1969 and Then Some

by Robert Wintner

  What else could I do?

  I went back to the campground to tell Gretchen we could now relax on trains or hitchhiking. She looked concerned, so I explained. Her head wagged into a shake. No, she could not travel with a boy who had no moto, not when he said he did have a moto. No. It was not possible. She gathered her things into a bundle and moved them back to the space by Erik. Then she went to find Erik.

  She was willing to trade snatch for a ride on back, and I was dumbfounded that I would get no snatch without a back to ride on. Ah, well. I lay back, too young to be so tired in late morning with burdens to process.

  The world spun to the other side of my sleeping bag bivouac, to Bruce and Kevin, two Jews from Juhrzy—no disrespect intended—who had watched all three acts. Any Jew can attest that your Jersey Jew varies significantly from your Hoosier schmoozer. Bruce and Kevin were not surprised at the outcome between the Hitlerjugend and me, guaranteeing that the Aryan femme fatale would have turned sooner or later. They’d camped there for a day and a night before I arrived, and neither Erik nor Gretchen had spoken a word to them.

  Not. One. Word.

  Because Bruce and Kevin were Jewish. “How could they know you’re Jewish?” I asked facetiously, as if blind to the noses, the eyebrows, the kvetch and shmageggy?

  “Who can’t tell?”

  “I’m Jewish.”

  “Wha! You? A Jew?”

  “Gazundteit.”

  “No way!”

  I shrugged and turned to profile. Turning back I confided, “Ma nish tah noh, hi lie loh hazeh. Okay?”

  “Listen, Bubby. She would have found out. Then she would have . . . she would have . . .”

  Gretchen and Erik returned to see me commiserating with the Jews. Erik wagged his head.

  Kevin whispered, “She’d have bitten your little schmekel off!” He and Bruce giggled.

  Erik sighed in disgust, disappointed to be back on the hook or disgusted with the Jews. Or the Chews. I watched him quizzically, trying to see the difference between a Swede and a Chuhman, I mean German. He and Gretchen packed and left.

  Bruce asked what gave Kevin the idea of how big or little my schmekel might be, but Kevin shooed him away and said to me, “Hey. We’re going to Brindisi. You want to go?”

  “And how do you know his schmekel would have been in her mouth?”

  “What’s Brindisi?”

  “It’s way south. You can catch the boat to Greece from there. You want to go?”

  I shook my head. “Three guys can’t hitchhike. It doesn’t work.”

  “We have a car!”

  I nodded. Why wouldn’t I want to go? It was the frequently asked question of the day. And with that we were off, after lunch of course, because it was time. They’d found a little café up the street and would surely miss it. We stashed our stuff in their car and went for sit-down, nice, with a tablecloth and glasses for the wine and as much time as we cared for every delicious thing. Travel with Bruce and Kevin was like that: slow, celebratory, joyful and fun. And quaintly civilized, bringing me to the realization that I hadn’t dined at a table with a cloth and niceties in weeks.

  At the car they quibbled and nagged over who should drive first and who would sit in back and who had more lunch and by rights should be sleepier and who knew his way around town better, as if we three were equal. They looked at me for an opinion. I told them I could drive if they wanted, but in all honesty I couldn’t find my ass with both hands. They giggled again. I wasn’t sure why.

  Historical context is again pertinent; gaiety had not yet come on line as a hip new wave of radical behavior, being or identity. It was neither spurned nor defended but remained simply odd. Call me naïve—and I was—but I didn’t think of it. Until a few miles down the road when it was my turn to drive and Bruce’s turn to sit in back, and Kevin decided to sit back there too for the little smidge of extra room, so he could stretch out more. He was so sleepy. I felt great, driving a car, missing my motorcycle but loving the comfort of a seatback and a windshield. Goddamn! That felt good, on par with a tablecloth and glasses and chairs for lunch. I glanced at the rearview to see Bruce asleep, his head on Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin snored softy, drooling onto his shirt.

  We arrived in Brindisi late at night to empty streets and a deserted industrial port. The low scrub landscape behind the town seemed suitable, so we drove a short distance out, parked and unrolled our bags under the stars. Some wine, some cheese, a little piece of hash I’d managed to score in Rome, and the world glittered anew. You get nights of beauty your whole life, though that summer of ‘69 they came like clockwork as though the supply were endless.

