Sunday, November 05, 2006
Edy (Pt. 1)
There was a certain relentless quality in how I perceived my agenda and carried it out in the late summer of 1968. I had moved up to Berkeley from L.A., after having lived and worked and travelled in Europe and the Middle East for two years.
Life at home in L.A. seemed intolerable to me after the freedom I had found in Europe. I lost my virginity, such as it was, to both a man and later a woman. Living at home with mom and dad and two younger sisters was not going to hold me. I gave up the idea of going to film school at UCLA, where I had already been accepted, and applied to Berkeley for English literature.
Berkeley in September 1968 had already been, and was about to become again, the hotbed of radical activity we knew it to be. Somehow I was aware of all that, but it moved on a different plane from where I was. I had three months before my classes began at Cal, and I was going to make the most of the time. I was going to meet as many gay women as I could lay my hands on, or their hands on me.
So I settled into my cheap digs ($50 a month)at a Chinese women's rooming house on Channing Way, and proceeded to have fun. First off, I placed an ad in the local rag, the Berkeley Barb. I met my first lover in America, Ingrid, who lived down the coast in Pacific Grove. And Jerrie, who was a divorced mom living in Berkeley with her young daughter.
One night when I was dating Jerrie we went out with some friends to catch the opening of Easy Rider. We stood in line and kibbutzed with hordes of other patrons, eager to see the hot new movie of the fall season.
Afterwards we headed over to the local girlie bar in Oakland. That's where I met Edy. At the time she must have been around early 30s. Edy was slim and fetching, with streaked and dyed silver/blonde hair swept up. Edy could do things like that, she was a hairdresser by trade. Do you remember how Janet Leigh looked in Psycho? Well that was pretty close to Edy.
On that night Edy was holding forth on the bar's sole pool table. The woman could play pool. That's how she and I met. I plopped my quarter down on the edge of the table and waited my turn to enter the fray.
Our first match was a close one, and Edy won it. But it was one of the few times in my life at pool that I was not sorry I lost. Because she and I became acquainted. Edy in fact flirted with me nonstop over the pretty colored pool balls. It had a touch of the sarcastic to it, which I always appreciate. where there is sarcasm there is wit, where there is wit there is intelligence. And the absense of boredom.
Jerrie looked on, and was not amused. She knew exactly what was going on, and what Edy was up to.
"She likes naive butches," Jerrie said to me. "She likes you, you could have her if you wanted her."
It was a comment that, looking back on that night, seemed calculated to stir up trouble. I probably would not have gone ahead with what I did had Jerrie not said that.
TO BE CONTINUED
Life at home in L.A. seemed intolerable to me after the freedom I had found in Europe. I lost my virginity, such as it was, to both a man and later a woman. Living at home with mom and dad and two younger sisters was not going to hold me. I gave up the idea of going to film school at UCLA, where I had already been accepted, and applied to Berkeley for English literature.
Berkeley in September 1968 had already been, and was about to become again, the hotbed of radical activity we knew it to be. Somehow I was aware of all that, but it moved on a different plane from where I was. I had three months before my classes began at Cal, and I was going to make the most of the time. I was going to meet as many gay women as I could lay my hands on, or their hands on me.
So I settled into my cheap digs ($50 a month)at a Chinese women's rooming house on Channing Way, and proceeded to have fun. First off, I placed an ad in the local rag, the Berkeley Barb. I met my first lover in America, Ingrid, who lived down the coast in Pacific Grove. And Jerrie, who was a divorced mom living in Berkeley with her young daughter.
One night when I was dating Jerrie we went out with some friends to catch the opening of Easy Rider. We stood in line and kibbutzed with hordes of other patrons, eager to see the hot new movie of the fall season.
Afterwards we headed over to the local girlie bar in Oakland. That's where I met Edy. At the time she must have been around early 30s. Edy was slim and fetching, with streaked and dyed silver/blonde hair swept up. Edy could do things like that, she was a hairdresser by trade. Do you remember how Janet Leigh looked in Psycho? Well that was pretty close to Edy.
On that night Edy was holding forth on the bar's sole pool table. The woman could play pool. That's how she and I met. I plopped my quarter down on the edge of the table and waited my turn to enter the fray.
Our first match was a close one, and Edy won it. But it was one of the few times in my life at pool that I was not sorry I lost. Because she and I became acquainted. Edy in fact flirted with me nonstop over the pretty colored pool balls. It had a touch of the sarcastic to it, which I always appreciate. where there is sarcasm there is wit, where there is wit there is intelligence. And the absense of boredom.
Jerrie looked on, and was not amused. She knew exactly what was going on, and what Edy was up to.
"She likes naive butches," Jerrie said to me. "She likes you, you could have her if you wanted her."
It was a comment that, looking back on that night, seemed calculated to stir up trouble. I probably would not have gone ahead with what I did had Jerrie not said that.
TO BE CONTINUED
