Pubic Hair, and The Mystery of the Hippies

I am going to publish an irregular biography here, and inspired by something Kitty Diggings used to do, try to anchor the memories in music that meant something to me at one point or another.

Sometime between when I was born and the Year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Seventy a few things stand now only as a combination of visual and sonic ruin. The first is a trip, or it may be two trips to California. Memory is a slippery beast. For convenience’ sake I will make them one. I was very excited to hear of the Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps so much that I do not recall any of the trees, deserts or mountains I now know exist along the trip south. I was asleep, but my parents must have known how much I was looking forward to seeing this bridge, for they woke me from that warm, vibrating, humming sleep you only can experience in a car. I looked out the window into the fog which being so thick that the cables of the bridge seemed vanished quickly into space. The art deco style remains impressed upon me, but I recall a slight melancholy at seeing the bridge was not made of gold.

Later, at Disneyland I remember the sight of my Grandma Nell framed by the door of the camper, waving to us as we walked from our space in the parking lot towards the entrance of the famed theme park. Grandma Nell was dying of an illness I did not understand. In fact, I did not understand what dying meant outside of direct observation of behavior of those around me. People were sad and quiet when around her, and this lent the atmosphere a code of behavior that was left unspoken. We knew how we were supposed to be. The other image I retain of her, and these two are all that remain; is of her on a narrow bed inside this trailer. This atmosphere I spoke of, also dictated her behavior towards us. If all I retain from this are these two memories, than I can say that she was a gentle person who in those moments was kind to me, who did not understand a thing.

One other ruin (I will call such ancient memories such, because we can only imagine what they actually were) was the assassination of a Kennedy. I was maybe three years old. The only reason I remember certain details of this is that this event, watched by my mother on a small, black and white television caused her to act towards me in a completely new way. It was the first time I was told to be silent. Her words were not charged with anger, but maybe  I sensed a fear she felt that was carried in the command. I sat on a faux-marbled, tile linoleum floor, playing with a few toys. My gaze went from her  face to the television, and I heard two strange words in a row, Sirhan Sirhan, spoken like some magic spell.

Those were the ancient times, and there are the Ruins of them.

A few years on, the images crawl out of the mire and become harder, more tangible and take the form of what we can say are more accurate combinations of image and sound. And so came the birth of music, a companion who follows me to this day, always changing.

The house my mother grew up in was next door to our own. The house my father grew up in stood across the street. I remember my mother once telling me that when she saw my father moving in across the street from her she told herself that one day she would marry him. By the time my father was seventeen he married my mother. At thirty-two years of age, and with nine children he died. A relatively brief time in the scheme of things, but one I remember as full of struggle and love. They both came from working class backgrounds, and shortly after marrying they converted to Catholicism. For this to happen may seem counter to the zeitgeist; a young couple in the 1960s, a tumultuous social and political time for America, but their backgrounds are necessary to understand this.

Both of their own homes were volatile, at times soaked in the unpredictability of drunkenness or violent abuse. My father’s family frightened me a bit, often drunk, kisses bestowed upon my forehead smelling of stale beer. My father’s brothers scared me when I was young, but his father and mother I eventually ceased to be afraid of and came to love.  On my mother’s side, by the time I was born things had calmed down a bit, but my Grandmother was at one time married to a very abusive and mentally disturbed man. I never knew him. For that matter I never knew my mother’s father, seeing him only one time attempting a drunken reconciliation with her outside our front porch.

So my parents tried to shield us from this unpredictability and, at times violence, by keeping us as distant as could be possible living both across the street and next door. I can see their conversion to Catholicism in this context as well, seeking solace and meaning in religion.

My Grandmother (next door) was in the habit of expelling her children in their mid-teens. Why, I have no idea. But I was very happy to have our Aunt Debbie move in with us. I idolized her as a young boy, and her brother as well. I both loved them and wanted to be like them. One time I was playing in the empty school bus my father had bought, and I had a towel wrapped around my head like a wig, and another around my body like a strapless dress. Coming out of the door of the bus, my father saw me so dressed and asked me, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?” Aunt Debbie, I replied and shrieked my way down the driveway, laughing.

Debbie was, being some years older than me, very connected to pop culture. I loved sitting with her going through her record collection, which my parents forbid us to play. I remember pulling open the double sleeve of The Beatles, White Album. I looked at the pictures of the rock stars that came with the record, and thinking that Debbie was just like them. She wore sometimes-dark paisley that I loved, and her long, straight hair also mesmerized me. She played for me one time, Ob La Di Ob La Da from that record. That tale of a boy who becomes a girl, combined with the childish melody complete hooked me. Another record of hers I loved was the first record by the Stooges. In particular, I Wanna Be Your Dog. Both of these songs appeal to a sense of magic and transformation in a child. The sexual message implicit in both is sublimated, but remained unclear. What could be more fun than changing into a girl, or becoming a dog? I could see myself running rampant with my four legs, jumping at incredible speeds after Frisbees, later to retire on the lap of an adult who would pet me to sleep.

