle talking to Eileen, but she had made the fatal mistake. In letting me know that she was one of those crying manipulators, she made me aware of the fact that, no matter how bad the traumatic argument we had would get, I could always make up with her by kissing away those tears and making love to her. So I coldly answered her questions (like a newspaper reporter; who, what, where, when, and why) and told her I would see her Monday night after I got off work. I heard the phone slam on the other end of the line, and I smiled up at my two companions. They heard the phone slam too, and were almost in joyful tears of appreciation at my melodrama.

With a flip of a coin, we decided to take Paul's car and climbed on in, stacking the back seat up with suitcases, blankets for the beach and Yasaka's purse, complete with a cleaned bag of grass and two packs of cigarette papers. It would be a hell of a weekend. We started smoking when we were out of Santa Cruz and on the old California Rt. I, weaving the black snake along the coast to Big Sur. We arrived after a drive that seemed to have no logical time element; only a collage of music on the radio, fresh joints rolled by Yasaka s fingers, and the flash of the forever-green landscape that snapped smartly by the windshield behind

Paul's expert, careful driving.

The lodge put us in two beautifully rustic rooms, furnished after designs that were a hundred fifty years old. I recognized the style from somewhere, but my fuzzy mind couldn't decipher the date, and I just made myself comfortable in the hot shower before meeting Paul and Yasaka in the restaurant for dinner.

I sat naked on the bed and tried to write Susanne a letter. I couldn't help but tell her that I was coming back and shortly. Nothing to back it up, and I wasn't sure that I would be able to keep my word, but I promised anyway, told her that I missed her something terrible and that I was very lonely. The fact that I lied to her is beside the point. She wanted to hear that I was lonely, so I told her I was. I really had missed her, but I certainly wasn't lonely. I spent all my waking hours with people. People at work, Eileen at home (even when I slept, she was there). Now I was at the Big Sur Lodge for a stoned and happy weekend, still with people and not alone. And I didn't miss her during the times I was alone anyway. The busiest times-like when I was fighting with Eileen over the grass thing or when I was in bed with her-were when a sweet bird of paradise came to my shoulder and whispered into my ear that I was not with the woman of my choice.

I signed the letter, addressed an envelope I had stuffed into the little suitcase, and slipped the letter inside. They would have stamps in the lobby. Then I got dressed, combed my hair and went to meet them. At the desk, freshly scrubbed and hungry, I asked the clerk where I could find a stamp.

"We don't have a machine in here, but I don't think anyone would notice if I slipped you one or two, now do your

"I could pay you for them."

"Nonsense," the bearded desk clerk said, emphatically. "They're only little pieces of paper you glue on envelopes to send them somewhere. Such a minor commodity. Everyone should get them free. He handed me two six-cent stamps and smiled at me. I thanked him, stamped the letter and dropped it on the desk. He picked it up, threw it into a basket behind the cage and wished me a pleasant evening. I thanked him again and walked through the dark, tunnel-like hallway to the restaurant.

Paul and Yasaka sat at a candlelit table looking at immense menus. I lit a cigarette and laughed to myself while approaching them. I realized that I would probably enjoy myself in their company more than anywhere else. We split a bottle of wine for dinner (Yasaka's being under-aged didn't phase the waiter), and for the big meal of our little vacation, we all chose crab with butter-sauce. It came served with a huge green salad, fried potatoes and buttered rolls. We ate like beggars on the road until there was barely room for the cheesecake and coffee we wanted for desert.

"I love this lodge," I told them. 'It has a quiet, secluded quality, yet there are really people all around us."

"That's because all the people are too wasted to make any noise," Paul explained. "When everyone is quiet, you lose track of how many people there are in a room."

"How long has this place been here? "

"Oh, Jesus," he sighed. "It's been here since God-only-knows-when! It was here in the old days. Same owner, same manager, same way of running things. It's the only place left here that hasn't gone into some far-out commercial scene and run off all the beautiful people. The manager here loves our kind."

"That's enlightening," I said around a mouthful of the delicious cake. "I wonder why these people are so different?"

"Well, the manager-I tried to get him to meet you but he's down in LA.-did his thing in the late thirties and early forties. He thinks everyone should go through what he did; the long search for identity and self-confidence. He knows that the best way to do it is through travel to groovy places, and so he has maintained this as a good place, to spend our trip."

"That's beautiful."

"How about some more coffee?" Yasaka asked, reaching for the pot the waiter left in the center of the table.

"Fine. If I have a cigarette, I may be able to move but of the chair in a little while." They laughed and she poured me the good, strong coffee. I lit a cigarette off the candle and sat way back in the chair to take in the deliciousness of the whole setting.

After refilling the coffee pot, the waiter brought us a check on a hand-carved, wooden tray. I offered to pay the tab because I had just been paid, and Paul accepted without argument. I picked up the ticket and looked at it. The meal had been very inexpensive in comparasion to the same thing in New York. Paul slipped a dollar tip on the table and we relaxed with one last cup of coffee. When we finished, I paid the bill, and we walked to their room to have a joint. It was too cold to be on the beach, and there were old Laurel and Hardy movies to be shown later in the evening.

We locked the door, which Paul said was entirely unnecessary, and toked for half an hour waiting for the movies to start. When the time actually came and I told them I was going to go downstairs to get in on the group, Paul said, "Maybe you can come up with a chick. Your sister and I are just going to stay and build a fire in the fireplace. Have fun."

"Oh, sure. I guess I'll see you in the morning for breakfast."

It was a put-off, but a perfectly legitimate one. I, Yasaka's older brother (or half-brother, at least) was being given the brush by a couple, both younger than I, who wanted to be alone. It brought me down for a few seconds until I realized that I would do the same thing if I were in the position they were. In fact, (I grinned wickedly at the thought), it was a real shame that Paul couldn't have gone in for the movies, and I could have stayed upstairs with Yasaka. But I had the feeling that she had decided on Paul to be the real thing for her, and I knew she would be faithful to him from then on. Thinking of the gambles, the contemplated risks, the emotional functionings of love, I suffered a mild depression and walked into the tiny, rustic auditorium.

There was no charge for hotel guests, or anyone else, for that matter, and the smoke-filled room was packed with people. A hip-looking woman, about thirty-five, moved her coat to make a place for me to sit down. I thanked her, lit a cigarette out of self-defense, and focused my eyes in the darkness. The movie was just beginning, and I was halfway through my smoke when she spoke to me.

"What are you doing here at Sur?"

"Just a short holiday from the City."

"You're from San Francisco?"

"I was born there. I live in Berkeley now. But I still work in the City."

"What do you do?"

I thought it rather odd that she was completely ignoring the movie, wondered what type of weird game she was playing with me as well as herself and answered her question. "I'm a commercial artist. Not really. I'm a portrait artist, but I'm employed in Commercial Studios in San Francisco."

