Impossible Vacation (35 page)

After the commune broke up, Mustang found that she was really missing her children she had left behind in Ohio, and knowing that she could never return to Columbus, she decided to have a love child
in Santa Cruz. She found what she thought was the right father, a great blond hunk of a surfer, and promptly got pregnant. Everything was going fine until one day he came home and said he had heard that the singer Taj Mahal made his wife ask his permission before she spoke to another man. The father of Mustang’s child said he liked that idea, he thought it was cool; so Mustang threw him out and had their love child on her own, and named him Om Shanti Karma.

And boom, I landed back on the beach, her story was over, just like that, just like she had taken me for a ride on her magic flying paisley carpet and then dropped me back down here on the beach, all solid and warm, just here. The only difference was I didn’t say “Do it again.” So here we were, very much here, and I wanted nothing more than to go run and romp with Shanti, and I told Mustang that and she made signs of understanding. I jumped up and felt the warm wind play all over me, and walked without shame in the sun, walked toward Shanti where he was playing a little bongo drum with all the other naked natives who sat in their sacred circle at the bottom of the great rock cliff. Seeing me approach, Shanti ran toward me and I swept him up in my arms and felt his glorious suntan-lotioned body slip and nuzzle against mine as we fit together like perfect pieces in a puzzle and I carried him squealing to the ocean’s edge. We stood there together in the cold rushing foam with sea gulls screaming overhead, screams that mingled with Shanti’s squeals, and I pressed his glorious young warm body close into mine until we almost melded. The only thing that separated us was the thought that it could be better, that perhaps we could be even closer. Then suddenly I was Mom and Shanti was me and we were on the edge of that other ocean so long ago and I knew then that it was Shanti I wanted and not Mustang. I wanted to be the mother of this child, and for a moment I was.

S
OMETHING WAS COMPLETED
in me that day on the beach with Shanti. After that I felt it was time to go, before I fell in too deep, got obsessive and couldn’t live without
that peaches-and-cream boy. I knew I couldn’t love his mother the way I loved him, and that would soon become a problem, I was sure.

Also, I longed for some social order that would pull me out of that long and syrupy season of fantasy, that long fall from the top of the earth to the bottom. Meg and the old familiar East Coast represented that grounded reality for me. And I was running out of money. If I was going to get back east I needed to do it now.

Wally had a friend who needed a car driven across to New York. I volunteered. I had never driven myself across America before and was ready to give it a try. We worked out the details and I went to pick up my transport, a black 1967 Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia.

I called Mustang to tell her I was leaving and wanted to come over to say goodbye to Shanti and her before I took off. She didn’t seem surprised and just responded with that sort of laid-back, go-with-the-flow, if-that’s-the-way-it-is-babe-then-sure-go-with-it tone in her voice. She asked me for my time and place of birth because she wanted to do me up a little farewell present. And I was amazed that I remembered the information: June 5, 1941, 1:51 a.m., Providence, Rhode Island.

After I packed up the Karmann-Ghia with my few belongings, I drove over to say goodbye. Mustang came out of the house to greet me, and then Shanti came out, but sort of hid behind her and wouldn’t look at me.

“Shanti doesn’t like goodbyes,” Mustang said, and then stepped forward to give me my farewell present. She had drawn up my astrological chart and wanted to tell me exactly what to look out for on my trip across the Mother (which was what she called the earth). I could hardly think of what was left of America as a mother, but for her sake I put on a smile and tried. The main thrust of Mustang’s astrological reading was that I should be very careful to get involved with working for an institution or I would soon end up inside one. I laughed and scratched my head, having no idea how right her prediction was about to be. I thanked Mustang and said goodbye. It was easy to say goodbye to her, but not to Shanti, and I was glad that he had disappeared back into the house before I left. I knew then that I was like him. Goodbyes to people I loved were just too much.

W
HAT IS THERE
to tell about a cross-country trip? It’s so monotonous. I had no idea how monotonous it was going to be. Had I known I probably never would have jumped in that car in the first place. The further I got away from one ocean, the more I just wanted to leap to the other. I felt as though I was simply racing from the Pacific to the Atlantic. I drove with the gas pedal mashed to the floor, hoping to make Las Vegas before nightfall.

I didn’t want to stop to eat or break my pace. I wanted to get to Vegas fast, so I bought some Swiss cheese and a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and nibbled and smoked as I drove straight out over that baking hot desert. The car was not air conditioned. I’d never experienced a blast of heat like that before; it was like driving through a great sauna. But as night came on it got cooler and beautiful beyond expectation. The clear, sharp angles of light highlighted hundreds of cactus, like those armies of cactus I’d seen fighting in Mexico, and gave a dark-line silhouette to the distant mountains as they met the clear orange and turquoise sunset colors above them.

Soon it was dark and there were only the stars and that little black Karmann-Ghia rambling along like a turtle on the ocean floor, being guided by a giant profusion of stars. Then in the distance I could see a glowing field of light like the landing pad for a giant space ship. It was, I realized, Las Vegas. I tuned my radio into Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” and headed straight for it.

I drove down the main drag strip, its blast of neon and glitz bringing me back from that hypnotic desert darkness. Vegas was such a contrast to Santa Cruz. There was so much more to be seen and done. I decided to quickly find a cheap motel and go out and do it all right away, maybe even hit the jackpot. I had no idea at the time that if you looked right—that is, like an average American on vacation—you could stay in a big fancy hotel for free, provided you gambled in the hotel casino. No one had told me that.

