27 Unharnessed Joy

I WAS IN SAN FRANCISCO—Oh, I don’t know. Fifty ... seventy-five ... eighty years ago? Paying attention to dates and time is a pain. Whenever I get tempted to, I find a quiet place to hide and go to the infinity room for a while. When I come out of the room, I have no idea what century it even is. Anyway, this was last century.

As I was saying: San Francisco. I owned a little shop down on Haight Street and was just trying to maintain a low profile in this crazy country. North Beach was too crowded and expensive, so I moved down to Upper Haight. I started off selling liquor and cigarettes. Then I moved into souvenirs as tourists started coming around. Seemed everyone wanted clothes like what my girls wore when they came in to work in the shop with me. So, they started sewing things up in the infinity room and bringing them into the shop to sell. The weather was great most of the year, so the lightweight cottons we wore in the desert weren’t out of place. I put a couple of dressing rooms in the shop and before long, I was doing a bigger business selling clothing than liquor. And to prettier girls.

I especially enjoyed going up to the Beach on Friday or Saturday nights and hanging out with the poets and drummers. It was after one of those outings that I remembered a drum I had from way back when. I went into the infinity room to find it. It was there, in the back of the magic room under a scenery prop from our Greek theatre days and a bit of dyed silk from China. I pulled out the silk and suggested the girls might try something made out of that and they got all excited about it. Finally, I found Ninra’s drum. I wasn’t going to take the original drum out into the air of the natural world. I wasn’t sure how well it would hold up. But I made a copy of it with my duplication spell and sat to learn to play it. I wasn’t very good at maintaining a constant rhythm on the djun-djun, but as far as I could tell, no one who played in the café bars had a sense of rhythm anyway. I guess they were all playing jazz.

I took the replica up to the Beach with me one night and sat in while a couple of poets recited incredibly long poems. People liked the effect of me squeezing the drum and getting it to change pitch in the middle of a strike. They nodded their heads and said, “Play it, man. Say it.” I got the message. They wanted me to contribute some poetry while I played. Shit. Well, like I said, it seems like what you needed in this club was a fast tongue and about any old story. I took a deep breath.

I was floating alone on the deep blue sea
with no work or place I needed to be.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around.
There was a babe there swaying with the rock of the boat
and not a stitch of clothes—covered only by her long blonde hair,
and that was almost no cover at all.
None at all
No cover at all
Just her long blonde hair
And no cover at all.

A girl like this, you don’t molest;
just sit and wait to see how she’ll move
and if she’ll offer a smoke
or drink your wine.
And you hope that heaven
has just answered your prayers.
Your prayers, your prayers
Answered your prayers
And sent you a goddess
To warm up your nights.

Then she stepped into my arms
and I was lost.
And found and lost again.
I tell you this babe took me straight to heaven
And dropped me a million miles back on the sea.
It’s a million miles from heaven to sea
But it makes no difference how far you fall
If you’ve been to heaven
In the arms of a goddess.

But no one believes in the goddess these days.
No one will take the risk to assail heaven.
No one gives sweet offerings of honey cakes
Or chilled goat’s milk
to satisfy her appetite wherever it takes you
and let her have whatever you are.
Whatever you are, whatever you are.
Do you dare let that babe know
Whatever you are?
Don’t ask me—she already knows.

I ended with a springing note that fell on a silent crowd and was eaten up by the smoke. I think I really had them, right up to that last verse.

My performance didn’t fall completely flat. I had a few new customers at Erosland Boutique. We’d adopted the name ‘Boutique’ after we started carrying clothes and jewelry. Supplying clothes, jewelry, alcohol, and tobacco had kept a whole country in the infinity room active and producing. People in the infinity room were always working to find new and creative projects. As long as they were working for Bob, their needs were all met.

“You laid some really deep shit on us last night, man,” a customer said. I glanced his direction and recognized one of the poets from the café. “Don’t let the cubes in the room get you down. They’re trying but just can’t cut it. Um...” He paused to light a cigarette. “I liked that drum you played. Got any in the shop here?”

That gave me pause. I hadn’t thought of selling the djun-djun. It could be another whole industry.

“I can get them. Don’t have it today, but later this week,” I said.

“Cool. Don’t rip me off with the price, okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I needed to go visit some music shops and find out what a fair price would be for a small drum. I’d had to do the same kind of research when it came to selling clothes. I had no idea what things were worth in the current currency.

He left and I started meeting more people from the beat café. Some just wanted to hang out and look at the hot mommas who worked in the store with me.

Before any of the girls were allowed in the store or to accompany me to a beat café, they had to learn the language. They only worked a maximum of one day a week, so they didn’t get a lot of practice in the natural world. I tested them on the language myself. As years progressed, it seemed that was less important as no one understood anyone anyway. At first, some of the girls sounded like a mashed-up recording.

“Hey, Big Daddy. Cast an eyeball at this neato merch. I bet you’ve got a hot momma waiting at home and this little dress would really razz her berries. She’ll have you out for a little back seat bingo at the passion palace before you know it. I’ll clue you, my boyfriend got me one and he had it made in the shade. And that’s good because he’s usually on a trip for biscuits when it comes to pleasing me. Not this time. I flipped for him. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, give me the bread for this and take it home to your baby. And shoot low out there. They’re riding Shetlands!”

I knew what all the words meant and I still couldn’t understand her! But they got better at it as time went by and ended up sounding like pretty normal hipsters. Business was good.

Which brings me to the subject I was going to talk about.

More and more people moved toward the Haight and some of our cafes got a makeover into really hip joints late at night. Daytime they still mostly just served coffee and donuts. The scene changed when it got late. I have to say, I might have helped things change. But the change didn’t stop where I wanted it to.

The culture was changing from the beat to the hip and the neighborhood had a lot more kids who really weren’t old enough for either smoke or liquor. I had to keep them out of parts of the store and I really hated that. Back in the day, we didn’t have all these age laws about who could smoke or drink. Alexander had conquered the Greeks by the time he was eighteen, and believe me, he drank whatever he wanted.

Oh, brother. America was already turning me into an old man.

So, I went with the flow and expanded the shop out the back door. We got a reputation as a head shop and it was bitchin’. A little ganja, which we grew away from where anyone could interfere, in the infinity room. We also kept an eye out for kids who were on their last legs. It was sad. They came here to turn on, tune in, and drop out. And for some of them, that turned out to be a little more than they could handle.

It was a lot like being a rescue mission—something my harem was very familiar with by this time. We’d pick up a kid who was strung out and had lost her bearings. I always checked on her to make sure she’d fit in with us, but then we took her into the infinity room. Sometimes a guy, too. I hated to take kids that left families and friends behind, but it was really the only choice for many of them. If I’d left them alone, they’d have been dead in days. And after we got them where life had meaning, they were very different people.

Oh, yes. The point of this story. Erosland Boutique became a gathering point for all kinds of demonstrations. I never turned anyone away, so people felt safe and comfortable, even when tensions were high. Like they were with the feminist movement.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that ‘feminist’ was a description of what I’d been all my life. You might say, “Hold on, Bob. You’ve got a harem of who-knows-how-many women that you have sex with. They all worship you and you say you’re a feminist? How so?”

Well, I’ve always believed that women were self-determinate. I never forced myself on anyone and I always treated my women with love and respect. I didn’t expect any of them to do anything I wasn’t willing to do—though there were many things they were much better at than I was. All the way back when Josie became my possession, it was her choice and she’s never regretted it.

Anyway, when a group came to me and asked if they could hold a rally out in front of our store, I welcomed them and did what I could to make sure it was a safe place for them to have their demonstration.