PINKY: IN MEMORIAM

     I grew up in a small community once known as the Berry Capital of the World. As a child I picked strawberries and Marion blackberries to buy my school clothes. If dad told us we were going to town, we were going shopping in Salem. If on rare occasions, he said we were going to the city, it meant we were driving to Portland. After high school graduation and two years of college where I learned more about Marijuana and psychodelics than the lessons i needed to study, I moved to Portland with 2 high-school friends who were living there and a college friend. We rented the main floor of a big house on 16th and Flanders, across from Radio Cab Company. A couple years later when there was an oil embargo by OPEC, this came in handy because we could buy gas from Radio Cab without waiting on odd-even days. It helped them to boost their fuel allotment. I worked an assortment of jobs from selling ladies shoes at The Shoe Shop at Charles F. Berg, a high-end women's clothing store, delivering craft paint products, eventually becoming a bartender at Frank Peter's Habit, on 3rd and Burnside. In my spare time I got involved with Portland Civic Theatre in small roles in a couple of their musicals. I was not a gifted actor but unafraid of being a ham. Never-the-less, I got the idea, no doubt while tripping, that maybe I should pursue this a little more seriously. For my 22nd birthday, and with a small character role with lines, behind me, i set off for San Francisco to see if I could get an audition at American Conservatory Theatre. I was making pretty good tip money so I was able to put together enough of a war-chest for a week in the city, a real city that I had only read about in books. Originally I was going to take the Tortoise, a hippy bus that traveled between Portland to San Francisco. I forgot why, but i had to scrap that plan so I decided to hitchhike. It was 1972 and this was a normal thing. I packed a backpack with a few clothes and rolled up what I thought was enough joints to last me a week. I was pretty good at rolling pin joints. I carried them in an aluminum clam-shell case that fit in a small pocket. I had purchased a jar of pumpkin-seed mescaline, named Screaming Yellow Zonkers, from a couple freaks that had installed my waterbed, but decided I shouldn't push my luck. And off I went.

     I had the extreme good fortune to make it all the way to Redding in one ride. The driver was a total hippy with long, straight hair and a Fu Manchu moustache. Even better the car was filled with pot-smoke when i entered. We shared joints and joked as we made our way south. I spent the night outside a truckstop at Redding waiting for good fortune to strike again. It did not happen until the next morning after sun-up. He was a businessman who lived in Oakland but was going into Chinatown to buy some coffee beans before returning home. He could drop me off there. "Have you ever had fresh ground coffee?" He asked. I had not, Folgers, MJB, and truckstop coffee was the extent of my coffee drinking at that time. Since I didn't know where I needed to go, this sounded pretty good to me. It turned out that Geary Street, where the ACT was, was not necessarily close by but within walking distance. Young people toting backpacks was pretty normal, then in most cities. I had never had such flavorful coffee. My ride told me that there were some SRO rooms on Post Street that rented nightly or weekly. It didn't occur to me to ask how he knew that.

     With the famous Condor Club, operated by Carol Doda of silicon breast implants fame, behind me and across a 6-lane street, I set off in search of Post Sreet. I had never seen so many people from different countries. Men with yarmulkes, women with their hair covered with tassled hand-woven cloth. Italian speakers, Russian-speakers, Asian language speakers, any foreign language you could think of. From time to time I would stop someone to ask directions just to hear them speak. As I got closer to Post Street I started seeing very tall, attractive women with silk scarves around their throats. They dressed very elegantly and were somewhat exaggerated in their gestures. A couple of them walked by close enough for me to hear their voices, which had a lower timbre. I was confused, but the reason eluded me. 

     I stopped at a walk-up that had a sign advertising rooms by the day or week. The manager was on the second floor. The elevator inside the building had one of those decorative metal frames. The door slid to the side allowing a slender person to enter. If you had broad shoulders you had to turn sideways. If you had a backpack, you had to take it off. On the 2nd floor, the smell of garlic and pungent spices greeted me as I stepped off of the elevator. The managers door was a Dutch door with the top open. The apartment inside revealed evidence of a small family, a bassinet, and a profusion of rugs and middle eastern artifacts. Pausing my recollection here for a moment, let me stress that my assumptions on accents, and cultural artifacts were just that. Aside from Russian old Believers and farm workers from Mexico and farther south, my exposure to other cultures was in books TV, and film. I paid for five days, I don't remember what it cost, but it didn't break me. I was led down a narrow, dark hallway. The manager stopped before a door, unlocked it, and handed me the key. Not much had been spoken from the beginning.