"Far out," she said. "What were you doing before that?"

"Doing portraits in the Village."

"New York? I was just back there last week. I had to see the publisher of the magazine I free-lance for."

"Oh, I see. You're a writer." I said it with tolerance. You can expect anything from a writer.

"Yes, I do things for ladies' magazines. It isn't exactly the audience I want to speak to and about, but it's the only market I've been able to break into in five years of work."

"That's not very long for a writer. You're successful, then."

"Sort of. If you measure success on the amount of money I make, then I'm the small town girl who made good, but if you ask me if I'm happy with my profession, I would tell you that I needed to modify it a bit."

"That's frank talk for someone I don't know. I'm Richard Goldstein."

"Oh, I'm Valery Evenston. My pen name is E.H. Somners. Read some of my articles sometime when you get a chance."

"I will. Which brings me to the questions."

"Questions?"

"Yes, like what are you doing at Sur; are you alone; and if you are alone, would you like to spend the time with me:

"I have a better proposal than that.. . I was going to ask you to come with me to a party in my beach house. There will be a whole gang of big-wigs there, but they're not too stuffy when they get down here. People here have a tendency to let it all hang out."

"So I've noticed," I said, watching a well-built cocktail waitress trip by in an outfit that looked like it was made for use in bed. "When does your party begin?"

"The people will start coming over after the movies, I guess. We could go now if you like, and set up the drinks and things."

"Okay. I can dig it."

"Let's go." We crouched under the sixteen millimeter movie projector, and when we reached the exit, I held out her mink wrapping to throw over he shoulders. She led me to an old MG Roadster, with the square body and wire wheels. A T.C.

"I like your car," I said, scanning the classic beauty of its lines.

"Why don't you drive, then? I'll direct you."

"Okay." I climbed behind the wheel, which was on the right-hand side. The small but responsive motor roared to life at the touch of the started button and I jammed it into reverse. I backed out of the parking area, and drove off a little paved road in the direction she pointed.

"Take this road to a fork, then the left fork to the end of the road. Isn't that simple?"

"Really," I said coldly, gearing through the tight corners of the little road.

"Hey! You really know how to drive."

"Well, I love to drive these old MG's and Jags. I would love to own one, but it's so hard to find an older one that is somewhat dependable."

"I solved that problem by putting a little sprite engine in this. Wasn't hard at all."

"You do your own mechanical work?"

"I'm not married, fella. I have no one to do these things for me."

"Why aren't you married? You are certainly attractive . . . sexy; you should have a husband."

"I'm pretty hard to live with after a while. All I care about is my writing. Fun comes after that, and I live the kind of life that connects to that kind of attitude."

"I always wanted to know how a writer lives."

"We don't. Writers don't really live. It's only through their books that they can accomplish any kind of meaning. Their lives are never normal and almost always perverse."

"What about the little housewives who write for Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping? Are they perverse?" I asked, turning a hard left at seventy miles an hour.

"No. They are the women who have a talent-you know that everyone who writes has a talent. You can't write anything without the talent. These biddies have the talent, but nothing meaningful, no soul, nothing of the nitty-gritty character that makes the sweat and blood come through the typing paper and into the readers psyche."

"I hadn't thought about them that much," I confessed. "Is this the place? Where do you want me to park?"

"This is it. Just park by those trees over there. Then, if the party gets to be a drag, we can always leave and not be hemmed in by the other cars. There's a road right over there. Park right in the middle of it."

I left the keys in the ignition, but turned them to the off position and hopped out of the car to open her door for her. She climbed out in an unladylike manner, revealing the fact that she wore no underwear under the miniskirt. I glimpsed at the furry twat and took her hand to walk her to the house. It was a cozy little four-room flat, nice bottle gas kitchen, decorated with the artistic taste of someone who can afford to spend five hundred dollars on an art object and watch it blend in with the other treasures on display. She stood in front of me in the doorway of her living room and focused a serious gaze into my eyes.

Her eyes closed and her mouth fell open in an invitation for me to kiss her. I thrust my tongue in her open mouth and she closed her lips over it, tasting me, the wine, the food, the grass.

"You understand that this will be an affair just for a couple of days and there will be no follow-ups," she said when out lips parted.

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that I will probably never see you again."

"I understand that now that you've explained. I didn't really think much about it before right now."

"I didn't expect you to. Let me explain. I have a husband. He's independently wealthy, doesn't have to work or write or anything, and spends most of his time sailing around in his yacht, screwing everything in sight. I love him, but he won't stop this childish manhood-proving thing of his. I guess he won't be satisfied until he has sampled several women from every race all over the world. So I have my affairs, and I don't let them get too involved. In his childish way, Mark really loves me. He would have a heart attack if he ever thought I was being unfaithful, but he never discovers me. And when he comes home to our house in Malibou, he makes love to me like he hasn't had any in ten years. So I just keep quiet and don't complain."

"Not a bad thing you've got going."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, morally, philosophically, et cetera, you have a groovy thing; you and your hubby, both running around but neither getting hung up about it."

"It's difficult at times, and I wish I had a simple situation, like a husband who comes home to me every night after work. But I couldn't write with a man like that around anyway. He would be constantly bugging me about this thing and that thing and I wouldn't get any work done during the hours he was home. I have to write when I feel like it or not at all. That may be anytime of day or night."

"Valery . . . " I said, holding her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. "I think I'll really enjoy this affair."-

"I'm sure you will," she told me. "In fact, you can count on it."

I told her about my situation at Sur, how I managed to get there and the hassle it caused with Eileen. Valery thought it was peculiar that I was so open and frank about another affair, but I explained to her that when she was honest with me, that she could expect the same thing. I touched her cunt a few times while we embraced-just gentle friction against her clit with my fingers. She responded warmly, but said we would have to wait until after the party.

"All right," I said in my sergeant's voice. "What do we have to do for the party? "

"Just take all the booze out from behind the bar in the living room and put it on top. There is a huge bucket of ice in the frige. Put it up there. Here are a couple of tongs for the ice." She handed them to me. "I'll set the hors d'oeuvres out. I made them this afternoon. Would you like one?"

"No, thanks. I had a hell of a dinner at the lodge."

"Isn't it a wonderful place? I think, sometimes, when I travel all over the world doing articles and short-stories, that there is only one place left to go, and that is to the lodge. Of course, I like my beach house, but it gets too lonely at times."

"In idle curiosity, how fast do you write?"

"About thirty corrected pages a day."

"Jesus Christ! I knew you were energetic from the way you talked, but I had no idea you wrote that fast!"

"I have a slight weight problem-you probably haven't noticed because I'm getting skinny again-but I take these diet pills and they seem to make everything go by much faster. My writing has a much faster pace when I take them. Not only the rhythm of the typewriter, but the pace of the story itself. The pills are a great help."

"You sound like something out of the Valley of the Dolls."

