Chapter Six Mary, Malibu and Marijuana. Who could ask for more? In time though, Mary was pounding the books in class, a jackhammer ripping up a sidewalk with powerful force, working on stage in local, major micro local theatrical productions, along with her job as a waitress and performing as a downtown clown. Even Dutchess, was off the radar screen at times visiting friends up north in San Francisco, a wild beast of a city she would tell everyone. The bay, the bridge, the beats...it was light years and galaxies away from Hollywood. Mike and Olvia were spending more time together now, without distraction, except for Tommie and Ray, distincly distracting as only they could be. Mike began distancing himself from them as they had gotten him involved in breaking and entering of a fast food restaurant, (the cook knew Tommie and set it up for the safe to be open when they came in through the roof) and breaking into a motel room that was locked on Tommie because he couldn't pay the rent, so the inn keeper locked him out and was charging daily on top of what Tommie already couldn't pay, so they broke in at night, smashing the window and grabbing Tommies stuff, what little of it there was. The same night they robbed the fast food of it's fast funds, the gang split up going in different directions like shattering glass. Mike was walking at night and jay walked on Doheny Blvd at two in the wee small a.m.'s when a cop drove up, checked his i.d. not figuring him for a runaway, which he wasn't anyway, just discontented and underaged, and issued a ticket for jaywalking...fucking jay walking! Goddamn cop! I just robbed a fuckin' shop and you give me a ticket for jay walking. What kind of town is this. (That ticket was issued in 1965 and has never been paid to this date. A gift to the city of angels in exchange for letting him get away with robbery, if not murder)
Olivia shared Mike's hunger for amusement parks and would hitch with him to Santa Monica and the pier, the dead end of the two laned Highway 66. Both of them had at least a month to themselves without a third party and felt free as Dutchess, their acknowledged benfactoress was quite possessive of both of them so didn't want to experience an eruption or explosion in the strange triangular chemistry lab where Dutchess wore the white coat and owned all the Pyrex and could fire up a Bunson burner faster then a rocket sled at the salt flats at Bonneville. Dutchess availed herself of them equally, and didn't mind if Mike went "outside" the circle and came back, but would not tolerate that of Olivia, let alone the two of them together, although it must have crossed her mind while in San Francisco. The city might be in a fog, but not Dutchess.
It was easiest to go down Wilshire to Santa Monica and then on to the playland of the beach. Going past Hollywood movie studies, with it's fake cowboy towns and movable and re-movable film noir sets that could be changed into an office setting for a screwball comedy with Leon Errol. Backlots of real Norma Desmonds and Francis X. Bushman's, Roland Gilberts, Valentino's, and D.W. Griffiths. Sometimes they would ride one of the stolen bikes Dutchess kept stashed in town. To Mike, riding a stolen bike without even a license didn't seem to have consequences built into the equation if they ever got stopped, caught by the not so gentle gendarmes of Los Angeles. They'd go to Malibu, Mike's favorite ride, up in the oil field hills to dirt bike a bit, and to Santa Monica. He saw Mary on occassion now, but she was getting educated and ready to leave for a trip to Europe in the coming summer. One day they rode one of the bikes to Santa Monica and parked it.
The pier park was a classic color tinted hand-painted turn of the century postcard of a Victorian purple age amusement emporium with boardwalk, carriages, men in spats, topped with straw hats, escorting and cavorting with corseted ladies with plump rear-end daring derriers, with soft ruffled bustles and gay ruffled parasols. It was the smell of sea spray, and the air auditorialy alive with music and playful screams from the coaster and carousel. Young hearts racing down the tracks chasing gulls that got too close as they tossed half eaten hotdogs into the air where the gulls would swoop and fetch like hungry dogs. Flying Cujo's they was. The pier was packed and the sun was hot, but tmepered by the onshore breeze that brought the smells of concession foods, sand and suntan lotion mixed together on bronzed flesh, it was that beach smell that is so terribly hard to forget. Cotton candy, bright and pink, like sunset clouds high in an Andean shroud of fog, to be consumed by cannibal children with a hunger for meat, and Dolly's llamas and indigo indio indian peasants in serapes of woven high country hemp. The shooting gallery and the pitch ball booth with Cupie dolls and mechanical machines with prizes of marbles to be scooped out with a miniature mechanized clamp. Carnies and bookies and crooks and guys on the lam hiding out as ride supervisors and paralysed pitchmen with dark pediphile pasts lurking in dark canvas tents.
