1 : Shop Around
April 1, 1970
David and I are leaving graduate school at Buffalo for good and moving to a hippie commune in southeastern Colorado. Weâre twenty-four, and weâve come of age in the third quarter of the twentieth century, when many of us have the opportunity to make passionate choices. We havenât told our graduate school friends about our decision straight out, although weâve told them about discovering Libre last summer, when we were traveling around Colorado and New Mexico on a SUNY Buffalo faculty fund grant to study the communes that were sprouting up in the Southwest. Libre, which means âfreeâ in Spanish, is in the Huerfano Valley in southern Colorado. The Huerfanoâthe Orphan Valley. The valley and the Huerfano River running through it share the name of the lone butte that stands east of the valley, looking eastward into the Great Plains.
When we got back to Buffalo, we showed our slides of Libre and Drop City and New Buffalo. The brilliant colors of the Southwest bloomed on the walls of our apartment and classrooms during the long, dark Buffalo winter. We showed pictures of the Huerfano, a relatively narrow valley with sides that slope up like the sides of a teacup, rimmed by mountain ranges. We showed pictures of contemporaries making adobe bricks, irrigating corn, playing guitars, laughing into the camera. We told everyone how in the West you could stand on a mountain and see forever. When we returned to Libre last winter, on another grant to study communes, we felt certain weâd go back there permanently, but we werenât sure when.
On the way back to Buffalo from Libre this winter, we detoured to the Grand Canyon on a late January weekday afternoon. The light was wintry but bright, and there were no other tourists on the south rim. Shoulder to shoulder we looked down through a space that is time to the glinting line of the Colorado River.
âAcross the Great Divide,â David said.
âSo, do you think weâll actually move to Libre?â I asked, looking down at a hawk, swooping across the canyon below us.
âI guess so. Itâs our only real option, donât you think?â David said.
âYes,â I agreed. âItâs where I want to wake up every morning. Itâs where I can be the way I want to be.â Against the canyonâs grandeur, these words felt like a betrothal to me.
Back in Buffalo, we try to keep our options open, and we donât talk about our future to others much. Some graduate school friends are going to Vancouver Island this summer to start a commune. They sense our paths are forking, but no oneâs asked us point blank what weâre going to do next year, and we havenât told them our plans are definite now. The mountain range that dances across the horizon at sunset in the Huerfano burns in our memory. The people building their houses at Libre can teach us a lot. They have their flaws, like everyone else, but they also have the courage to be the vanguard. Theyâve grown to match their landscape. They are mountain men and women, artists, and free. We want to be like them. Frankly, we donât think our lovable, inexperienced, goofy, intellectual friends in Buffalo will last long in the Canadian woods.
Tonight many of these friends are sprawled in the living room of our second-floor apartment. Itâs surprisingly warm, and the doors are open onto the balcony overlooking Arlington Park. The elms havenât leafed out yet; in fact, most of them are dying from Dutch elm disease, but their large, graceful skeletons are silhouetted in the streetlights. Rickâs gotten some MDA from the army. Actually, Rick got it from someone who got it from someone who supposedly got it from the armyânaturally, Rick keeps his sources secret. He says the army developed MDA to dose hostile populations, to make them more docile and manageable. Heâs taken some before and says itâs great. The Band is playing on my KLH, and weâre all smiling at one another, nodding to âAcross the Great Divideâ: âAcross the Great Divide, / Just grab your hat and take that ride, / Get yourself a bride, / And bring your children down to the riverside âŚâ
Kevin lights a pipe of hash, sucks on it rapidly to get it started, and hands it to David. Kevinâs in graduate English with me, but heâs a little older. He was a monk for a while, but heâs switched his sacraments. His pale blond hair is perfectly trimmed, chin length, and naturally wavy, sort of like a forties starletâs hairdo. His beard and mustache are trimmed neatly too, and his large blue eyes seem even larger through thick, rimless glasses. Do monks still shave their heads? I canât see Kevin without his hair.