"It's not that bad. Besides, you shouldn't criticize. I tasted weed on your breath a while ago."

"Weed?"

"Sure, pot. It's easy to taste in someone's mouth."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"No. I don't take anything like that. I don't even drink. I just take my pills and write and lose weight."

"All right now. I've got everything out I think. Look." I pointed to the readied bar. "Is that all right?"

"Just perfect." She walked from the breakfast table, where she had spread out the food and kissed me heartily on the cheek. It was the most stimulating kiss I have ever felt on my face.

"I have the strongest desire," I told her, "to just spread you out on this carpet and have at it." I felt the padded thickness of the wall-to-wall.

"Go right ahead," she said, sarcastically, "and the members of the party will come stomping in and discover us and have something legitimate to tell Mark."

"Do we have to play it pretty cool at the party?"

"Not really. We just can't do anything that obviously indicates that we are more than good friends. I mean, I'll be with you all through the party, and we will probably leave together, but that's all right. As long as no one sees us making it in the shower or something."

My mind wandered a little. "Next week is Christmas, and then it's New Year's. Odd . . . "

"What's odd?"

"Well, just that I found you at this particular time, no sooner, no later. I have a drag of a New Year's party to go to and I don't know who I'll take."

"Take the woman you've been living with."

"She gets on my nerves too often. And besides, my mother is throwing the party and this woman and my mother are very much alike."

"Are you afraid they're going to gang up on you?"

"If they put their heads together, they could drive me insane before the New Year comes in at midnight."

"I know it's a drag, being alone for New Year's. I was alone here in the cabin, last year, putting together my first attempt at an unsuccessful novel. But I'm going to meet

Mark in Madrid this year. He says he has a great party to go to this time. I can't wait."

"Shouldn't the people be coming in soon? I thought I heard a car door slam."

"That'll be the Morrisons. Mr. and Mrs. They're always the first ones here for a party and the last ones to leave. We're quite close, and they'll watch the house for me and keep the lid on if things get out of hand."

"Do they know about you and Mark?"

"They have their suspicions, but it's a well-kept secret. They don't really know about him, and they don't really know about me. And they're both too close to each of us to mention anything to the other. You were right. That's them, knocking at the front door. Would you let them in, please? I'll fix them a drink. What would you like?"

"Oh, a whiskey sour, I guess." I walked to the front door, accepted the middle-aged couple and introduced myself. "I'm Richard Goldstein," I said, "and you are Mr. and Mrs. Morrison?"

"Yes," the man answered warmly, with an outstretched hand. 'Tm Henry Morrison and this is my wife, Lena."

"How do you do, Ma'am?" I slightly bowed to the elegantly dressed woman. "Won't you have a drink?"

"We'd love one, thank you. Valery's probably putting them together for us now, aren't you, Val?"

"Well, hello Henry, Lena. How have you been the last couple of weeks? I couldn't get in to see you."

"We've been away," Lena answered. "To Paris, doing some shopping. Just got back yesterday." Henry nodded in agreement.

"Don't overdo it with the "won't you have a drink" jazz," Valery cautioned me with a whisper. "You sounded like a Yale professor."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You phony," she whispered again. "I'll bet you're completely anti-academic."

"How did you guess?"

She handed the couple their drinks and we talked for a few minutes, introducing ourselves in a less casual manner.

Then the guests started trickling in, one two-seater sports car at a time, and then a whole horde of them stampeded through the front door. Valery and I lost each other in the confusion, and then she reappeared, glass of coke in her hand, one arm crooked through mine at the elbow.

"Long time no see," I said, sounding like a soused Indian.

"Want to split?"

"Where to?"

"We could go to your hotel," she whispered. "They know me there, but they wouldn't say anything."

"All right. How do you want to get out?"

"Tell you what.. . to save you from the people you don't know and probably don't care for, you can slip out to the car and I'll be out as soon as I can get away. Should take only a few minutes."

"Okay." I squeezed her arm and wormed my way through the wall-to-wall mass of human flesh to the front door. When I opened it, a herd of new people stampeded over me, introducing themselves as they stomped, fifths of bourbon and scotch under their arms and glazed smiles on their faces. I got past them to the night air which was growing cool, and buttoned up my sweater before climbing into the open little car. I lit a cigarette, smoked it and chain-lit another one, staring up at the stars. The door opened to the beach house and I heard several 'good-byes' before a quiet figure slipped across the lawn to the car.

"Are you sure everything is under control there?" I asked when she sat in the car next to me.

"Of course. Everything is just fine. They'll get a little rowdy, and a couple of the younger women will end up running around through the people without any clothes on, but it probably won't come to that. Once, though, one of my parties turned into an orgy."

"Oh, really? Strange people."

"In a way, yes. Most of them come from very well-to-do families and they don't really have much to occupy their time. When they get into a situation like the one my party presents, they lose their inhibitions. One old man tried to rape me one time. Ran all around my room with his tool in his hand, telling me it was bad for a woman to do without her man and that my complexion would go bad. I hit him over the head with the whiskey bottle he brought in . . . after he ejaculated all over my carpet!"

"Jesus! I'm glad we're getting away from that." I took another drag on the cigarette, snuffed it out in the ash tray and started for the lodge. It took a couple of hours to get there because Valery wanted to take me through a network of roads that showed the beauty of Big Sur under a full moon."

"This is the best night in the world to show it to someone," she said, anxiously. "I hope you will come down and see the Sur again sometime. Even though I won't be here, it's a wonderful place to spend some time. And you can't help but meet people. If you hadn't come home with me, you still wouldn't have spent the night alone, hanging around the lodge. People just come and invite everyone out of there!"

We drove past a few of the more beautiful houses in the area and stopped at several spots on the beach road. She directed me up to a canyon with a bridge across it where Jack Kerouac first lived when he came to the Sur. I stared for several minutes at the dark, mysterious old bridge.

"Down there," she pointed, "those rocks are where he wrote the poem about the ocean in the back of Big Sur, the novel. See where the breakers smash against them? Couldn't you imagine sitting down there, all alone, in the middle of the night with nothing but a pen and paper? I have tremendous admiration for the man."

"Which man?" I asked.

"Kerouac, of course." I drove on. We came to one place in the road where the spray from the breakers came over the road and dampened the little MG and its passengers. Once through it, I could see the lights of the lodge, and I pressed my feet down on the accelerator to get there faster. The wind roared through the open top when I climbed over seventy, so I held it right there until we came back to the populated area. I squealed the car to a halt in the hotel parking lot and again walked around to open the door for her.

"Which room do you have?" she asked. "What name is it?"

I took the key out of my pocket and held it up to the light. The name Rembrandt was carved on the wooden key slab. We laughed at the irony and she waited while I lit a cigarette before walking into the lodge.

