She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me

by Herbert Gold

  The smells of bus, baby, and Priscilla surrounded me. Life is good, life is the very best. Here is what I felt: Love, love, love. So I lack all proportion and cry aloud, “I love you! I love you!”

  Priscilla slips me a sidelong glance of smile-suppressed forgiveness for uttering such language on the street, on Columbus in North Beach, in the full brisk light of midday and well outside the normal and appropriate marital context. But what was I doing here, performing vocabulary stretches, interfering with her sandwich at noon with her baby? The business of motherhood was a woman’s earnest, dreamy hormonal work. The father’s business at that hour happened to be getting his teeth cleaned.

  Fuck dental hygiene.

  “You’ll have to pay for the appointment if you don’t show up,” she says.

  “I floss, I floss! I love you so much!” I answer.

  “Thanks. Me too.”

  As we stand on the street, then turn to go to the sandwich shop, the Minimum Daily Requirement—hippies, beatniks, newspaper readers with shreds and stems of green stuff hanging from their mouths, sprouts, lettuce, meat, avocado; Jeff still bobbling on Priscilla’s back, half asleep, half giggling from the motion—she forgets to remind me again to call the dentist’s office. That would be nagging repetition, the enemy of marriage—one of them. In twenty years, when her stride may be a bit slower, her hips heavier, Jeff in college and doing well, we might take a senior tea in the afternoon instead of a fast and noisy sandwich amid folks who could be defined as “denizens.” She was saying something over the noise of the shop, which didn’t disturb Jeff, who was trying to get his mother hopping again. “I have an idea,” she is saying. “Dan? You want to?”

  I like the sound of that.

  “After we eat, because I’m real hungry,” she says.

  I assent to that.

  “Hey, I’d like a roast beef on rye—no mustard for me because it upsets Jeff’s tummy—”

  “But I can have mustard.”

  “True enough, you don’t make the mother’s milk, you only make the father’s milk—”

  Where is this heading? To reproach because a woman’s work is never done, even in the automated factory of lactation?

  “So then I’ll feed Jeff and he’ll stop that bouncing, get some sleep, sack time you used to call it, World War II, didn’t you? But if you come home with us, okay, I know it’s the afternoon, Dan—”

  Her hand is creeping from location seven to location ten, from my knee to my crotch, where the mother’s fingers give a clarifying squeeze to what she finds there. A simple explanation always works.

  Her voice is softer now, with the delighted energy laughter tuned all the way down. “I know it’s afternoon and you’ve got to do the work of the world, and you always get sleepy afterward too, just like Jeff after a feeding, but—”

  “I’ll call the dentist,” I say.

  “So let’s go home and fuck, dear man,” she answers.

  The sun is high. Jeff is gurgling and jumping a little, wanting the pleasure of that long stride rocking him. My roast beef has mustard and too bad hers can’t have. My happiness takes a pedantic turn, bound to correct her formulation of the program for the rest of the day: “Let’s make love.”

  “Sometimes I have trouble expressing myself. You’ve got to learn my WASP style.”

  She expresses herself well enough. Under the table, well beneath the roast beef sandwich, she was squeezing what she found there. I guess I’ll settle for what she gave.

  * * *

  In his high chair, propped on a telephone book for greater height, Jeff leaned forward with his little neck and his now downy head of hair, mouth open, eyes wide, as I extended the spoon of cereal, saying, “Here comes the airplane,” me buzzing like an ancient prop cropduster, and his hangar snapped it down with a fake look of surprise and we both laughed and then I did it again. Why does every father with every child play airplane with spoonfuls of mush, and why does every child gurgle happily at the father’s idiot crooning? Jeff and I didn’t mind sharing everyone else’s family pastimes; playing airplane during the child dining procedure is part of the great chain of being. Sneakily I hoped Priscilla noticed that father and son were essential to her housekeeping arrangements.

  “Jeff,” said Priscilla, “now why don’t you give your father an airplane ride?”—getting it wrong deliberately—and he extended the dripping spoon and I ended with a face of Pablum.

  The Kasdan Family, Open for Business. This firm under new management, Jeff’s mom and Jeff’s dad accepting clerical and cleanup duties as experienced, sleep-deprived partners in the merged enterprise. Jeff busy eating, drinking, shitting, and sleeping on a twenty-four-hour schedule, not excluding Sundays and holidays. The new CEO, Mr. Jeff, doesn’t bother to wonder how he got into this. The father accepts conditions he had not anticipated. The unearned perfect intimacy of family, like sunlight, doesn’t need discussion. Pride happens. Contentment happens. The years happen. The mother begins to wonder if this is what her life was supposed to be.

  * * *

  And here is what I feel now: Love, love, love, horrible desolation and regret, love.