     My room was four walls, a small sink with a shelf for toiletries, and one of those metal framed beds with squeaky mattress-frame and thin mattress. A lone, bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The bathroom was down the hall with a claustrophobic shower, the door locked with a hook and eyelet. For someone brought up on the weekly episodes of the UNTOUCHABLES, it did not seem unusual. There was an airshaft outside of my lone window. Some three stories below were beer and wine bottles, and other evidences of past tenants. Somewhere across the way, an occupant was listening to a classical music AM station. The radio stayed on day and night.

     I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, absorbing my first day in this vibrant city where a few short years earlier the "summer of love" had happened. That night I walked around the neighborhood. I had a beer and Irish stew at Lefty O'Douls who my father had liked as a baseball player. He had died in 1969 but the walls were decorated with memorabilia of his career. Later I went walking in the club district. This was the Vietnam era and hustlers and 'B' girls clogged the sidewalks, tempting anyone in uniform. There were also those tall slender women with scarves around their necks and a lower register in their voices. I had to see what was inside so I walked through a doorway sheltered by a heavy curtain. The music was loud rock and roll with women in not very much clothing dancing on different stages surrounded by drunken men three-deep around the meat-rack.  Other women, revealingly attired, but somewhat more modestly, sold you weak cocktails and offered good seating around the three stages for a price. Some offered to dance with you if you bought them a small bottle of champagne. By the looks of it they were splits of California sparkling wine but who's complaining? I did not stay long, I just wanted to see what the famous 'B bars' were that I had read about. I left without having that dance and walked back to my hotel room. On my bed I wondered about the tenant whose only worldly pleasure was now classical music.

     The next day I walked the few blocks to the ACT on Geary Street. My intention was to buy a ticket to the evening performance and see if I could find out what was required to be trained. The play was GODSPELL. I suspended the temptation to comment on the cheap exploitation of religion and culture, and did not buy the ticket. I found someone who handed me some brochures and told me that auditions were on Mondays and Tuesdays and were booked several weeks out. I stuffed the brochures in my backpack and set out to find City Lights Bookstore which was down near Broadway on Columbia. On my way there I resumed my practice of the day before of asking directions of various people on the street, to hear the rich variety of American English spoken with foreign accents. Nobody refused to give me directions. At City Lights, I found a small intimate bookstore tucked into a turn-of-the century building. I was expecting much larger for such a legendary beacon of the counter-culture. I had to ask if I could leave my backpack at the checkout counter, then walked through the narrow aisles looking at all of the offerings. Always on my mind was the nagging thought that I had to make my small amount of cash last for the rest of my stay. I bought a book that was on a display of new offerings. It was called, I think, Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan. I have forgotten the story but must have enjoyed it. 

