My first venture out of the pad was a bargain matinee at a downtown sticky-floor theater. Rarely did I go to an American film but this was Brando in Appalossa double-billed with a De Sica film. The theater audience was mostly isolated men sitting as far as possible from each other. Brando was in peak form but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t tell if there were gaps in my concentration or I missed things during obsessive monitoring of thought processes. Even when I would force myself to concentrate, I forgot within minutes what had been said. Perhaps most disturbing was my disconnection, the absence of the empathy necessary for identifying with the characters. This was not in the first speed crash. Here and there around me in the dark, men laughed uproariously at serious violence.
Unsure how to leave it, I haunted the Haight, walking a lot, avoiding hangouts and friends. Somehow, a couple days later, at a free concert in the Panhandle, I met a chick. When Evelyn and I started talking, side-by-side at the edge of the crowd, my first impulse was escape. But she had striking blue eyes, a softly southern-shaded voice, and a delicate, caressing poise to her gestures and expressions and intonations. She also had perfect breasts, the best since Ruth. She wore the hair and clothes of a straight downtown secretary, which she was.
I walked her to her studio apartment across Haight Street from Buena Vista Park. I’d once been in an identical studio in the same building that had walls covered with an incoherent meth-epic, “Xorfuck, God of Rock,” written in randomly arranged, roughly square-foot blocks of miniscule longhand. Evelyn changed that association. I was, perhaps, too awed to slip into paranoia-paralysis and kept my balance throughout that first day, right up thru our parting when I mentioned stopping by sometime and was encouraged by her smile.
The next afternoon, we were sitting at her table, windows full of sunlit park, when she said, “Well, I just broke up with someone.”
I had steered conversation toward her love life.
“He was a Negro,” she said softly. “We, we couldn’t stay together, but. . . we’ll always love each other, in our ways. We agreed that everyone is equal, everyone. No one is better or . . . or superior to anyone else.”
Her naïve revelation was so sincere that, as she fondly stared off into the memory, I felt a surge of affection for her and almost leaned over and kissed her. But didn’t. Like the flag-doormat, miscegenation was a test for hipness.No chick who objected to having a black lover could possibly be hip, nor could a white cat who objected to his ol’ lady having had a black lover. I knew I couldn’t love a chick who wouldn’t have sex with a black man because of his race. A perfect counter example to this was the redneck runaway who murdered the black man on Haight street.
I looked around the room and realized that Evelyn may have been here long enough to have her first affair with a black man, but she was living in and still wearing her Southern girlhood. I had seen it happen many times before. A couple more weeks in the Haight and her studio and wardrobe would be transformed utterly. Gone the bed on box springs and the ruffled curtains, the make-up and the hairspray.
I could tell by the light on the trees undulating in the wind across the street that it was almost evening, so I suggested we walk to the top of the park and watch the sunset over the ocean. It showed her greenness that the sunshine fooled her into thinking she would be warm. She wore only the tan blouse and the skirt she had worn to work. When we reached the top, arctic gusts shoved us. She wasn’t wearing a bra and, as she hugged herself, bulging breasts, oblong diagonal areolas, and rigid nipples were outlined against sheer fabric. We stared silently into the eye-singeing orange of the half-set sun. I had on a raggedy old leather jacket and started to take it off to give it to her but caught myself. Instead, I put an arm around her.
She snuggled into me, and when she stopped shivering, she looked up and we kissed. I was startled by her delicacy. For a moment, I wasn’t sure our lips were touching. When the kiss ended, she started shivering again, so I suggested we leave. She eagerly agreed, I gave her the jacket, and we descended to her apartment hugging.
Back at the table, savoring the warmth, I felt muffled trembling and wasn’t sure if it was excitement or residual cold. She was at the sink, preparing tea. I looked over at the bed and felt a hard-on begin. She turned around and came toward the table carrying a tray with two cups and a pot.
“Nawh, how did you know this Shob?” she asked with a skeptical lilt.
I had struck the pose of oldtimer and mentioned my connection to the new celebrity. I noted the absence of nipples on her blouse.
“Uh, my roommate and I were trying to do a big deal with him and, uh, a dealer we met in L.A.”
She set down the tray and I saw that she was convinced.
“What is he like?” she asked with a titillated grin. “I’m mean what was he like?”
“He was an obnoxious asshole.”
“Really?” she gushed to the verge of laughter as she poured steaming tea.
I ran down the list of things I didn’t like about Shob and then recounted my history with him and as we talked I was desiring her more and more and luxuriating in the certainty of having her. And, of course, that’s when promise turned to disaster.
She said something. I don’t know what, and that was the problem. Instead of simply saying, “What?” I panicked and said, “Yeah, Shob. What a jerk.”
It was a ridiculously irrelevant comment on something we dropped minutes before. I scrambled desperately for something to say, some cover, but couldn’t think of anything. So I said nothing. I couldn’t look at her. I just stared down.
Agonizing silence.
It was the same ol’ barbed-wire straightjacket. I was trying not to gulp and hoping she somehow hadn’t heard me, or I was somehow wrong about what had just happened.
Panic.
Though not concerned with radiating bad vibes, I still tuned out.
Paralysis.
She broke the silence. “More tea?”
“No…thanks.”
I couldn’t look at her so I don’t know her reaction. I hoped, somehow,
she hadn’t noticed anything.
I asked, “When… how… did you… come out here?”
“Oh, uh, I drove with a friend…”
“The chick who lives in Noe Valley?”
“Yes.” She smiled at a pleasant memory. “We didn’t really know each other that well before…”
And I had conversation back on track.
Initiating a kiss chair-to-chair is awkward enough even when invited. I hadn’t been but I was anxious to check for damage. I hoped she’d see it as a continuation of the kiss at the top of the park.
She allowed the kiss and it was still delicate but when I pulled back, she pled, “I’m really tired. It was a hard day at work…”
“Oh…oh…O.k.”
She was polite and I was considerate. I left, disappointed and relieved and determined to fix things.
The next evening, doing my rounds of the Haight, I passed her place and saw the lights on and decided to visit. As I entered the front door of the building, always unlocked, and climbed the stairs, I resolved to mount a major charm offensive and reclaim lost ground. I would even tell her about the speed crash if necessary. She was worth extreme measures.
I knocked lightly at the door. No answer, so I knocked again. Again, no response. I listened for movement within. There was light under the door. Then the truth hit me like a truck. She was in there.
I had an image of her, and perhaps others, sitting still and silent, hoping to escape that broken-down speed freak. She couldn’t be sure it was me, so she was even willing to risk turning away a friend. I was stunned with shame and humiliation, and slunk down the hall, then the stairs, into the street. I had been shunned, exactly as I had seen it done to John Groupie many times, and indeed had done it myself.
This confirmed my worst fear. I got off Haight Street at the first opportunity and went, again, through the least used alleys to my apartment. I realized I wouldn’t be able to answer the door, so I sat in the dark by the window, radio off, staring at the City. Maybe Evelyn had just gone down the hall to see a friend and left her light on. But I couldn’t believe it. I was on the level of John Groupie or Howie.Then I remembered the most painful and open display of insanity I would see that summer.