  We make love and say to each other, “Yes … Yes … Oh yes … Yes,” and then the baby is crying when we get out of the bath together.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she says to Jeff as she picks him up, holds him to her breast, and he subsides into happy feeding sucks. I lie near the other breast, dozing, loving the Chinese on the bus, loving the bus driver, loving Jeff, loving Priscilla. Even daring to say yes to myself as I pick up clothes blown hurricane-style around the bedroom, one of my socks miraculously planted inside one of the legs of her silken panties. Pale sweet silk, smelling of her sweet strong stride. Yes for sure, forever and ever.

  So much affirmation to come to naught in its doomed due course.

  And here is what I feel now: Love, love, love, horrible desolation and regret, love.

  Yes anyway, yes, because it was.

  Chapter 8

  We painted our walls white, did it ourselves because Priscilla liked climbing on ladders, wielding rollers, dripping thick paint on drop cloths, then breaking to go at turkey sandwiches on sourdough bread held in speckled hands. We hung Fillmore Auditorium posters, psychedelic works by Mouse, Rick Griffin, Moscoso, Wilfred Satty, gazing at them with fond irony, and then we suspended stained-glass mandalas and zodiac images from the vendors on Haight Street to improve the Aquarian Age sunlight through our windows. In the bathroom we mounted a sepia-tinted photograh entitled “Chocolate George’s Funeral,” which showed the memorial motorcycle cortège of Hell’s Angels commemorating the life and tragic end of a colleague who had collided with a black-and-white van full of pigs at an intersection where the right-of-way belonged to the survivors. Priscilla had once joined me in a summit conference I scheduled with George, who got his name from lounging about with a trademark container of chocolate milk propped against the hairy gap in his jeans. I needed to ask about a meth factory allegedly run by an alleged chief of a motorcycle sport club. We met at the corner of Page and Ashbury, near the detox unit of the Free Clinic. George graciously offered Priscilla a swig of his well-browned, well-muzzled milk; she, of course, accepted the Chocolate Milk of Peace. About the methedrine sulphate factory, whatever that might be, C. George declared he didn’t know nothing, but he sure thought the world of my old lady. “She’s a mama I could even have a go at myself,” he roguishly hinted. So the sepia commemoration print was meaningful to us.

  Around this time the Native American separatist movement launched its war canoes to occupy Alcatraz Island, first installment on the rest of Amerikkka—important to include all those ks—and Alfonso suggested I put up a Free Hawkfeather St. James poster on my nice new white walls (how about the kid’s room, buddy, next to the seesaw mobile?) but not get otherwise involved. Some rough stuff going down, he said. Alfonso gave me these hints now and then, because what else are friends for, especially if they’re on the police force?

&n
bsp; I asked Priscilla to stay away from this cause. She had already cooked up the buffalo stew but agreed to send it out under cover of darkness with an expedition of feral English rock and roll journalists. But then, bang, I was hired by a grieving father to look into the death of a Native girl who fell/jumped/was pushed down a flight of stairs, so I got involved anyway. And Priscilla asked if it was cool if she wore a headband. “You’d look cute in it,” I said. So she didn’t wear it.

  Even when it wasn’t the sixties anymore, it still was. We had entered these times from different doors, at different stages in our lives. We kept rolled joints in a cup in the fridge, wrapped in Baggies so they wouldn’t dry out, but I preferred brownies because my whole life could be reexamined if that happened to be the program, unrolling with stoned concentration in super-meta-magnavision, without having to contend afterward with a scratchy throat. It was normal for me to move from spectator to chorus in the Aquarian operetta. Secretly, in my heart of hearts, soul of souls, ball of balls, I too was a runaway child. Those questers on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park, strumming their guitars, blowing their dreams at each other—well, maybe their parents hired me to find them, my brothers and sisters, but I tracked them down in the encampments of the Haight warmly, compassionately, cordially. Heaven and Siddhartha, patchouli and Isolde could be found in every crash pad.

  One girl, Tanya Tangiers (born Terry Templemeyer), explained that she couldn’t go home to her parents because (a) she was now married and had been for a very long time, and (b) she was no longer sixteen years old. She was living in the Kerista commune and married to thirteen husbands. (How long? Since last Thursday.) And since Thursday she was two thousand years old.

  I arranged for her father, an admiral in the U.S. Navy, to have a little talk with her and bring her home. I was not only Tanya’s spiritual brother but also her father’s.

  Priscilla, my bride during these zigzag voyages, tripped and smiled triumphantly from her twenties into her thirties. She was willing to contribute small miracles as part of the whole-earth acceptance deal. She invented adding roast potatoes, carrots, onions, and leftover chicken from a sandwich to a can of Campbell’s Whatever Kind of Soup, cooking it with her secret, recycled ingredients so that eventually it actually tasted good, yummy, the best; as she did, too; and maybe a trickster brownie for dessert or maybe not. These were times when tremendous doings were afoot all over, and even kitchen life could be magnified, become tremendous.

