Thursday, December 29, 2005
Girlie Dating #2
My second girlfriend was Ingrid, whom I met in Berkeley through the Berkeley Barb, a local rag of the late 60s. Personal ads were just getting under way back then.
Ingrid lived down in Pacific Grove, a quaint little artsy community on the road heading down towards Carmel. "Hippie chick" described Ingrid to a T. She had a kind of Janis Joplin flavor about her, long brown hair, a solid body, a droll demeanor. We all exhibited shades of Janis back then. I ran around in gold paisley bellbottoms, with a yellow shirt, a yellow sheepskin vest, black boots and rose-hued aviator sunglasses. My blonde hair was just below my shoulders and normally all over the place. Riding a motorcycle does that to a girl.
With Ingrid, a new sexual technique came into my life. She was the first woman to go down on me. My first guy had done that too, but to far less effect. Ingrid was good at it. I brought her back to the Chinese girls rooming house I lived in at the time. I don't know why they let me in. For some reason there were just other asian women there. And me, and one Korean woman whom the other girls seemed to shun. I wondered if they heard Ingrid and I that night. The rooms were small, the floors wooden. Sound seemed to carry like a pistol shot.
Let them get to know the more esoteric rituals of the White Women, I thought to myself, as I was coming with Ingrid. She was very easy to deal with. She even got me to come down and visit her in her little artsy shack in Pacific Grove.
There I took my first (and only) Mescaline trip. A bumpy ride, as Margo Channing would say. At one point I had a handful of jellybeans, lined up in a row. They suddenly became, in my skewered little brain, my parents, and I proceeded to bite their heads off, one by one. Lovely stuff. Ingrid took me out for a walk along the beach, but I was just too paranoid to be kept out in public for long. Eventually we meandered our way back to her place.
Our relationship probably would have continued had we not attempted to move in with one another. It was way too soon and ultimately too scary a proposition for me.
We rather spontaneously decided to rent a room from a couple of Berkeley lesbians who owned a house with a basement we were going to fix up. Sometime during the first night there I lay awake, thinking, wondering if this was the right move. Around two o'clock I decided it wasn't. I needed more space. I couldn't exist in a tiny basement in a small single bed with a girl I barely knew.
I would never have done this with a guy, so why was I so ready to leap with this woman? Beats me. I realized I couldn't go thru with it though, and moved back to my Chinese rooming house the very next morning.
I was disappointed, surprised. I felt badly. I simply did not know my own mind. Being the scared little girl I was then, I backed away from Ingrid. She seemed ok that I couldn't move in with her, but she seemed prepared to carry on dating.
I was not. The whole experience was now too scary. Like the coward I was back then, I ran.
- - - - - - - -
Ingrid lived down in Pacific Grove, a quaint little artsy community on the road heading down towards Carmel. "Hippie chick" described Ingrid to a T. She had a kind of Janis Joplin flavor about her, long brown hair, a solid body, a droll demeanor. We all exhibited shades of Janis back then. I ran around in gold paisley bellbottoms, with a yellow shirt, a yellow sheepskin vest, black boots and rose-hued aviator sunglasses. My blonde hair was just below my shoulders and normally all over the place. Riding a motorcycle does that to a girl.
With Ingrid, a new sexual technique came into my life. She was the first woman to go down on me. My first guy had done that too, but to far less effect. Ingrid was good at it. I brought her back to the Chinese girls rooming house I lived in at the time. I don't know why they let me in. For some reason there were just other asian women there. And me, and one Korean woman whom the other girls seemed to shun. I wondered if they heard Ingrid and I that night. The rooms were small, the floors wooden. Sound seemed to carry like a pistol shot.
Let them get to know the more esoteric rituals of the White Women, I thought to myself, as I was coming with Ingrid. She was very easy to deal with. She even got me to come down and visit her in her little artsy shack in Pacific Grove.
There I took my first (and only) Mescaline trip. A bumpy ride, as Margo Channing would say. At one point I had a handful of jellybeans, lined up in a row. They suddenly became, in my skewered little brain, my parents, and I proceeded to bite their heads off, one by one. Lovely stuff. Ingrid took me out for a walk along the beach, but I was just too paranoid to be kept out in public for long. Eventually we meandered our way back to her place.
Our relationship probably would have continued had we not attempted to move in with one another. It was way too soon and ultimately too scary a proposition for me.
We rather spontaneously decided to rent a room from a couple of Berkeley lesbians who owned a house with a basement we were going to fix up. Sometime during the first night there I lay awake, thinking, wondering if this was the right move. Around two o'clock I decided it wasn't. I needed more space. I couldn't exist in a tiny basement in a small single bed with a girl I barely knew.
I would never have done this with a guy, so why was I so ready to leap with this woman? Beats me. I realized I couldn't go thru with it though, and moved back to my Chinese rooming house the very next morning.
I was disappointed, surprised. I felt badly. I simply did not know my own mind. Being the scared little girl I was then, I backed away from Ingrid. She seemed ok that I couldn't move in with her, but she seemed prepared to carry on dating.
I was not. The whole experience was now too scary. Like the coward I was back then, I ran.
- - - - - - - -