     I had skipped lunch so I looked for some cheap eats, settling on a food cart for an empanada, which I washed down with a coke. The thought makes me shudder to this day. On my way back I noticed a building called, The Museum of Erotic Art. In smaller lettering it announced that it had exhibits from the Krohnhausen collection. It was closing time so I decided that I would visit it the next day, day three of my adventure. Back at my room I washed up at the sink in my room and lay down on the bed in my underwear. Briefly I wondered if I was exposing myself to crabs or some other such urban fear. The classical music lulled me to sleep. I woke the next day, waited to shower, and then, set off for my next adventure, The Museum of Erotic Art. I stopped at another food cart for a Polish Sausage in a thick, chewy bun. Like a subway sandwich but chewier and so much better. I paid my admission and entered a world of Erotica, starting with pre-history on the top floor and descending, with the floors sectioned by era and culture. Fat fertility goddesses from pre-history Africa, Greek statutory, Roman depictions of the God Priapus, Hindu gods and goddesses in the act of copulation, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, you name it, there was something there. It didn't matter how far back in history you went, or what part of the world few of us knew, human beings were, and are a kinky lot. In a display of American Puritanical culture, there was a fireplace from a Nantucket Whaling captains house. Whalers were gone for three years or more in their quests, thanks to over-fishing. A successful captain would ask his wife to build a house befitting their status. In the bedroom fireplace could be found a hidden drawer where a whale tooth penis was kept. It was called "he's not here". In another room were Elizabethan devices including a stationary bicycle device with soft suede tongues on the front wheel. As i said, we humans are a kinky lot. The bottom floor were contemporary erotic art including paintings by artists with familiar names, as well as statuary and glass depictions of woman's sex organs as well as artistically presented successors of the Roman God Priapus. Most fascinating were lamps and other familiar glass object d' arte. One lamp had an artfully concealed light bulb at the top of the vulva, i think the artist was Betty Dobsen, or at least she was one of the featured artists. Don'task me why i remember her name. On the way out into the late afternoon sunshine I stopped at a poster that advertised masterbation classes for women. Girls need these activities needed to be taught? Months later I read in the newspaper that the Museum had burned to the ground. I wondered if it was arson caused by some puritanical religious cult upset that such things would be there to tempt people away from God. Perhaps that was the audience of women needing lessons in masterbation. I went to a small Chinese restaurant, that I had walked by, for dinner. I was spending a little more than usual but I wanted to sit and think as I ate my meal of more authentic Chinese food, and sipped the green tea. Back at my room, I cleaned up and lay on the bed. I will not describe my thoughts as the classical music once more subdued the wild thoughts in my head. 

     The next day was to be my last day in San Francisco. I had spent money cautiously but it was quickly running out. I had not yet ridden the famed trolley car. The turn-around was near Lefty O'Douls so I had a lunch of corned beef sandwich and a beer, before setting out on my streetcar journey. I boarded the trolley and dropped my quarter in the the fairbox. The conductor was a tall, skinny hippie, with his long, brown hair in a pony-tail that hung below his shoulder-blades. He had a motor-mans jacket but faded blue jeans. Without giving it too much thought, i asked him where I could find a nightclub with cool music. "The Garden of Earthly Delights", he replied. "How do I find it", I asked. He gave me a stub of pencil and a small spiral notepad, then proceeded to tell me which buses and transfers to take, as new riders dropped their fare in the box and moved back. After writing it all down I ripped the page out of the notepad and returned it and the pencil to him, thanking him. I found the bar without too much difficulty and walked into it. After my eyes had adjusted to the dark interior I found myself in a world out of some modern day Daecameron. Men and some women were standing at the bar or sitting in booths. They were covered with tattoo's and sported piercings far beyond the usual ears and noses. It was not unusual to see men with silver nipple-rings, connected by linked chains. There were, I have no doubt, piercings to be found in places not on display. The clothing was almost universally leather. Pants, vests, fingerless gloves, often accompanied by a leather motorcycle cap. Loud rock and roll played from a jukebox. A small stage was at the back with a drum set and ancient upright piano. Presumably there would be a band as the night wore on. I was not going to remain to find out but needed a way to make a strategic exit. I walked confidently to the bar and ordered a Rye, straight up. Dropped a $10 dollar bill from my dwindling reserves and tried to justify my taking up space at the bar. There was a tiled ditch at the base of the ornate bar. In olden days it may have been pissed in when the need arose. I hoped, but was not confident, that that practice no longer occurred. " Buy your next round, Sweety", came an offer from a lanky, bald-headed guy with about 20 lbs of metal on display. No thanks I said. I picked up the shot glass, stared at the backbar mirror through the amber liquid, and downed it. Then I tried to make my exit with as much dignity as possible.

     The next day I packed up and left, heading towards the Oakland Bay Bridge and my first ride towards home. I smoked a joint while standing at the entrance to the freeway. And waited for someone to pick me up. As I was smoking the joint a cop car drove passed me and slowed. I quickly, and not too obviously, I hoped, tossed the roach alongside the road. There were others that must have done the same thing, judging from the roaches on display. The cop sped off down the freeway onramp, no doubt pleased that I had had to ditch the joint before it was done.