Unconditional Haight

Mom threw me out of the house this morning. 

Or did she? 

It wouldn’t be unique if she had and, technically, it is her turn as, last time, I beat her to the ‘off’ switch. In either case, this time, instead of the usual orgasmic ripples of triumphant liberation associated with being freed from The Monster that’s trying to kill me, I’m hating her. True, my hate for her is ongoing, but as the bright, perfect sun burns the chill off our Bay Area, this new day’s hate is a spectacularly blinding paparazzi assault of echoing screams and piercing flashes, a montage of highlights clipped from the full body of her work - of our work – multi-screened around what is perhaps her crowning achievement of just a few hours ago: Asleep in my bed, I’m shaken awake to find her face and arms somehow stretched across the entire airspace above me. Trumping every past surprise attack, this new one is most disorienting because I’ve never experienced this particular brand of insanity: quiet and other-worldly.

“If you get out now,” ghost-voice in monotone, “I’ll give you one hundred dollars, thirty Biphetamines and a ride to anywhere so long as I’m back by morning.”

Now, out here on this freeway on-ramp, I realize a few hundred thousand of the hydrogen micro-spheres blazing hostility toward The Monster are actually pointed at my own heart and'll never reach target Mama. Why?

Because I fucked up and said, “No.” 

See, somewhere during our live-long-day mission to immolate one another, I’ve shot myself in the balls, (de)evolved, by actually refusing drugs, money and a ride to the Haight just so long as I can be contrary. Just so long as I can make it as painfully clear as a 15-year old can that she no longer controls me. Just so long as I can punish her for teaching me to hate myself. 

An hour or so later, I’m knocking on her bedroom door, an attempt to recoup the lost cash n’ prizes.

“What do you want?” a barbiturate croak from deep below the earth’s crust.

“I changed my mind – I’ll take you up on your offer.”

But whatever phantom co-wrote her spooky/glam proposal has left the building:

“Close the door, asshole. It’s too late. Get out.”

So now, chain-smoking the Pall Mall straights I stole from my Godmother, Laverne, leaning against the familiar 101 NORTH – SAN FRANCISCO sign, the diatomic hate I feel for the both of us feeds my young muscles while it wipes my brain clean of the self-conscious fears of arrest for being the child - ripped jeans, suede cowboy boots and shoulder-slung sleeping bag notwithstanding – hitchhiking out onto the apricot and gold-tinted freeway thru suburban Santa Clara.

You can always get a ride in 1968. The tendrils of a million-foot tall Day-Glo Freak Magnet San Francisco’s effectively become are thick with hippie-types and we’re all going to Mecca. The Haight. I’ll be fine.

I keep burning the Pall Mall reds to show the world how bad-ass I am - a brushstroke on a work in progress, it’s message already clear: “Don’t fuck with me.” My walk, my clothes, my sleeping bag, my rings, turn me from abused slipper-boy into a defiant little man getting the fuck outta Dodge. Oh. Except the hair. The hair’s all wrong. My hair says, “You should be in school, young man”. Worse, it says, “I’m a pussy from the suburbs.”   

Across the overpass, the sign says, 101 SOUTH – LOS ANGELES. A magnetic force whispers, “Hollywood! Movies! My dope fiend dad!” But a hitchhike to L.A. is still too far and too scary. I remember it taking at least a day to drive to LA and besides, the hippies in LA are all phonies – the real hippies - my tribe - are in San Francisco, in the Haight-Ashbury. The real hippies will know I’m one of them, a fellow freak, and take care of me. I walk further down the ramp a ways, throw down my sleeping bag, plug in another smoke and stick out my thumb.

And now the old magic’s returning, the one I feel every time I escape The Monster. I am once more drafted into service, picked to star in the triumphant cinema finale entitled: "I win!" Maybe I can use this magic to force my hair down to my shoulders by the time I get to the City. 

“But oh that magic feeling – bum! bum! bum! bum! – nowhere to go.”

Still, fear undulates beneath the glory. Every driver that refuses to stop grinds off a layer of my Oh, Freedom Highway! euphoria, each of their puzzled squints whisper, “Something’s not right – shouldn’t he be in school?” Every flash of doubt and hint of wonder carves the core out of this derelict runaway child standing by the side of the freeway at sunrise.

But it all turns around like magic when the CPA in a Rambler makes the mistake of locking eyes with the real me and all it takes is this single blip-transmission of his confusion and fear to remind me of who I am:

I’m the one people are afraid of now. I’m the one scaring ‘the straights’. I’m the freak eroding your foundation, I’m a sexy mystery you can’t control. Your world is crumbling and I am the future. Your abuse will no longer be tolerated. We’re taking over and you just told me you know it.

I mature by years in moments. A cop rolls over the overpass, right past the ramp I stand on. Nothing. I am untouchable. Magic. On my way home, no where to go. 

I hear the honk first. I turn around. Further down the ramp’s shoulder, an old dirty-white delivery truck wheezes black smoke near a blinking right turn signal. I grab my sleeping bag and run to the passenger side. A burly hippie with live-wire hair and glasses beckons me to slide open the door. 