The seagulls, numerous as drunks in a neighborhood bar, and as noisy as a group of nuns doing a penance of flagellation in secret rooms under the watchful eye of one big superior mother. Olivia wanted to name the seagulls, one by one, each by each. "Why do that?", asked Mike. "They're free the way they are. Give 'em names and they ain't free anymore. No. No names, first or last. Names only cripple you. Social security numbers, drivers licenses, what do you call those things, surveys? No, a census, yeah, the census, car insurance, life insurance, home owners insurance, health insurance, death insurance, wills, prison numbers, phone numbers, lottery tickets, marriage licenses, pay stubs, bus tickets, train tickets, plane tickets, draft cards, time cards, credit cards, tax forms, dog tags, address, post office boxes, APO's, FPO's, office cubicles, cemetary plot numbers, stand in line and take a number, mortgages, birthday cards, sympathy cards, appointment cards, birth certificates, death certificates, gift certificates, certificates of appreciation, awards, military discharge, VA cards. Our whole lives are nothing but a trail of paper. Names and numbers, are all we are if you thnik about it. A name is good, but all those numbers, man. All those numbers. (Later it would be Myspace, Facebook, E-Bay and email) Maybe names ain't good, they only lead to numbers and everybody confuses you. No, don't name the gulls. Leave 'em be, leave 'em free," said with all the glory of the Gettysburg Address, freeing the pelicans and the seagulls to a post-oceanic future, uncertain. But...no names. No Names.
When they came back later, the stolen bike they had, well, stolen, had itself been second generationed stolen, again, only this time from them. The irony was apparent to the duo, and they just stuck out a thumb and made it back to the apartment to get naked, smoke a couple of joints and jump into Dutchess's bed, just the two of them not having to share each other with or to be shared by Dutchess.
Then there was the night of the living dead as Mike would refer to it later in life. Cruising...the sport not of kings, but of queens it seems....Lou Reed hit it between the knees when he sang "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" doop, do doop, do doop, and the colored girls go.....Tommie and Ray were part time card carrying sugar punk fairies who never once evar gave it a way...everybody, had to pay and pay...so goes the song....so went Tommie and Ray and this time they drafted Mike and placed him in the front lines of the battle for the back seat...Olivia was against it, but Mike had a philosophy...I'll try anything once, and if I like it, twice...turns out, it was a one time deal.
The local homosexual community got to know Tommie and Ray, but rather than hustling by the rules of the Marqui de Queensbury and points of order, they were taking a nasty turn into violence, not something Mike cared for, nor at the time knew. They told him that he was fresh and they wouldn't recognize him, and besides there were new cruisers too who didn't know any of them, but Mike was the youngest in years, and looking, and the most innocent looking one too so he would be "easy prey" for the carnal carrion eaters of the night. It was arranged then, Mike would stand out on the corner, against the wall of the little store that stayed open all night selling beer, condoms and cigarettes along with Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walker and bum wines too, Night Train and Mad Dog, cough syrup really, bathtub gin gone straight. Soggy paper bags filled the alley next door, and dark figures would be standing in darker shadows urinating in corners best left alone, as the street scene passed by on parade, up and down the street. The cars slowed to cruise speed and eager faces peered from within at the "merchandise" that lined the shelves of the sexual supermarket, a visceral Safeway with hot foods, steaming, piping hot.
Olivia was against it, but as always gave in to Mikes desires for adventure and passion for the unknown. He would have been a better explorer of the Northwest Passage than he was a street hustler. Tommie and Ray had stationed themselves at the counter of small diner next door to the little store and drinking Cokes sat watching outside for a bite. It didn't take long until a T-Bird drove up, slowed down and came to a stop at the curb where Mike was standing. Tommie punched Ray lightly, "Alright, alright..this is it.." he kept repeating. Mike noticed the car, and his heart started racing, "What the fuck have I gotten into now. Damn this fuckin' town. I hate L.A." he said to himself. He felt the drivers eyes stripping him naked in front of everyone, and he was sure everyone knew, which they did in a way, and Tommie and Ray had big broad smiles. The big score...this is it, this is it...
They told Mike, all he had to do was get in the car with the guy, agree to anything, alright? Blowjob, nudie shots, whatever. The guy pulls out a wallet and a bill or two and Mike swipes the whole thing and hops out the passenger door and into the alley. If they guy started after him, Tommie and Ray would run interference. Simple enough, painless enough, a classic football move if ever there was one with Mike in the quarterback position heading for the goal posts. Got it, Mike? Yeah, got it, got it.
Mike was fidgety when the car curbed, and looked behind him to Tommie and Ray, who were no help with shit-eating grins painted on their faces, so Mike walked over to the passenger side window, ever so slowly, and crouched down to look in, as a face peered back from the drivers side. "Hi," said the Birdman, "Wanna lift?" Not knowing what to say back, clever or not so clever, he merely nodded, as the door swung open from the inside so he could hop in. As soon as he started in, Tommie and Ray came out of nowhere and hopped into the backseat, and told the driver to hit the gas. He did, and both rightside doors in front and back slammed shut from the velocity. "Keep drivin' motherfucker, to your place, and don't say shit faggot,"
The T-Bird soared through the streets and up to the Canyon area where he lived in an apartment with his "friend" and pulled into the covered parking structure and came to a stop, panicky and terrified, as much as Mike was. Tommie held a knife at the back of his neck and told him to step out, slowly, with him. Mike and Ray got out too and followed behind as they were led to his apartment and unlocked the door and all entered and shut the door behind. "Ok, guys. Just calm down, what do you want? Money? It's always money right? What else, go one you shits take what you want!" he yelled, and as he did Tommie hit him in the face and he went sprawling backwards landing on the couch, bouncing off and onto the floor, bleeding and now, crying. "Go on, take it all, what the fuck do you want from me, what else," and started to cry.
