Junkie Love

Ziggy and Doreen  

6

 

“Those fuckin’ spades! All they wanna do is screw Doreen,” Ziggy complained one afternoon after he settled into the car. I had been waiting for him while he was arranging a deal in a house in the Fillmore District. “I tell ‘em it’s up to her. I don’t give a shit.”

So I figured there wouldn’t be any trouble if I made a pass at Doreen. I desired her but I was eighteen and unsure of myself, so I decided to let it go. I had only had sex with one girl.

Her name was Amy Purtle. In that redneck milltown no girl would have me as a steady, I was too weird, but every summer I had a string of two-week steadies from among the city girls in the nearby tourist resorts. Some I would see again other summers and a few I saw during the winter ski season. Amy was one of the latter.

In the first hours of January 1, 1965 , we lost our respective virginities together on the rattan couch of a cabin she had rented with some girlfriends. The sex was something of a feat, hampered not only by our ignorance and my trembling, but we were both tall and gangly and had to maneuver around the bamboo armrests. It didn’t occur to us to simply move to the bed.

She was no beauty but had huge startling blue eyes and I liked her personality a lot. I felt no passion and neither did she. But we saw each other a couple times that spring. After one visit we shared a case of poison oak on our genitals. I accepted her invitation to her prom though I didn’t attend my own of course, having long ago dropped out of school in all but the academic sense.

We lost touch in my first year of college. Then a few weeks after I moved into the Haight in June of ‘66, my parents forwarded a letter inviting me to visit her in the Sierras, near Quincy , where she was working at a summer camp.

We had a couple good days and good nights and I drove home contented. Then within days I got a letter at the Waller Street pad. In essence it said, “Don’t write, don’t call.” With no explanation. But I figured it out. The turning point for her was almost certainly when I was gushing about the wonders of this secret world I had discovered in the Haight (the word “hippy” hadn’t even surfaced yet).

“…And I’m even going to try heroin,” I had said.