“Where you goin’?”

Music playing inside. Incense. Big dirty windshield. An Indian curtain half-separates the front seats from the dark rear of the truck. Newspapers. A roach clip. Maps. Coffee cups.  

“San Francisco”, I reply.

“Vamanos, brother.”

“Okay, good. Thanks.”

And it’s that easy. I’m in. I have my own co-pilot seat and a wide view of the freeway ahead. He asks me my name and I tell him the truth because we’re family. His name is Oscar. Oscar’s about 20. Or 30. Or 50. He’s not my age, I know that much. But Oscar’s cool. And Oscar knows I’m cool, too, because he stopped for me, let me in and already passed me a lit joint. Oscar’s listening to KMPX, the first underground FM station. I know because I play it when mom’s at work, and the rage ignites - She has to leave for work soon - the memory shoots a blinding-hot wire of revenge through my being. “FUCK YOU BITCH! Find some other live-in housekeeper babysitter cook punching bag to take care of Steve and Elizabeth.”

My body, my mind, are entirely encapsulated in a radiation field of a rage strong enough to float this old milk truck on a magic carpet of seething bright hatred all the way to Oz.

God, I love this feeling!

As the rush begins to wane, my sense of sound returns in time to catch Otis Redding sing, “Dock of the Bay” in his saddest voice. “…left my home in Georgia/Headed for the ‘Frisco Bay…” and I know I’m magic, because, right on cue, I see the first grizzled fingers of blue San Francisco bay waters. “I’m headed to ‘Frisco, too, Otis.” The rage-high, the refer and the freedom of escape snip the last wispy strands anchoring me to an irrelevant, dissolving hell. The universe conspires, joins my celebration by synchronizing a real-time Otis soundtrack as we, Oscar, black brother Redding and me escape the sadness and repression, connected souls sailing an open, enchanted sea.

Haight Street, 1968. Troops, armadas, throngs, congregations, ten thousand men and women, boys and girls moving as one amazed, righteous, entitled, stoned entity in water buffalo sandals and high-steppin’ dancehall girl boots, in painted vans, tour buses and gawk-eyed family station wagons, a symbiotic entity that moves up and over and down and thru the streets and sidewalks. Beautiful velvets and cowboy leathers, antique lace and princess slippers, Chinese silk and last-century military parade jackets, plumed hats, beaded headbands, bracelet and rings, ricochets of laughter woven thru chants of “Owsley” and “hash”. Rock guitar feedback and bending sitar notes ride giant nimbus clouds of incense pumped out of stores selling pictures of Hindu Gods with blue skin and cartoon lion mouths, brass hookahs, tickets to the Fillmore and the Avalon. Snake-charming barefoot hippie girls lob acid-injected oranges into the bejeweled kaleidoscope crowd from the edge of a flatbed truck The Grateful Dead perform upon. Hell’s Angels, drunk and sneering, provide the service of reminding us danger and evil still exist. A celebration of The Celebration, the mischief of embracing The Mischief as a chorus of penny-whistle shrieks begins eight, nine blocks east, moving up steep Divisidero hill, it grows louder until, a minute later, the hundreds packed tight around me blow on two-tone Cracker Jack toys, a misfit alarm system warning the dealers and runaways the SFPD is inching its way toward us and the old wall corralling Golden Gate Park. I duck into a stairwell over-seen by a woman with hair like an exploded blonde brain that she somehow balances a Yellow Cab hat upon. She wears tiny blue granny shades to protect her eyes against the lit green candle she cups for light, even though there’s still plenty of day left.

“Gotta cigarette?”, she whispers, exotic, from somewhere on the East Coast. I pull out the last two Pall Malls, light mine on her sacred flame.

My obsession with Hollywood and its precious merchandise has, over my abbreviated childhood, opened out from itself like flora. First, a seedling with a singular craving for the warm light of fame, it grew into a x40-scale flower I’ll push down the throat of every last motherfucker to let them know who I really am: the Chosen One who’s special enough to act out endless fantastic tales for millions of dollars, safe inside exotic costumes, storybook sets and far-away lands, and all the bright lights and eyes and hearts focused on me will create a ripple effect of world love beyond mortal limits.

Someday, baby, someday.

But Haight Street – in fact, the whole city of San Francisco - is here! Now! The true alternate universe of acceptance and safety I’ve always longed for, staring actors just like me who’ve chosen to embody characters with names like Swan and Pineapple and Chocolate George, our costumes ready for a zillion different cinema moments we weave together on pixie-dusted Victorian sets, in luxuriant emerald parks, over gritty sidewalks and behind deco behemoths, this enchanted foggy Olympus with views of the entire world espied from tottering peaks above the clouds, all bound together by the most advanced special effects ever conceived by man, God or movie studio: The Drugs. The mesmerizing, all-powerful, erotically congruent puffs, pills and powders. I am me. I am safe and I am loved and I am finally, finally home: San Francisco.