Friends gather at our houseâitâs spacious, with hardwood floors, working fireplaces, and balconies on the park. Kevin, who lives in the apartment downstairs, says this was the actress Katharine Cornellâs childhood home, now split up into apartments any graduate student would die for. Friends also gather here because David and I are one of the few long-term couples in the group. Weâre Peter and Wendy, and this is our gang. Because we havenât told them yet that weâre not going to Canada, this eveningâs bittersweet. Davidâs and my eyes meet occasionally as they chatter, and I just canât believe itâweâre going to join Libre and build a home nine thousand two hundred feet up Greenhorn Mountain and live there differently and forever. Weâll be psychic pioneers.
On paper, we donât seem prepared for this choice, no more ready to make the change than our friends heading for Vancouver. I graduated from Vassar in 1968, and this is my second year of a teaching fellowship in the English Ph.D. program at SUNY Buffalo, where I came to be with David. He graduated from Yale in 1968, too, and his Yale professor asked him to come with him to help start the new American Studies program up here. This job has the invaluable perk of a graduate school deferment from the draft and Vietnam, at least for a while.
The fact is, neither David nor I have ever built a bookcase before, or anything else for that matter. I suppose David took shop in high school, but Iâve never seen him with a tool in his hand in the six years Iâve known him. Weâve lived the life of the mind in suburbs and cities all our lives. This lack of practical skills doesnât stop us from wanting to head for Libre to build a house by hand, without electricity, on a frequently impassable road halfway up a mountain. Weâre young and strong, and we can do anything.
At Buffalo Iâm studying Blake and teaching journal writing to most of the freshman football team. English is required freshman year, and journal writing is the athletesâ course of choice. Iâm slim and small and have long, straight blond hair. My students are big and built; each oneâs neck looks bigger than my waist. I urge them to talk about their feelings while we read AnaĂŻs Nin, who, even in her delusions of grandeur, may not have expected an audience of eighteen-year-old football players from places like North Tonawanda, New York. I try to discuss Vietnam with them in classâmany students have brothers or friends thereâbut they look down at their desks and donât want to talk about it, maybe because they think Iâm crazy or stupid or worse. I donât have Davidâs charisma or his leadership abilities. But Iâm their teacher, and they flirt with me, awkwardly and politely, humoring me as best they can, confessing more and more in their journal notebooks as the semester progresses. Meanwhile, their uncles and fathers sit in bars along Delaware Avenue with other steelworkers and pray that some hippie will be stupid enough to come in and ask for directions or a beer.
Davidâs across the living room, messing with his guitar and amplifier. Heâs tall, dark, muscular, and lean. He has high cheekbones, pale skin, wild dark eyes, and black hair and mustache. One grandfather was a North Carolina Cherokee. David is handsome, and his eyes burn. He looks like a cross between Omar Sharif and Henry Fonda with a soupçon of Tonto thrown in. He has the look that visionaries, poets, and some outlaws haveâone eyeâs focused a little further into the future than the other. This may be why he pays a little less attention to the present than I do. In the new American Studies program at Buffalo last year, he taught a class called âThe Outsider.â This year itâs titled âFREAK.â On his reading list is Hunter Thompsonâs Hellâs Angels, Kerouacâs On the Road, Tom Wolfeâs Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ginsbergâs Howl, The Stranger and all the rest of Kafka, Ralph Ellisonâs Invisible Man. His course is so popular that, even though itâs full, many unenrolled students drop in to participate. The large attendance is due to the exciting revolutionary thoughts and insights expressed there, but also because lots of students smoke joints together throughout the class.