X

IN THE LODGE ROOM, WE FELL TO DEVOURING each other like rabid dogs. One of those 'understood' things, where she understood what I was looking for and I understood what she was looking for, and we happened to suit each other's needs for the moment. Her long blonde hair fell way over her shoulders when she took out the pins and let it down. She shook it at me, like a mane, almost as if issuing a challenge; "well see who can outlast whom," type of thing. I pulled off my shorts and pushed her to the bed. She fell back gracefully, rolling onto a kneeling position at the head of the bed. I kneeled the same way in front of her until we were face-to-face, and then we embraced, falling sideways toward the foot of the bed until we were completely outstretched and entwined in the arms and legs of each other. It was a passionate moment for such a short affair. Not sexual passion at least at that moment, but a closeness that shouldn't have been there that night, three hours after we met. We both knew it; that was what made it beautiful.

With my tongue in her cunt, she was a walking advertisement for satisfaction. She loved it more than any woman I have ever known, almost to the point of worship. She held it there, too, pulling with her strong arms against the back of my head, pulling my face harder and harder against her cunt. I lapped at her until I thought the muscles of my tongue would cramp up and require hospitalization.

She came the first time shortly after I tongued her and the second time took about twice as long. The third and fourth times were right together, only seconds apart, but getting to that point must have taken a century. My tongue was sore, the muscles were sore, my neck was sore from her pull on my head. I thought I might suffocate if my nose got stopped up, but just when I was preparing to overpower her just to get away, she came. A great, final thrust of her pelvic bones into my face, a shudder, a sigh, and it was all over for her. She wanted no more from me except to make me happy. I had satisfied her, and she didn't want to be satisfied again.

While embracing, she pulled me over the top of her and onto my back. I lay there, waiting to see what position she would want next and trying to imagine how painful it would be for me. But to my surprise, she climbed onto me, her tongue in my mouth, and spread her legs over mine, guiding my cock into her with a hand.

Her cunt wasn't as tight as I thought it would be when I was eating her. Instead, it was sort of an elastic mouth that stretched over the largest object, but gripped even a tongue tightly. She did all the work, sort of returning a favor for what I had done for her. She started whipping her cunt down on my prick' at a terribly fast pace, causing me to come right away. Seconds after she climbed on, my sperm shot into her cunt, leaving me with a deflating prick. But she kept right on pumping me with that elastic cunt of hers, and in no time, I had another hard-on.

She slowed down, revolving her cunt in a circle around the base of my prick, reaching through her legs to rub a finger hard against the spot halfway between my scrotum and my anus. I responded with strong upward thrusts against her cunt, the feeling of orgasm raging through my body until I finally made it a third time. She kept right on, but with a firm grip on her ass, I just pulled her body against mine until she couldn't bang against me. "That's enough," I whispered. "Do you want me to die of a heart attack?"

"No. But I sure would love a cigarette and some tissue."

"Oh," I mumbled and stood up. The blood rushed away from my head, and I became so dizzy that I had to put my head between my knees to recover.

"You all right?"

"Oh, fine." I stood up nonchalantly and managed to walk into the bathroom. I grabbed a handful of Kleenex from a dispenser on the wall and carried it back to her. "We have candles. Would you like one."

"Great! Light one up!"

I struck a match to one of the candles in their brass holders and used the light to find my cigarettes. I found the pack, and then hers, and lit us both one. She stuffed the Kleenex between her legs to absorb the liquid pouring out of her slot.

"Here." I handed her the smoke.

"Thank you." She took a deep drag on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke at the ceiling.

I smoked my cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed, watching her. The sweat, the body-sized damp hole on the sheets; these things didn't show in the candlelight. Only the beautiful golden skin of her body, the long straight blonde hair and her bulge of pubic hair. Her heavy breasts fell slightly to the sides with their weight, the broad pink nipples relaxed and flat. Her long legs were slightly crossed at the ankles, and in the candlelight I prayed for the sudden arrival of a set of paints and a canvas. They didn't come, and I had to be satisfied with just looking. No big thing; I knew that I would be able to remember her body and face well enough to paint them all as soon as I returned to San Francisco. Now the important thing left to determine was what this peculiar married bird and I would do for the rest of the evening. There was really no way to predict.'

She was unusual, no doubt. Not many women have the opportunity to be in her situation. A free-lance writer, unattached except for a husband who is always out to sea, but a husband she loves dearly when he returns to her. Strange, but not so strange in that respect. Men who work away from their wives for long periods of time usually have one affair after another to satisfy the sexual urge. After all, a free piece of ass every night of the week is the subconscious American reason for marrying that gal, and when a man has put his time into the institution of marriage, he doesn't feel like masturbating when he's away from home. Valery was the same way. Not meaning that she was masculine because she possessed a trait common only to men, but that she was normal, one of the few normal women who let their desire rule their lives and rationalize it off with logic.

"Are you going to stay here with me tonight?" I asked her, almost humbly.

"Well, no," she said, matter-of-factly, "when I finish this cigarette, I'm going to get dressed and go home to end the party. This will probably be the last time you will see me."

I touched her chin in a caress with my fingertips and kept my hold while my mouth closed over hers. After we kissed, she looked right into my tired eyes and stared for several seconds. I tried to determine what she was thinking, but it was impossible. The look in her eyes was of total blankness; she wasn't looking at me-she was looking right through me.

"Do you want to see me again?" I asked.

"Yes, I would. But I think it will be quite impossible."

"Why do you want to see me?"

"Because I see in you many of the things that persuaded me to marry my husband. Many of the things he has . . . and many that he never will." Her stare was still fast.

"I've had the desire to tell you I love you. Especially in the last fifteen minutes."

"Is that unusual?"

"It is for me. I don't know what the word means, and I don't use it at all."

"You've never been in love?"

"Not love. You see, I can understand the psychological concepts of what makes a relationship work, but I can't understand the word 'love'. "

"You fool! Don't you know that love is what attracts people like you and me to each other? Love does not make a marriage or any other kind of relationship. It's just the little thing that clicks between two people and they decide to try and make it together. After the people have discovered themselves and each other, love sort of steps aside and makes room for something that's based on reasoning and compatibility rather than on the emotions one person has for another."

"Then I can say I love you."

"If you really think you mean it. I think you know what is going on in my mind." I didn't, but I told her I did.

"But that still doesn't change anything. We needed each other tonight, and tomorrow all I'll need is my typewriter. If you need me . . . you'll have to find a replacement."

"I respect that wish of yours. The only thing I don't understand is how we came so close together in such a short time."

"Not that it really matters, but we were swept into a sort of timeless thing because we weren't observant of our environment. We were observant only of each other."

"I think I can really disagree with you there. Not on the part about how observant we were, but the part about it not mattering. I think it matters. Just what we felt for each other tonight. It's no great earth-shattering thing, but we were kind to each other. And that isn't usual."