  In the morning we learned that deck passage to Piraeus was a few bucks and just that, passage on the top deck. The ship would leave at sunset and cruise all night. Since it was early, prime deck spots near the smoke stack—for the warmth—were still open. Kevin and Bruce found a garage to store the car, and we were on board by five. The youth brigade of Americans, English, Italians and Greeks made up the manifest in equal measure, happily awaiting departure, snacking on sandwiches, souflake, giros, olives, pita and hummus.

  I ate underway, picking freely from the smorgasbord of untouched delectables left on the dining salon tables. Then it was time for sleep in the mildly pitching sea and salt mist, so we curled up in the smoke stack’s three-foot radius of warmth all night. Could it get any better?

  It seemed so in Piraeus, moving from the dock to the bus with a warm farewell to Bruce and David—they aped discretely when Carolyn, the formidably beautiful and articulate woman who would vanish directly, rushed in to ask if I would mind terribly if she sat beside me. “Not terribly,” I said. “Can I ask why?”

  “Yes. You can. A man is following me. He may not get on. But I think he will. Just in case.”

  “Not to worry. We’ll pretend to be on our honeymoon.”

  So the road happily unraveled into Athens, the bus bouncing nicely along the Greek countryside on a beautiful sunny day, as my future wife and I got to know each other—till we checked in, and she checked out.

  The first of two salient events of that phase occurred while strolling an Athens sidewalk that afternoon, wondering where to find a pension or hostel. I’d checked out of the hotel once what’s-her-name split, because it was twenty bucks—four days budget! Ain’t love strange? I stopped to scan a park that looked inviting, but I saw no campers. Being first could set you up for arrest, and we knew even then about what happened in jail and what they invented in Greece. I squinted at what might be some backpacks and people near some bushes and stepped nearer for a closer look when a familiar voice called out, “Hey! Beezer boy!”

  There under a parasol at a sidewalk café table sipping a Nescafe was David Rayall. Yes, we’d had some friction, but a reunion never felt better. He arrived three days ago from Rome, where he’d been since Madrid. He loved Greece.

  “You visited Bruno and his mother?”

  “Yeah. It was . . . It was . . . how can I say it? It was . . . real Italian.”

  “What the fuck did you expect? Lower Slobovian?”

  “No, I mean the language, the cooking, the wine . . . Taken together it was a . . . a unified context . . . you know . . . you could really . . .” David became Professor Rayall, his first symptoms of lecturing condescension occurring there on the streets of Athens.

  “So. Was he sad to see you go?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You guys fall out?”

  “Why would we? Bruno is most reasonable.” He nodded up behind me, and there was Bruno. They’d flown to Greece, which didn’t so much piss me off as, well, yes, it did piss me off. David could cry poormouth with the best of them, and here he was popping for double airfares when he was too cheap to spring for gas money on the motorcycle. He’d complained that I was driving anyway, and having him on back couldn’t account for more than a few pennies, so he’d buy me a pack of gum or something.

  Ah, well, I was glad to see Bruno and glad for him
. They had tickets for the next morning on the boat to Mykonos, where everyone was camping on the beach and eating at these amazing beachside huts where they cooked the fish and brought in the wine. Bruno was excited and happy as a poor, resourceful man would be. And he spoke Greek. “You didn’t say you spoke Greek in Spain.”

  “No person of Greek speak in Spain.”

  “You speak English now?”

  “Yes. I hav-ed to learning.”

  Bruno had found a place to camp—across the street no good. Too much polizei. No good. So it was old home week once again. I got my ticket for the Mykonos boat around the corner and a block down, and it was set. I had longed for a long night with my future wife, but she was gone, and I have to admit, getting loaded with the boys under the stars felt as good as one more time ever could.

  We ate free on the boat to Mykonos next morning, and once ashore hiked the few miles to a far side where rocks and scrub lined a sandy beach area. I had foresight even then to bring a mask, fins and snorkel of adequate quality that I bought in Athens, and though I saw only a single fish, she seemed to expect my arrival with a welcome from Poseidon, god of the sea. She was blue with black bars and big eyes that asked for help, with the Aegean already mostly dead.