Guadalupe was a very young nun my father and mother had befriended. She was so unlike the nuns I would see at church. A small, very pretty Mexican woman, the way she spoke to us was filled with the coolness and enthusiasm typical of folks in their 20s. I remember the way she would speak of religion was also different than at church. Her Jesus was political; her faith was based in justice. It was only reading many years  later about radical, Catholic religious movements in South Los Angeles that were largely Mexican-American, that I realized this was most likely her background. At any rate, I associate her with a red corvair we had at the time. Maybe because she would go on errands with us in that car, and I was really impressed with her and that car.

The day the first Apollo mission landed on the moon, I was in that car with my father. He was listening to the radio, and we were parked, waiting for someone to finish an appointment. My father was looking absently out his window towards the street as the broadcast described the moon landing. I was five or six years old, and remember looking out the window at the moon in the daylight sky, and not seeing the people there became bored and began looking out my window at the sidewalk and houses.

After a short time a young man without a shirt on staggered towards my window. I know now he either was fried on acid or was drunk, and did not see me. But he came to our car to piss. Because he had long hair, and was shirtless, he was already in my slowly growing Pantheon of counter culture heroes. At my window he took out his cock and began to piss. I had never seen pubic hair before, and was dumbfounded. “Daddy, what is THAT?” I asked my father. Taking a look, he rolled up my window, started the corvair, and drove off in a hurry. “That is a hippy” he told me with no further explanation, and the meaning of ‘Long Haired Hippies’ made sense.

YEARS LATER A STORY WAS PUBLISHED AND MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED

Neil Young had a hard morning. None of his vintage cars looked appealing. He stood in the garage and stared at them in the pasty gray northern California morning and felt irrevocably normal. It was if the cars had drunk an overdose of rock star glamor overnight and sat dusty and hungover. At last climbing into the 72 El Dorado, Neil started it and began the long, twisting drive to the Cala Foods at the base of the hill his mansion sat on.

Neil liked to go to Cala because he felt at once part of the world there, almost normal, but armed with the unspoken knowledge that anyone who went to this supermarket was among the richest people on the West Coast. Everyone from the check out employees to the rich patrons seemed to enjoy this quiet and calm prestige. But something nagged at Neil. His life was not like anything he would have expected 30 years earlier. Back then he actually knew real heroin addicts, and as part of Rock and Roll’s Vanguard, he felt they were against something important. What, they did not really know.

Rebelling against this sickening feeling that was overcoming him, he went to the meat department and bought every steak on display. He thought himself an Indian chief bringing a fresh kill to his tribe. Somewhat relieved, Neil drove home. He parked the Cadillac but left the engine running. He then took the keys to all his cars and started them. Opening the hoods of the cars, the muscular sound of all the engines running began to put him in a trance. Slowly, almost ritually he began putting steaks in all the motors. Some motors had already heated to such a degree that he could hear them sizzling and cooking on the engine blocks, their rich and flavorful smoke filling his nose and lungs.

Neil then did a strange thing, He backed the cars out of the garage and lined them up in a circle, their hoods open and juicy meat cooking. He sat in the center of these rare, coveted vehicles and drifted softly into trance. The Vintage cars all shape shifted into wild cats. Lions, Pumas, Jaguars and Cougars. He stared into their headlights, seeking a secret knowledge.

Across the world, a new band was rehearsing in their garage. They were called Cabaret Voltaire. Armed with a home made drum machine and a strange vocal transformer they felt as if they were going to change the world with their music. They were well aware of history. It showed in their name, referencing the long gone Dada movement. Marxism was in vogue with the young, unemployed kids of England. They felt the hippies had betrayed not only them, but also the world because they did not see themselves in a dialectical light. They hated the hippies for this, and fought society in style as they signed record contracts with the majors.

Earlier in the afternoon they had drank various cold medicines, using them like water to wash down the barbiturates. As they slumped into their narcotic daze a magic thing happened. Their machines started overheating, and the excessive heat began melting a plastic ashtray which contained several roaches of weed. The garage became more and more filled with smoke. They woke up when this slow smoldering fire sparked an electrical source and sparks mixed with the smoke of burning wires and marijuana. It looked and smelled like a great concert. The smoke cleared and Neil Young was suddenly in their midst, looking like an angry but tender Shaman. He had several greasy, half cooked steaks with him. They all smiled at each other, feeling an occult kinship. They sat down together and feasted on the flesh of wild cats. They were one.