She snuffed the cigarette in the ash tray next to the bed and lowered her feet onto the floor. Once they were firmly planted and she had the feel of the carpet, she didn't hesitate to stand right up and start putting her clothes on. I threw on the bare essentials to walk her through the lobby to the MG. We were silent when we left the room and silent when we walked past the clerk. At the car, we faced each other and I felt her body rubbing against mine. "I'll miss you tonight," she said.

"I'll miss you."

I gave her the keys to the little roadster and she gave me a quick kiss on the lips before climbing into the car and motoring out of the parking lot. Back in the lodge, I decided to check on Paul and Yasaka. Maybe they would still be up. The clock in the lobby only read eleven-thirty. I walked up the short flight of stairs and down two hallways until I came to their room. No noise was to be heard from within, but when I knocked and Paul opened the door, I could hear the low volume of a portable record player. "Paul brought it so we could have some sounds at night," Yasaka explained.

"Good. Nice to relax by. I've had a very strange evening."

"I'll bet you have," she laughed. "Running around alone at Big Sur!"

"Now don't jump to conclusions, little sister."

"Well, look at you." She grinned. "Your hair is all messed up, and all you've got on is a pair of slacks, a sweater and sandals. I'll bet you don't even have underwear on! What happened tonight?"

I looked at them. She was sitting at the foot of the double bed, rolling a joint, and Paul focused his attention on me to hear what I had to say. "Well, this woman picked me up right after the movies had started. I didn't even get to see the movie."

"Jesus," Yasaka shrieked. "Did she just grab you out of the chair and haul you off to bed? "

"Listen, you little shit." I grinned at her. "Let me tell my own story. Okay?"

"All right."

"Do you two always fight like this?" Paul asked. "Every time you get together, this war seems to begin."

I cleared my throat and took a toke on the joint she handed me. "It wasn't anything like that! We drove to her beach house in a little MG and set up a party."

"Did you stay?" Her eyes became intent. "How was the party? And where was it?"

"Oh, I can't explain where it was, but it was a drag, so we left forty-five minutes after people started showing up."

"And you came back here to the hotel when you left the party."

"That's right. And now she's gone. I'm all screwed up about it."

"Here." Paul handed me a joint. "Smoke this whole thing and you won't be hung up at all about it."

I took the joint and lit it with a candle. "She was just so beautiful."

"Well, tell us about her!" My sister's voice sounded shrill.

"What is there to tell? She has a husband who's sailing around the globe in his yacht making a personal survey of the sexual traits of women of other races."

Paul and Yasaka grinned at each other. I was trying to hold a lungful of smoke and I wondered what they were grinning about. "Look," I said in a squeak, trying not to let the smoke out. "Why don't you tell me what's so funny?" I exhaled the smoke. "What arc you grinning about?" They just grinned at each other for several seconds more until Yasaka spoke to her man.

"He's been initiated, hasn't he?"

Paul nodded.

"Her name was Valery, wasn't it Richard?" Yasaka said.

"How did you guess?"

"Well . . . she's sort of a nympho. Balls everybody. Paul thumbed down here his first year in college and she practically raped him."

"Yes," Paul agreed, grinning. "It was all I could do to defend myself."

"Shit," I said, holding the joint to my lips for another toke. "That fouls up all my ideas about her."

"Don't let her get to you," Paul warned, "just take another hit and relax."

I was already relaxed. The room seemed crowded with little heat waves that ran parallel to the floor at about the height of the candle. The little flame itself flickered and jumped, strobbing shadows around the room in rapid succession. Thelonius Monk played softly in the background vibrations of the portable record player. I listened, then became too involved in the music and a little bit of nausea that set in.

"I don't feel well," I told them. "I think I'll go to bed."

"Finish the joint first," Paul suggested. "You'll go beyond the nausea stage and everything will be groovy."

I didn't answer, but kept my place on the floor and dragged on the stub of a joint. Each toke made things jump around the room more than they had before, and I seemed to be completely losing my equilibrium and about to fall sideways on the floor from a sitting position. When, at last, the joint was all but burnt out, I weakly stood up and made my way to the door.

"Can you make it all right?" Paul asked. "Oh, sure."

"I could send Yasaka to help you."

"Well. . . maybe I'd better do that. I might just get lost and wander around the halls until dawn." I tried to smile. Yasaka carefully stepped across the room and pulled one of my arms around her shoulder. "Goodnight, Paul."

"Goodnight, man. See you in the morning."

I felt like a complete invalid, staggering down the hall, supported only by the strength of my younger sister. But if she had left me there, I would have curled up on the floor like a dead spider and passed out. We trudged on, slowly making our way to my room. I handed the key to her, unable to open my own door, and watched her deftly turn the sliver of brass in the lock. The door sprung open and she helped me inside.

"I feel like I'm outrageously drunk, except there's very little booze on my stomach." I confided, once the door was closed.

"Your nerves are all jangled because of Eileen and this Valery and the whole thing. If you get plenty of rest, you'll be all right in the morning."

"Thanks for the confidence." I partially undressed myself while she turned the covers back, but the zipper seemed to stick on my pants and she had to take them off me. I rolled onto the bed, naked and limp with exhaustion, and she pulled the covers over me. The candle still burned and she blew it out before lying on the outside of the covers beside me. "I wish you were under them."

"You're too up to do anything anyway."

"But I could feel you next to me."

"You're just all hung up because you had a good piece and now you've got to sleep alone. You're unaccustomed to that."

"But she wasn't good; that was the thing. She was good enough, but she didn't want to do anything with me. She wanted me to do it for her, and then she did it for me. That took some necessary ingredient away from my stash of happiness remedies."

"Well, you'll get a good night's sleep." She put her arms around me and snuggled against the side of my face. I fell asleep that way, with her still cuddled against me. That last time I looked, her eyes were closed and I began to worry about Paul. But when the telephone rang at eight o'clock, she was gone.

XI

WE SPENT SUNDAY MORNING WALKING AMONG the beaches and gigantic boulders that lay in formations on the shoreline. We had checked out of the lodge, bought food for a pack lunch, and planned to return to Berkeley in the afternoon.

It was a happy morning for all of us. Yasaka and Paul were too engrossed with each other to notice me, and I was too engrossed with the splendor of the ocean to pay much attention to anything. We ate our sandwiches, washed down with wine, atop a huge boulder that sat us facing the sea with a granite backrest. The sandwiches were consumed and the wrappers put neatly back into the bag-we didn't want to ruin such a majestic natural wonder as Big Sur with our plastic wrappers and labels. Paul paid a sacrilegious homage to a rock that slightly resembled a cross. Yasaka and I watched the young man smoke a joint while kneeling in front of the stone, and then place the roach at the foot of the stone. We gulped down the remainder of the wine when he rejoined us on the boulder, and we climbed down to the car to make our way back to the East Bay.

