Amateur Insanity

Christine

 

Sex in the Haight that summer was inevitable. Good examples of that tendency were our spontaneous drives into the country. When a drive was suggested, whoever happened to be in the two Scott Street apartments at the time filled up whatever car was available. Haphazard seating threw together random cats and chicks and resulted in couples-for-a-day by the time we arrived at the beach or a rock concert or the redwoods or wherever…  Arm over her shoulder, significant nudges or hand-brushings and, if the signals were right and the road clear, you started kissing. Backseat foreplay was often consummated behind trees or bushes. Chicks might be recent Haight Street catches, friends of Cookie and Christine or, once, Christine herself.

Inevitably, calculation in choosing seats arose, but never so blatantly as the Sunday morning Christine surprised me and probably everyone else by plopping beside     me     in the backseat of Tim’s car. She glanced up at me with a coy, shy little smile. All this was uncharacteristically bold for her. She was extraordinarily attractive and so not a pursuer. I was surprised, even stunned, that she felt that way and not yet convinced she did.

I had found that I was very finely-tuned to her moods, and sometimes, while just standing next to her, I would lose my balance.

We were headed for The Magic Mountain Music Festival and Fantasy Fun Faire, a rock concert on top of Mt. Tamalpais. Among the dozen or so bands from the Bay Area and beyond, we were most interested in one that had just leapt from the hip cognoscenti to a #1 AM hit, the Doors. Next to Christine sat Sherry, a kindergarten teacher colleague of Tim’s ex-wife. Tim, of course, was next to her. His calculation.

Danny drove, Cookie and Don-Ed beside him. As we pulled away from the curb I remembered something Christine said when she and Cookie were discussing men while dancing on our hardwood floors one Sunday morning. I was stretched out on the couch reading the regular Sunday rant against the war of columnist Herb Caen, the first of the WWII generation to speak out.
Christine emphatically told Cookie that when judging a guy, “It’s in the eyes.” A note in her voice? Something drew my attention to her. She was staring into my eyes. At that time, I used on chicks a smoldering stare full of entranced desire and promising oceanic passion, but I only occasionally went beyond the stare, only when yanked out of shyness by overwhelming desire. Though she didn’t intend it that way, Christine was calling my bluff when she sat next to me. 

Soon it’s the usual party on wheels: radio rock thumping in open-window wind-roar, and a jug and a joint going the rounds. Tim doesn’t really know Sherry very well. He bumped into her on Haight Street that morning and invited her to drop by sometime, which she did just before we left. Grass and wine eventually kick-in. Knees wedged against the back of the front seat, we four slouch deeper. By the time we reach the Golden Gate Bridge, Tim has his arm on the seat above Sherry’s shoulders. I’m still reeling with disbelief and awe, suspecting that I’m misreading this and afraid. If I thought about how Christine and her apartment-mates thought about Tim and I, I would have guessed they saw us as likeable, bumbling eggheads. Hardly glamorous enough for Christine.

Cookie occasionally peeps over the front seat and exchanges a knowing smile with Christine.
While she and Christine and I are ranking favorite cuts on the Doors’ album, Danny suddenly lets out a panic-charged whisper, “Cool it man, the heat! Right behind us! “   

“Don’t turn around and look!!!”         

“Relax!”        

“Keep the jug down!”      

A highway patrol car creeps by in the next lane. We turn with wooden casualness and answer the cop’s tired scowl with that sweaty smile prey gives a predator. But today, this stretch of Highway 101, the descent to Richardson Bay and the turnoff to Mill Valley, is four lanes clogged with our type, so he pulls ahead.

The adrenaline rush from the cop gives me the courage to put my arm on the seat above Christine. As the car switchbacks up Mt. Tamalpais, we slide back and forth, throwing her against me. Then, after we turn a sharp curve and go straight along the crest of a ridge, she stays pressed against me. That’s it. There’s no mistaking it now. I’m going for a kiss.

I’m feeling pretty groovy the last couple days. The intensity of the Paranoia seems to be decreasing after each attack. I’m comfortable in most social situations, hearing and interpreting correctly most of the time. The Paranoia seems to be gone, aside from a frayed edge, an occasional flash of panic entering a peopled room, or after a simple misinterpretation of something said. I decide what’s left is just the jitters: the normal amount dirt life is cut with. At least it seems that way today.

Through the car window there is a break in the trees, and where I expect a panorama of gray scintillate ocean, there is instead a cotton prairie of fog, walled from the bay by the hills. In front of that, Tim and Sherry are already going at it. I drop a hand onto Christine’s shoulder and she looks up at me, ready, expectant, aware of Tim and Sherry. I lean down and we kiss.

Christine is long-necked and willowy, even so, she is much smaller, lighter than I expect, almost fragile, with a delicate kiss. We part and she looks up and I see she too is pleased. So we do it again. Then we part and she puts her head and hand on my chest and I clutch her. Then we start kissing again, and if we were alone, I would touch her breasts. I see Tim feeling Sherry’s, but I don’t want to move too fast. In my elation, I am patient.