This winter, even Davidâs class was canceled when SUNY Buffalo was shut down because of student revolt. The campus ROTC building was burned down one night, and its records were destroyed. Unemployed steelworkers drove through the campus shooting at longhaired hippie-looking students. It was a cloudy, grim winter. While we were away in Colorado, our two cats, Yin and Yang, died from some no doubt environmentally caused disease. JB, a close friend, checked into a mental hospital and detox program last month, not long after heâd organized the clandestine midnight brigade who drove around Buffalo stenciling WAR under STOP on all the stop signs. We didnât see the sun once in January. Gary Snyderâthe Japhy Ryder of Kerouacâs Dharma Bumsâvisited, and one long, dark winter night we had a party and danced so exuberantly that the hardwood floor of our apartment shook. Kevin lives downstairs, so no one complained. Snyder knew of Libre and the Huerfano because his friend Nanao, a Japanese poet, was visiting there. We showed Snyder my pictures of Libre and New Buffalo and Morning Star Commune, and he asked, âWhy donât you go there?â We couldnât answer. Baba Ram Dass, aka Richard Alpert, Mr. LSD, came through Buffalo, too, dressed in white robes now, drug free and high from two years in India with his guru. We told him about Libre, and he said, âFollow your heart!â Itâs silly, but when he said that, it felt so simple, so profound.
Beyond the local indications of doom is the tragic, revolting big picture. Che, Malcolm X, Martin, and Bobby are dead. In February, the Weathermen blew up a Bank of America out West. In March, three Weathermen blew themselves up in the East, making a bomb with some sticks of dynamite and an alarm clock in a Greenwich Village brownstone that one of Edith Whartonâs eligible bachelors might have lived in late in the previous century. The three were about our age. Nixon expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia, and last fall at a demonstration at the Pentagon we were teargassed. We were in the front, and one soldier must not have liked the way David looked at him. Or maybe it was the large black and white silk pirate flag Iâd made for David to carry. When the order came to gas the crowd, the soldier aimed a canister at Davidâs head, and it knocked him down. The neighboring strangers didnât panic and trample over him. Instead, they helped Davidâs brother Doug and me pick David up. Gasping and choking on gas, we held him up and helped him run. He didnât drop the flag. Itâs on our apartment wall, by the poster for Cream at Fillmore East.
Bob the Rake, whoâs sharing a large maroon Naugahyde chair with me, passes a pipe. I take a light puff and smile at him. Heâs broken five womenâs hearts in the past three monthsâand those are only the ones Iâve heard about. Heâs got dark brown bedroom eyes, thick eyelashes, wavy brown hair. Heâs not killingly handsome, a bit stocky even, but heâs got a way with the women, and a libido turbocharged by a Catholic boysâ school education. The stereoâs off, and Davidâs tuning up his electric guitar. Buddy, back from Chicago, where heâs been clerking for William Kunstler on the trial of the Chicago Seven, is picking languidly on a bass. Suddenly, Iâm overwhelmed with love for everyone in the room. Even Bob the Rake seems harmless and endearing. Joanne, hopelessly in love with Bob, gets up, flicks a cigarette over the balcony, and closes the balcony doors, either because itâs getting cold, because sheâs worried about the electric guitars and the neighbors, or because Bob is driving her crazy.
I stare down at the frayed oriental rug my parents gave me to bring up here. It wasnât new when I crawled on it as a baby. My parents are angry that David and I are living together in sin. Itâs my mother whoâs most angry, but my fatherâs going along with her. Iâve visited over the last two years, but they donât allow David in the house and refuse to speak his name. Maybe itâs the MDA that makes me feel a surge of love for them, too, along with love for all the people in the room, and the conviction swells up in me that it will all work out, though Iâm not sure of the details. If I were a hostile native, Iâd drop my Molotov cocktail now.
David plays Leadbellyâs âBourgeois Blues,â then a Woody Guthrie tune, âDeportee,â then Jerry Lee Lewisâs âGreat Balls of fire.â His soft tenor voice is clear and slightly southern, no matter what he sings. Iâve heard him practice these songs late into the night. Now he starts âShop Around,â the old Smokey Robinson favorite which heâs been playing a lot lately. Everyoneâs swaying, and Buddyâs picking up the bass line surprisingly well. The lights are low, the large candles dripping and flickering.