It was a long drive back, with the three of us stoned most of the way, and I was ready for nothing more than sleep when I saw the early evening lights of Berkeley outside the car windows. A light rain had begun to fall, and Paul drove straight home to the ticking of his windshield wipers. Once in the house, we crumpled to the floor and lay there in a sort of triangle, passing that last joint around. Then I crawled to the telephone and called Eileen to find out how I had jazzed everything up.

"Hello, Eileen? It's me."

"You! I've been trying to get you all weekend! Where have you been?"

"I told you that I was going to Big Sur for the weekend. I told you Friday."

"I don't remember that. I'm very upset with you at the moment."

"If you can forget things people tell you that easily, I guess you have a right to be upset at most anything."

"That's rather cruel, isn't it?"

"Now, look. I called you up to be civil and ask you about your weekend. If all I can get out of you is a roar of anger because I didn't spend the weekend with you just forget it."

"Richard? Is that any way to talk to me."

"I'll talk to you the way I would talk to any other child."

Click! I put the telephone back on the receiver. "She hung up on me," I told them.

"And she's got all your clothes, doesn't she, man? I have some that will fit you until you get those back."

"No thanks. I have a few left at home . . . and I'll go over and see her tomorrow."

"So what are you going to do right now?"

"I guess I'll drive home and go to sleep. I'm awfully tiredj and I have to go to work in the morning."

"That's right. I sure was lucky to get this weekend off. Drop by tomorrow. Or call us and say how things are."

"All right, Paul. Later."

"Yeah, good night."

"See you tomorrow, Yasaka."

I bumped into a few walls getting to the doorway, but once outside in the rain, I found the way to my restful-looking beetle and started it up for the trip home. I had smoked my last cigarette before I left Paul's and I opened a new pack as soon as I got in my apartment. Smoking in a semi-trance, I decided to go see Eileen right after work. No big breakthrough, but it was a constructive thought for someone as tired as I was. When the cigarette burned down, I thankfully put it out and turned off the light in the bedroom. My clothes came off in seconds and I fell immediately into a deep slumber.

The next day, I worked hard and fast in an effort to make the time pass faster. When five o'clock rolled around, I still felt full of energy and didn't have the usual five p.m. let-down. I drove straight from the office to Eileen's house, and apparently she wasn't expecting me. There was no dinner, no wine, not even a friendly woman. Just a neurotic, twenty-seven-year-old child, playing little games with herself in an effort to make me think that she was perfectly normal. When she realized I knew something was amiss, she flew into a rage that ended with me tripping out the front door, arms full of clothes and records. I had to face her a second time to get my shaving bag, and I knew I didn't have everything. I shouted a sarcastic "Good-bye, Love," up the stairs after me when I made my last trip. There was no response; I expected none. I just wanted to get away from her.

At home in Berkeley, I found a letter that had come in from Susanne. She was despondent, alone for the holiday season, and she wanted me back there in New York. That depressed me to the point of bleak nothingness, because I wanted so much to be with her and it was such an impractical thing to do. I prepared a meager dinner of hamburgers and baked beans and sat at the small table, reading the letter over again. I lit a cigarette, thinking of the lack of humor in a situation where a man, instead of living with someone he loves in a place he wants to be, is living in just the opposite sort of city with a domineering mother and a mistress of the same breed. Possessive. There was no humor in my situation at all, or at least no humor that my mind could detect, and when you haven't got any humor, baby, you haven't got much of anything.

The two bitches harassed me during the rest of the week. Every night when I came home from work, I would find two notes. One slipped under the door by Eileen and the other tacked to the framework by Motherbitch. Each woman wanted the same thing. Trivia. Something little to make ah issue out of if possible. If no issue could be made, they would dream up more trivia. With Eileen it was the little things that I left at her house. Like my lighter and cigarette case! If I'd wanted those little things I probably would have thought of bringing them home. And all I wanted her to do was stay away from my door. Mother wanted me to come over and help her move something or other every day. And when she didn't have something for me to move (because I'm the only man around) there were other petty chores she thought of to bring me all the way across the bridge.

I learned to despise both of them and considered making a move to a new apartment where they couldn't find me. But then, Motherbitch could find anything. And for all I knew, she and Eileen had teamed up on me and exchanged information. It was hopeless. No place left to run except to Paul's, and if I was over there I was stoned and I don't like to be stoned all the time like that. Eileen would eventually talk me into coming back to her, and Motherbitch would eventually talk me into being civil. Either of these things would be bad enough, but both of them? The thought of it turned my stomach.

Christmas Eve came and I slept on the couch in Paul's house after spending a beautiful evening with my only two friends. We had drunk gallons of eggnog, and listened to Christmas records and decorated the tree. The whole traditional thing, with popcorn strings, and most beautiful of all were the fifty copper candleholders Paul had pounded for the tiny white Christmas candles. In spite of all this, I felt the pangs of exile: an outcast among his partner outcasts. That took away much of the spirit of the thing and left me sad to fall asleep alone and sheltered away.

Morning brightened things up a bit. With all the presents and the tremendous breakfast steaks that Yasaka broiled, I could hardly be depressed. But that, too, wore off and I was once again staring at the world through slits in my cell window. We ate a righteously prepared Christmas dinner, the three of us, and it didn't change my feeling. Then, as we sat around in the kitchen drinking hot cider and smoking grass through a water pipe, Yasaka got a frightened look on her face and declared that she had an announcement to make.

"What is it?" Paul asked. I didn't have the energy to ask.

"Well, our blessed Bitch, Mother of all young orphans, has invited us to evening services on the very night of Christmas."

"Oh, shit!" Paul groaned. I just stared into the depths of the tree.

"We've got to go over there," she said. "Motherbitch will be furious if we don't."

"Yeah, but, Jesus, what a drag of a way to spend Christmas night."

"You all sound unreal," I remarked.

"But we still have to go and see our beloved Mother and we have to leave in about ten minutes! Isn't that pleasant?"

"Oh, shit!" Paul said again.

"Come on, my two strong warriors. Take me into the depths of hell and return me to safety."

"Where is she?" I asked of Paul, who was flat on his back eyeing the wallpaper and contemplating the situation.

"Don't know, man. But I guess we have to go over there."

It took time, but we finally managed to get off the floor and into action. For a dreamlike instant, we all looked back at the house, disbelieving that we had really come from it. "It's a weird Christmas," I said. "Everything's all screwed up."

We climbed into my beetle and I started the motor. Paul sat in the front seat and looked at me. "You're right."

"I am? What are you talking about."

"It's a weird Christmas."

"Oh, yes, things are terribly strange. Look over there at the way the clouds are hanging on that moon!"

"Must be the season of the witch."

We all shuddered at the eerie thought, and I hunched over the wheel to see better into the misty night. The fog grew thicker and the headlights flashed on a solid wall about ten feet off the hood of the car. I flashed them on bright, but that was only worse. We had to slow down and creep along, all the way across the San Francisco Bay. It gave me a paranoid feeling about things like earthquakes and bridges falling through, but we arrived safely to the other side and turned off into San Francisco.