  We drank, smoked, ate fried fish, swam in the ocean, told tales and lolled the days away. We ate free on the boat back to Athens, where we camped again.

  The next day we would catch a bus to the airport and fly to Tel Aviv, David’s idea, or rather David’s compulsion. I told him that Jews aren’t like Muslims; they are not required to make a pilgrimage. He insisted that real Jews do, given the chance, and being this close to God and then not stopping in for a visit would be nothing short of an insult.

  “What? You think God lives in Israel? You think he’s got a nice flat uptown? Fuck.”

  Ah, well, it was another eight inches east on the map, and we’d heard about free love on the kibbutzim, and Bruno was eager as well to try a society that served up breakfast and lunch too, and provided a bed and clothing, even a hat, and medical services and, well, everything in exchange for a few chores. He thought the answer to his economic situation might be waiting in Israel. I asked what was wrong with hitting the tarmac in New York and opening an Italian deli. Or wait! He could be a wood carver named Geppeto.

  “Fangoo. I no like’a New York. Too many Jew.”

  We laughed and drifted off anticipating another adventure.

  Tel Aviv was too much like New York, with a preoccupation on bombs and instant death so pervasive that it colored every minute. People threw trash on the ground, because trash everywhere would make no difference if you were dead. They weren’t yet dead but could be dead at any moment and would surely hate to waste the effort of cleaning up.

  We took a daytrip to the Red Sea and sat up in the water with no flotation. We talked with a lonely Arab whose hotel had been shot to smithereens by both sides. In Jericho we saw fourteen-year-old boys in open shirts and flip-flops with machine guns slung over their shoulders—boys with no youthful innocence or adolescent machismo; these boys seemed war weary. Anxiety depression prevailed. Joy seemed isolated and out of context. Even the prospect of sexual fulfillment at last seemed best postponed, except that such things are not rationally processed.

  Well, it was a great burden to be rid of, not so much the physical build up as the peer-pressure burden. Unfucked during that summer indicated abnormality. A grand tour was meant to alleviate inexperience on all levels, and the doors were open to opportunity. Still, those of us who took awhile longer to cross that rudimentary threshold were relieved of a significant burden.

  Crossing that threshold for my associate in sexuality and me was a coarse, quick exchange between a madly lusting boy and a young woman of uncertain depth or substance. She insisted on what she knew with oscillating chatter. We arrived directly at premature ejaculation and nothing more to say. I was glad to be rid of the pent up pecker juice and she who’d played her part. I’m certain she’d hoped for more romance, more attention, more cavalier wit, more of anything to value in her memory trousseau.

  David and Bruno had discreetly left the room to grant some privacy to my partner in desperation and me for the few minutes we would need to lighten our mutual load. They came back and wanted to know how it was. I lied, telling them it was great. It wasn’t great, but it made room for another try with less urgency, more deliberation and maybe better company. Things could develop more slowly next time with more exchange, maybe, I thought. Then again, that’s what happened in Spain and failed on deliberation where a pounce and fucking were in need.

  Well . . .

  We turned in at ten. By midnight I woke with a gasp, hardly able to breathe.

  It was my first night indoors in eight weeks. Staggering to the window I leaned out to gulp the fresher air. I’d seen movies with wild boys who couldn’t sleep in beds. It was true; anything less than the great outdoors and all that air was stifling.

  The next day we took a bus to Jerusalem and found a cheaper place and met Abraham, an Arab our age who envied the youth brigade and wanted in. Abraham asked if we liked to smoke hashish. We nodded like pups, and he smiled in camaraderie. If we harbored distrust, it was what we had learned, not what our instincts told us. Abraham said he would take us to a tea parlor behind a café, both operated by his uncle. And we were off, down the yellow brick road.

  Abraham turned to face us near the café with a warning: we would be offered hashish to buy, but we should decline, no matter how great the quality or the bargain, because the Arabs offering were in cahoots with the Israeli police, who would arrest us. They would demand a huge bail from our suburban parents and then deport us—and then return the hashish to the sellers. What we smoked, on the other hand, could not be used against us.