The motel I checked into was $29.95 a night. That was the best I could do in my rush to get to the gambling tables. My room had a vibrating bed in it. All I had to do was put a quarter in the slot and the bed went wild—just what I needed after my long trip across the desert. But I was too excited; I wanted to do it all. I took a hot shower with the Jacuzzi spray attachment, then lay on the bed, only to jump up in mid-vibration, dress, and run out to the casino, hoping to win and win again. I really believed that this was how I was going to make my next little nest egg to live off of.

I dressed up in my white cotton pants and brown raw silk Nehru jacket, left the black turtle parked safely in the parking lot, walked to the strip, and started down the row of casinos, one after another.

I’d always loved the look of roulette: the big, colorful table, the wooden ball dancing, and the blurred beauty of that big wheel spinning. I started safe, just playing red and even. I did not want to associate myself with black or odd—not yet, anyway. I saw those as the shadow and bad luck. I hadn’t learned my lesson. Playing only red, I would slowly win a little, but it all seemed to keep balancing out, like life. I’d win a little and then I’d lose a little, and then in a very little time I was bored and started wandering around watching people play dice and fill up the slot machines. They looked like a bunch of compulsives to me, and I soon realized that I was not really attracted to anything there. It was like a big gaudy funeral parlor with a bunch of toys in it. As for the money to be won, it made me think of that old quote from Freud that I’d read in Norman O. Brown’s book: “That is why wealth brings so little happiness; money is not an infantile wish.”

After Santa Cruz, Las Vegas seemed so unhealthy. I began to feel a little depressed and longed to go to sleep in my vibrating bed, so I could get on the road bright and early the next morning and make it to the Grand Canyon before sunset.

Walking back to my motel, I realized that part of the reason I was feeling so spaced out was that I hadn’t eaten. I’d missed my dinner. The initial excitement of the place had made me lose my appetite, and now it had come back in full force. So I found what looked like a regular restaurant and went in. I ordered a typical American meal: a cheeseburger, medium rare, and two Budweisers. The cheeseburger came well done and with very little cheese on it, something like
Velveeta, and when I got the bill, the price was so high that I was outraged. When I got to the cash register I found that no one was there. Fortified by the two beers, I decided to just walk out. The meal was certainly not worth paying for. I felt justified in not paying for it. I stuffed the check in my pocket and walked out and headed back to my motel. But before I got three blocks two police cars, each speeding from different directions, came to a screaming halt on either side of me. A cop jumped out of each car and came at me in the most threatening and aggressive way.

The one on my right said, “Okay, guy, let’s see your ID,” and that’s when I realized that in my rush to get out of the motel, I had left it behind. So I said, “It’s back in my motel,” and the cop on my left said, “What’s the name of your motel?”

Good question, I thought. I said, “I don’t remember. I just checked in.” Then he asked, “What’s your name?” And for some reason, maybe because of the beers, I just politely said, “Why do you ask?” And I realized at that moment that it came out of me sounding rather snooty, and I hadn’t meant it to sound that way. Then everything went real fast. The cop on the right said, “Where you coming from, boy?” And when I proudly answered “California,” that did it.

The cop on the right said, “Well, we’re going to teach you that you’re not in California anymore,” and they did. The next thing I knew I was down on my knees with my hands handcuffed behind me and the two cops were standing over me with their nightsticks vibrating just inches from my head. Then I was in the back of one of the police cruisers, and then I was emptying my pockets to a man behind a wire mesh screen, and then I was standing in a big room being told to take off my clothes, and then I was naked and someone was yelling, “Cover your eyes and mouth,” as someone aimed a big gun at me that blew a great gusty cloud of DDT all over me, which made my skin itch and made me very quickly realize that I was indeed not in California anymore. I was in the Las Vegas, Nevada, jail. I was, just as Mustang had predicted, in an institution before I’d even had the chance to work for one.

After they sprayed me with the DDT, I was issued a gray prison jumpsuit that zipped up from the crotch to the neck, and I was led by two guards down the hall to some sort of holding tank, and I was
locked in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cell with about twenty men. There were nowhere near enough benches to accommodate everyone, so most of the men were lounging or lying on the floor in various states of rage, regression, and intoxication. I was told that I was allowed one phone call, but I had no idea who to call, and because I was so confused by what had taken place, as well as mesmerized by it, I think I went into a sort of mild dissociative shock and suddenly became an observer, a fly on the wall. It was as though some part of me was outside watching it all, watching this new stranger in a gray prison outfit, who, just moments before, had been Brewster North, all dressed up in white cotton pants and raw silk Nehru jacket. Now life had changed real fast and this same Brewster North was among what looked like a mob of soulless, hardened criminals, a bunch of losers, people arrested for all sorts of misbehavior, from jaywalking to attempted murder. A young man was talking to his father on a telephone the guards had passed through the bars to him, and he was bragging to his dad about how he had almost killed his brother in a fistfight, saying things like “Maybe I’m in the fucking slammer, but Jimmy got the worst of it. You should see his fucking face. He’s unrecognizable,” boasting in front of us all.