When I became of age, my mama called me to her side,
She said, âSon, Youâre growing up now,
Pretty soon youâll take a bride,â âŚ
David doesnât try to sound like Smokey Robinson. His version is true to who he is, and slightly Appalachian. I feel lucky to be with a person whoâs so intelligent, such a creative thinker, so handsome and hip. I also feel Bobâs hand on my back under my Mexican blouse, and I jump a little, wondering when he put it there, but then heâs just been stroking my lower back softly, and it feels good. Not sexual, just good. I smile at David across the room. He looks at me briefly, then looks down at his fingers on the frets.
âThis feels so good. Youâve always been so cool and distant! Youâre such a weird mix of reserve and passion, Iâve always wanted to do this,â Bob whispers as David plays a bridge between verses, and Glint gives a Texas good olâ boy hoot of approval. Candlelight glints on the thick lenses of Glintâs wire-rimmed glasses, and the wire arms disappear into his large, muttonchop sideburns. I should say to Bob that Iâm so cool and distant because Iâm in love with David and committed to him. Also, Iâm friends with Joanne, who has loved Bob forever, and unlike some people, I believe in being faithful. But Iâm feeling too good to be snide, and David looks up from his guitar meaningfully with his dark, indigenous eyes. I smile back, pretty sure neither he nor anyone else has noticed Bobâs arm halfway up my back. Joanne would notice if it werenât so dark.
David sings the chorus in a high falsetto.
âTry to get yourself a bargain son,
Donât be sold on the very first one
Pretty girls come a dime a dozen,
Try to find one whoâs gonna give you good lovinâ âŚâ
He sings and plays with more feeling and flourish than ever. Bob runs his fingers over my back lightly, and I sway a little, to avoid his fingers getting more intimate, and because the music sounds so good I canât sit still. Then David strums his guitar loudly and pauses. Everyone stops swaying and looks up. Glint spills his beer.
âRoberta PriceââDavid strums dramaticallyââWill you marry me?â Bobâs hand freezes. Glintâs mopping up beer with his sweater and grinning. Everyoneâs smiling at me, and I smile across the room at David. My face flushes with embarrassment and MDA. I want to get married, but it occurs to me (inappropriately, it seems) that he must be very confident of the answer to ask me in a crowd. Why shouldnât he be confident? I think irritably. But, almost as soon as I think that, I wonder if heâs asked me like this because it would really be very hard for me to say no in this situation. Why am I having such foolish thoughts? It must be the wine, the hash, or the MDA. Iâve been sure that I wanted to marry David all the time heâs hesitated and said marriage is too conventional. Have I been so sure because heâs been so doubtful?
Everybodyâs staring. Itâs been forever since the last guitar chord reverberated in the dark, sweet, smoky air of the apartment. Iâm looking at David, and then I remember Bobâs hand on my back and wonder if anybodyâs noticed. Bobâs lowered his hand a little and has stopped running his fingers over my skin, so at least my goose bumps are deflating. I look down, blush more, and then I say, âYES!â Glint hoots again, and lurches away to the kitchen in his worn cowboy boots for something to clean up the beer, and Bob puts the arm that was under my blouse around me.
âPretty girls come a dime a dozen,
Try to find one whoâs gonna give you good lovinâ,
Before you take a girl and say I do now,
Make sure sheâs in love with you now,â
My momma told me, âYou betta shop around.â
David sings on. Bob looks sideways at me, thick, dark eyelashes at half-mast. He smiles and whispers, âApril Fool!â
I get up and cross the room to David, threading through our friends on the floor. I really donât think Bob was kidding.
2 : May Day
May 7, 1970
Five weeks later, on the way to tell New Haven friends about our wedding, we loop south to White Plains to tell my parents. I call from a gas station on the Merritt Parkway, and Mom sounds a little surprised, but she doesnât say David canât come to the house. Maybe she senses weâve got news. We drive up the hill in our 1947 Chrysler Windsor coupe that we bought in Barstow, California, last July, after our Corvair camper died a miserable death in the desert outside Needles. When we found the Chrysler in the first used car lot coming into Barstow, we opened the glove box and found the ownerâs...