  Abraham at nineteen or twenty was one of us, an instant ally on the road to adventure, a brother in the youth brigade, because that’s how it was. Not so much as us against them—though there was plenty of that—those times recollect as us united, based on the simple virtues that will not go away: youth and idealism. Youth goes away on a personal level, but it remains immortal as a font of idealism, and I think of Abraham steering us around a certain disaster, because we were brothers in the bond in that holy bonding time. Oh, we would have shopped that bargain! We may have changed since then, though I believe the fundamentals to be intact, and a peace pipe would be a lovely thing to share again.

  Uncle Tenouse was a perfect host who led us through the café to the space in back, enclosed by three short walls with a partial trellis and hanging vines for a ceiling over a sawdust floor. On stools around the perimeter sat Israelis and Arabs in common society awaiting the pipe. Abraham’s cousin Farouk entered with a flourish, grasping the pipe in both hands. The impressive hookah captured our fancy and fantasy. Would they ever believe this one back on the farm? Ali Baba tassels and Arabesques dangled in festoons among the leads. Little brass charms, figurines and cymbals clinked, as a briquette of hashish wisped in the oversized bowl. Inhaling like a billows, Farouk stoked the briquette till it glowed red, till his eyeballs slumped toward his warm smile, and the glow gained radiance with a life of its own. Farouk delivered, rounding the patrons on their stools. To my left a geriatric Arab smoked and mumbled, “Hubbly bubbly. Hubbly bubbly.”

  The other customers pulled like seasoned veterans, exhaling in billows. What was not to waste? The briquette, about two by two by two of red ember—and I don’t mean centimeters; that was inches—wouldn’t fit into the bowl for a while. To our left two middle-agers introduced themselves as former pilots. That they were Israeli was foregone; nobody else had pilots except the Egyptians, who wouldn’t likely come to Jerusalem to smoke hash. I leaned over and asked a pilot, “What is hubbly bubbly?”

  He shrugged, “Good shit.” Was it true that we would be arrested if we bought any hash? He said it couldn’t be truer, because the Israeli government considered hashish a severe threat and a great ally. That is, many Arabs were sto
ned—all the time stoned, and even though the Soviets supplied advisors, explosives and guns, the Arabs could not figure out why setting a bomb on the ground three feet from a building only blew a hole in the ground and left the building unscathed. Now how would it be if the Israelis started smoking hash too and messing up the fundamentals of endless warfare?

  “You’re smoking it.”

  He shrugged. “I’m retired. And I won’t buy any either.”

  The cost of the session was one Israeli pound, about 28¢. As if that weren’t enough, an exotic beauty of the Middle East, Abraham’s other cousin, served mint tea and fresh melon slices. Stoned to the gills, we ogled, we dreamed, we sipped and ate. And smoked some more, for the sheer, abundant richness of the thing.

  Abraham asked, “Is good. Yes?” He grinned hopefully, seeking affirmation that we were one, among the youthful wave meeting the world on fresh terms of peace and love all around us.

  “Yes. Is good.”

  Strolling through the underground market I bought a burnoose and keffiyeh with a tasseled band I wore for years on Halloween. It was a real hit four years later during the first oil crisis, when the costume got a rope belt and some empty oilcans dangling from it. I had to stop wearing that outfit many years later when terrorism displaced the love all around us. Halloween could be so fickle.

  We walked up a steep hill to where a guy waited with some camels. The guy was another friend of Abraham’s, maybe another cousin or uncle, and so we too were in the fold. We dropped another pound on a camel ride, which was a goof and another stoned gas. Our friend Abraham was kin to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and don’t forget Sarah, Leah and Rachel. Ishmael fairly completed the arc of the Revolution in replacing historic conflict with newfound friendship. Ah, youth. Our dromedary cloud made time immaterial down to incidental eons drifting by as we drifted past olive trees said to be seven thousand years old, which seemed very old but then not so old in the geological view. In fact, human time seemed momentary, a still life like us. Fingertips brushed olive branches that were already two thousand years old even back then, when