Tommie grabbed the car keys from the table where he had tossed them when he came in. He also took his watch, expensive one and lifted all the cash from his wallet, and then hurried Ray and Mike out the door and down to the T-Bird, keys in hand, cash in pocket and they got in to go for a ride up the coast. Mike stopped before they got to the car and doubled over, out of breath, adrenalin exhausted, breathing hard and heavy, almost gasping. "Jesus, Tommie, what the fuck was that crap anyway? The guy wasn't gonna do anything, and you said he'd just hand over the money to me in car." Tommie looked at him and leaned into his face and said, "I lied. Shit, Mike, we got the car now, let's rock and roll. Malibu, Mikey, Malibu, with a full moon out and lot's of highway to go, man, go!" Mike just looked up, disgusted, and said, "Fuck you, go on without me. I'll hitch back," he said set in concrete. "Suit yerself. We're goin' up the coast," Tommie said with arrogance in the air, while Ray didn't say a word except, "See ya, Mike," and they hopped into the car and took off, leaving Mike exhausted in the exhaust.
After that night, Mike didn't hang around Tommie, or Ray for that matter, and devoted more time to Olivia. Dutchess had been back in town for a month, and had a new live-in lust interest move in, so Mike and Olivia moved out. Mainly to rooftops and at friends houses. They stopped dealing dope for the Dutchess, and perfected panhandling as a high art form for food and dope. At one point he remembered Doc Yucatan telling him about southern California and the desert, the valley of death with bleached cow skulls, white as a virgins satin wedding dress, and skies full of tiny pin pricks of stars, and coyotes howling. Mike told these stories to Olivia and she wanted to do nothing else but explore the desert..so they took off hitching to Death Valley and spent a a a little over a week roaming the desert, camping out, eating rice, rice and more rice concoctions, beans, bread and cheese, enjoying the stars and coyote calls, not to mention the panorama of the Panamint Mountains....more on these journeys in another book...just look for Doc Yucatan and the Haiku Hobo driving along the Tom Joad Highway....
After hitching and thumbing to the desert, through the desert and back to the city, the town was loosing it's luster for both of them. Mainly, Mike, Tommie and Ray had managed to set up a small savings account at a bank to put what money they got on the streets into it for safe keeping. Unfortunately all three had access and Tommie morphed into John Dillinger and left with all their funds. Never heard from him again. Ray, headed up to Wyoming to try punching cows and writing poetry among the tumbleweed listening to Tex Ritter albums on the ranch, no doubt, and Dutchess, well, business as usual. The Strip was tawdry, more so than ever, and the patena was covered by an ugly red rust.
Besides, it was spring, and like tiny purple flowers under twigs, mud and leaves in a forest, ready to push forward and upward, because unlike those tiny flowers, Mike and Olivia were ready to push through the winter and herald a new spring, for themselves, as that is all they had, just each other as emotional anchors. Dutchess had tolked so much about San Francisco, that they thought it was worth checking out. All those cool beat cats, hepcats and hipsters they had read about and heard about in a round about way. Berets and capuccino cowboys and cowgirls. Dharmabums and roadheads and haiku bhikku's. They spent one last night with Dutchess, (her new boy was out that night) and the next morning finished packing the two backpacks they had, both Army of Salvation issue, messkit, Swiss Army knife (stolen) cigarettes, rice, matches, a hobo stove, poncho and a small baggie protectively wrapped around a full ounce of Mexico's best and a copy of Charman Mao's Little Red Book he had picked up in a Goodwill shop. He carried it around in his jacket pocket in case he ran out of rolling papers, which he often did. Rolled newspaper was nasty stuff, but the little thin pages in the little red book were perfect. He was already on page 25 of chapter three, Communism vs. Imperialism, although he hadn't read one red word of the book yet....oh yeah, he did make sure he had four packs of rolling papers, Zig-Zag's and Bambu's and hiked to the station to ride the 'Hound north, snuggling under their field jackets in the back of the bus copping feels all the way up the coast.
It was spring of 1966, and the Sunset Strip riots were months away, and the summer of love was over a year away, but San Francisco was a sexy vamp and she left a trail of bra's and panties on the floor to follow like breadcrumbs for Mike and Olivia, now reduced to Hansel and Gretel following the trail to the bedroom where the Yellow Brick Road would lie within reach, and then they would be off to see thw wizard, the wonderful wizard of odds. Let's face it, L.A. was no more than a sleazy film noir whore, whereas San Francisco was the personification of Ingrid Bergman and Alfie Woodard style and elegance all rolled into one...buth standing at the read with each ones moist Golden Gate wide open, ready for exploration.