The fog was worse in the heart of the city and it took us hours to find Mother's house. We looked at each other then back out at the fog, mouths gaping open at this natural phenomenon. Street lamps were ghostly yellow pinpoints in the distance. I couldn't see street signs at all, and I had to try to find the proper turns by using familiar landmarks. But after at least an hour of aimless searching in the fog, I pulled off the road and parked on a side street.

"What are we going to do, team?" I asked.

"Well, if my lover and my brother weren't so high we would be able to find the way. The fog gets like this all the time and-"

"And you're not supposed to drive in it unless it's an emergency," I interrupted.

"But it is sort of an emergency. Our diplomatic relations are at stake."

"All right, then," I started off in first gear, very slowly. "Does anyone have any idea where we are? I'm completely lost. I only know that I'm in San Francisco."

There was no response. I drove on, disgusted with Yasaka for insisting that we go on when she didn't even know a way to go. I glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. Her dark eyes were boring into the fog, searching for something familiar. Paul sat straight back in the seat, a cigarette pasted to his lips and his eyes glued to the window. I turned this way and that every time I came to a street that looked like it went somewhere. I lit a cigarette. When it went out, another half-hour would have passed. I puffed slowly on it, hoping I could throw the nasty butt out the window on Mother's sidewalk. Little patches of clearing appeared at times, but they were never near enough to an intersection for us to get our bearings. Then, just as though some god had shoved a hot-gloved fist through the air, a clear area appeared with a street-sign right in the middle of it! I drove right up to it and read the names: By some stroke of nothing less than magic, we had come into the clearing about three blocks from the house. And after the two hours of driving over unfamiliar hills and through unfamiliar neighborhoods, I was amazed. I quickly drove down the street to the corner where the house would be hidden in the fog. I parked, and we couldn't see the house at all until we climbed out of the car.

Mother must have been watching for us and saw our lights, because the door swung wide open when we were halfway up the steps to the porch. "Is that you?" The fog curled around her hair, right in the doorway!

"Sure, it's us," I told her.

"Well . . . I thought you weren't going to come." Or at least that's what she hoped.

"Just a little late on account of the fog, Mother. We got lost and couldn't find your house. None of us is really familiar with the City."

"Well, come on in so I can close the door."

We stomped past her to be greeted by the forged smile of the old man. "Hello," I said. In a polite way, he said "hello" to everyone and we exchanged greetings. Mother came out of the hallway and into the big room.

"I thought I would fix all you kids some hot-buttered rum." Good old Mother, always trying to buy you out. Only she didn't know what we would bargain for.

"Sounds good to me," I said, without much enthusiasm.

"Yeah," Paul agreed.

"Do you want a hand, Mother?" Yasaka stood up and started after her.

An intense silence followed. The old man just didn't know what to say to us. He didn't know if he should apologize for the mess his wife had brought on us, or condemn us as young hellions. And Paul, Yasaka and myself had invented a pact not to answer any questions we thought were in the least way unfair. Paul sat and stared at the man, as if he expected the tired, gray face to come to life with the miracle of speech. But it didn't happen. Paul had nothing to say to him and he couldn't think of anything appropriate to say to Paul. I smoked two cigarettes, waiting for something to happen. And when it did, it was only Mother and Yasaka with the drinks. But that brought a little color back into the room. Not that she was more tolerable than he was, but only that she browbeat him, and he was afraid to speak when he knew she might be listening.

"Don't look so glum, Richard! It's Christmas night." Mother brought a drink from the coffee table to where I sat in a secluded rocking chair. "Here's that buttered rum I promised. Don't you want some?"

"Thank you. I like rum."

"What has made you so blue?"

"Well," I paused, lighting a cigarette and looking around the room to find Paul and Yasaka engaged in conversation. "You know, I think. I want to be in New York right now . . . not in San Francisco. Wouldn't that upset you a little if you were in my shoes?"

"Supposing you were my parent, and you arranged a business venture for me, and I came back and told you to get lost?"

"It was a museum, Mother. I've told you many times, in letters and in speech, that I can't stand museums. They're great for tourists, but I don't even like tourists."

"I think that is beside the point, really. It is something that I worked at-for you. And you muffed it."

"Precisely! You know I won't do anything I don't want to do. Why do you keep proposing things that you know I won't accept? Do you want a hair shirt?"

"Richard! What a thing to say to your own mother!"

"Well, you asked me why I was unhappy, and you are one of the reasons I am. What else could I have told you?"

"I don't want to discuss it," she whispered, and walked to where Paul and Yasaka sat on the sofa. "How are you two love birds getting along?" They didn't answer; our pact had achieved an effect. "Well? Aren't you going to answer me?"

"Why don't you put your sentences together without so much levity, Mother?" Yasaka glared at the woman.

"I see. Then how are you two getting along?" The blush of frustration first paled her face, then turned it a muddy red. I held my hand over my mouth so she couldn't tell I was laughing at her.

"We're getting along fine, Mother," Yasaka answered. "And yourself?"

"Oh, fine, I guess. Are you and Paul enjoying your little . . . your . . . "

"Living together? Is that what you're trying to say? Yfcs. We enjoy it very much."

"Oh. Congratulations. I'm glad you're happy." Did you hear that? She wanted to shout to her husband. Did you hear her say that they were happy? What does she mean, happy? Her spirit was lost, if only temporarily. I knew that after we went home, she would take the whole thing out on the old man, chewing him up and spitting him out again in little frustrated pieces. But her crushing defeat was taken along with a bit of information from enemy intelligence. She had started a conversation with two of us; she knew how to do it. And with both feet stomping, she flung herself right in the middle of a conversation and expended immeasurable quantities of energy keeping their minds occupied. I watched for a minute until it became too boring. The old man wasn't much help, either. Nothing has excited him lately, nor has he caused anyone to be excited.

With little effort, I leaned back in the rocker until my neck muscles felt the pressure of the high back chair, closed my eyes and let my mind wander. My thoughts went first to the members of the room. According to their approximate closeness to me, I analyzed them separately.

First, the old man, closest to me in an easy chair. I could see him with my eyes closed, almost as perfectly as when I opened them. Looking at his image on the dark walls of my mind, I studied his dried old face. Wrinkles of worry, wrinkles of pain. He had wrinkles for every kind of problem that faces the American male. But what had happened to his manhood? He must have had it at one time, or she wouldn't have accepted him into her web. She liked the real-man type. And the bastard had once fit that description. He went to Germany to "Kill those Nazis," even though he could have Stayed home safe and teaching school. He came back wounded, but we were never told about the nature of the wound. Could it have been one of his testicles? No, he was too skinny. When you cut the balls off a man, a cow, a horse, a cat or a dog, the result is always the same; a fat animal. He looked like a shrunken onion, left on a fencepost to blow away when the first strong wind came along.

Beyond his figure in the chair was the Christmas tree. Not only were the bulbs and ornaments made of plastic, but the tree, itself, was made of some unreal shit, and it had been stored every summer I could remember, in the attic. The scenery being played in my head diminished after a while. Beginning with my step-father, little images of things relating to him became distorted, and I lost them all together. Then I was thinking of the tree in Big Sur, the one I had paid special attention to because of its beautiful dead limbs. That tree in no way resembled the Christmas tree made of aluminum foil, but they were both trees and my mind was supposed to be wandering, so I let it. I went back to Big Sur and back to bed with Valery. I wasn't at all satisfied with the night we spent together. Just the way she wanted me to do it for her, and then she would do it for me. It sounded like something two five-year-olds would say to each other when it came time for nitty-gritty show-and-tell. Not that she was bad in bed: she was one of the best women I have ever known. She knew what I wanted, how to give it to me as well as how to get what she wanted out of me. It was just so cold.

Susanne is a good example for a comparison with Valery. The former girl isn't as good in bed, and hasn't been to bed with as many men. She's only had four, other than myself. Valery, especially if the story about her nympho bag had any consistency, had been to bed with literally hundreds of men and was an expert, but v.nen Susanne snuggled up to me in bed on a cold autumn night in New York, it was like two priests joining in prayer. We worshipped each others bodies for hours on end at the beginning of our relationship. And when the sexual union was made complete, my cock probing deep into her cunt, we slipped out of the normal dimension and stayed there until the shattering energy of orgasm brought us back to reality. Valery was more practical, Susanne more romantic. Valery would get what she wanted and repay the donor in the same blood, while Susanne knew what she wanted but wasn't obnoxious about her methods of finding it. If I came and she didn't . . . there was always the next time. And I fought to make those next times good ones. But Valery wouldn't really appreciate the thought behind such a thing. And she would despise Susanne if ever they were to meet. Susanne would tolerate the other woman and out-last her.

With a focusing of my thoughts, I fell back into the mob of reality-people, landing with a thud and the grace and balance of a wart-hog. The old man noticed that my eyes were open for the first time in several minutes, and I was afraid he might ask what my problem was. I moved with a jerk when my eyes focused on the people sitting around the room. The ash tray next to my rocker had two. dead cigarettes in it, and that was the only evidence I could find to certify that I had been in the room. Yasaka looked edgy, like she was about to do something horrible, and Paul looked as apathetic as a bespectacled sponge.

I stood up and walked to the base of the cold, empty fireplace. They were both too lazy and anti-sensual to light it, even on the coldest nights. My picture was in the largest frame, centered over the mantle. I tapped at the glass with my finger-nails, listening to the little knocking sound that seemed to add rhythm to the voices of the three vocalists. I continued to tap, looking from the high school graduation picture taken over a decade ago, to the reflected image in the glass. One hell of a difference. Was it a change for the worse, or the better? I looked at the reflection and noticed the smile wrinkles. Those were the worst ones. That meant life couldn't be too bad. How many sad men have smiling wrinkles? The other lines I got from wondering where my next month's rent was going to come from in New York. And the smiling ones were from laughing over the whole matter of finances. But it wasn't a gloomy reflection. There was character, and character can't be all one mood, but there was a brightness that spread the healing powers from the smile I flashed at the glass on downward, throughout my body.

I was happy, becoming happier, and I wanted to shout it. But I had to leave the house. If I shouted about how happy I was over nothing, it would shatter their tired eardrums. I would snatch Yasaka and Paul up and carry them to the car. The three of us would roar off into the adventure-filled fog and laugh and yell and sing funky old Christmas carols, one day late.

"Lets go," I commanded. Everyone turned to stare. The old man, Motherbitch, everybody. .

"Are you tired, son?" I looked at the hateful eyes she tried to hide with makeup.

"I'm tired of all this horseshit. Besides, I have to go to work in the morning and it's getting late."

"I'm ready anytime," Paul said.

"So am I."

"Well, let's go then. Yasaka? Let's disappear in the fog."

"Disappear in the what?"

"The fog," I shouted. "Paul, you come with us. Well get in the VW and slowly sink into the murky depths of San Francisco superstition. Come on."

There were no "good-byes" said. I .had caught Motherbitch at a point when she was being verbally crucified by the calm voice of her daughter, and she didn't know how to thank me for the reprieve I had given her by getting up to go. She stood in the doorway when we left, her husband right behind her, both of them staring after us into the fog.

XII

IT WAS RAINING EARLY THE NEXT MORNING WHEN I pulled up in Paul's driveway. I ran to the porch and turned to look back at the car. Luggage racks clamped over the roof, supporting two suitcases and a box of tools, all wrapped into a neat, canvas-covered square. I rapped on the door twice and walked on in.

Things weren't normal. The walls looked bare and the sofa was missing it's paisley cover. Pictures were stacked along the walls next to the stereo, which had been folded away. Yasaka was taking the tree down, dropping the ornaments into a cardboard box, and Paul was taking the mirror off a huge chest of drawers.

"What's going on?"

"Can't you see, silly? We're moving!"

"It looks like it, Yasaka, but the question is why?"

"Well," Paul said, "I've had my eye on a place for quite a while. Out in Sonoma, near where I work."

"So you're going to move out today?"

"Well, if not today, then tomorrow."

"Why the sudden hurry?"

"It's like this," Yasaka began. "Last night when everything was so shitty over at Mother's house, I started thinking. And what's worse, Paul started thinking. So you dropped us off and we stayed up all night rapping about how good it would be to get away to more of a country atmosphere and cool it with the grass for a while. So by four a.m., we had decided to move out to Sonoma."

"What are you going to do about your classes?"

"Drop them! What else? They are of no use to me if I'm not happy . . . and I'm not happy here in Berkeley. By the way . . . what are you doing, so spruced up and groomed?"

"I'm getting ready to go on a trip."

"In your mind or in your car?"

"In my car. Right back to New York and Susanne and my old job at the portrait studio. Same old rut, where I can curse the rat-race and the traffic and the subway strikes."

"When are you leaving?" Her eyes were as big as saucers.

"Right now! I'm all packed, and I dropped by to say good-bye."

"You're just going to get in that old Volkswagen and split to New York the day after Christmas? "

"Can you think of a better time?"

"No, there is never a better time to escape than now."

"Paul? I'm glad I met you, and I hope you can both make it out to New York. I won't be back here for a long time. San Francisco seems to have lost something for me."

"Yeah, man, well try to make it back. If you ever get out here again, be sure and come out to Sonoma."

Yasaka threw her arms around me and sobbed a little. I kissed her fully on the mouth and pushed away. "Are you sure you have everything?" she asked.

"I'm not sure I have anything. But it's better than what I've got here."

THE END
Mother's Little Stud ....(89k)    by Eric Jay




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