  * * *

  Lots of LSD Jesuses seemed to be shipped to San Francisco by my personal guardian angels in order to provide employment opportunities. The father and mother of a freshly anointed Jesus would come on a referral from another PI search service, or just telephone from Frantic, Indiana, or the upper peninsula of Michigan, saying that their lovely son, Dennis, was heading west on a mission to be Savior of the World and would I please ask him to take the bus home because Mom was worried sick. Mom was often too distraught to come on the extension line with more than “Filthy drug addicts got ahold of him on a trip to Dee-troit. You’ll recognize him—grew his hair long and whiskers.”

  The pokier Jesuses headed toward the Jerusalem of Marin County; the freak Jesuses liked the Haight because of ample free parking—in doorways, in the Panhandle, in Golden Gate Park—plus crash-pad wise men for company and potential discipleship, plus the best music. They turned on, tuned in, and bought tickets; rock and roll was here to save.

  A Jews-for-Jesus kid sang his hit single in front of the Haight Straight Theater—“I Knew Jesus Before He Was a Gentile”—whomping and wailing, until I put my hand on his guitar and led him off for a heart-to-heart discussion about the Last Supper. This one turned out to be somebody else, a second-generation Jew for Jesus, and later a star of the San Francisco Sound, with a record that landed up there with “By the Dock of the Bay,” “Hello, Hello,” and the one about if you come to San Francisco, wear flowers in your hair. “The Last Supper,” he explained, “was really the first free feed, like the Diggers, man. Now if you ask if He means for all the folks to join Him in the Big Auditorium—”

  I didn’t ask. I was looking for Dennis. When I found him, inquiring at the Psychedelic Shop or the Drog Store, checking on Haight or in the Panhandle or on Hippie Hill in the Park—Lords of the Universe tended to stand out in crowds—sometimes all it took was a kind word: “Your mom misses you, Dennis. Your dad says you can drive the Trans Am on Saturday nights.” It got cold sleeping outside, because San Francisco doesn’t have the California weather people imagine, and the doorways were crowded with competition: L. Ron Hubbards, Paul Bunyans, Strangers in a Strange Land (symptom of an apolitical bent—never met a Napoleon around here). One Jesus got suspicious about the weekend driving privilege: “Where you get that Trans Am shit? My old man drives a ’64 Buick Skylark.”

  I snapped my finger and scuffed my boots, eyes modestly downcast. If you try to carry your office in your head, you sometimes get the file on runaways jangled. “I meant that, son—Buick Skylark, right, right—just slipped out wrong. Hey, how about a little breakfast—two pork chops and some mashed potatoes sound good to you?”

  “You can call me Joshua,” he said. “They got fries?”

  The non-exalted runaways were harder to find, secretive, depressed, and sometimes in trouble. The girls were in danger. They would turn up pregnant if I didn’t hurry and sometimes if I did. Often I had to contend with a boyfriend or a pimp and a lot of sadness. I would go from squat to commune to group dwelling, generally within a mile or two of Haight Street—those free spirits tended to huddle together—and then find Valerie or Sharon suffering from malnutrition, venereal disease, and bad habits. “Can’t go home. They don’t want me.” “They want you, they love you.” “If they did, why’d they treat me like that?” “They’re going to do better now.” “Promise?” “Promise. Hey, come on, I’ve got a hotel for you, a suite, nice warm bath, the shampoo and conditioner kit, and listen in on the phone while you talk to them.” “What’ll I tell Luther?” (Luther or Dwayne or Terrence would be the boyfriend-pimp-guardian they had found to improve on their parents.) “Don’t you worry about Luther. I’ll handle Luther. Just pick up your kip, honey, and here’s a nice taxi.”

  If Luther came bopping around on his cork heels, he would notice my mean eyes and think, Plainclothes cop, chick underage, and usually let go okay. Sometimes I’d help him: “I’m gonna watch you walk down that block to Page Street, Luther, and then you turn right without looking back. ’Cause if you do … I bet you’ve met Officer Jones over to Park Station—Alfonso Jones?”

  Luther was less trouble than the girls. No tears, no snot in his nose, no turning back.

  Priscilla called me “Finder of Souls.” I said I was only the shepherd dog barking after a little flock of Jesuses and Mary Magdalenes—was that disrespectful or sacrilegious? She worked her lips, checked her Sunday school memories. “I’ll have to see.”

  While a sitter watched Jeff for a few hours a week, she was back to teaching at the Museum of Modern Art, running tour groups and lecturing on French Impressionism to high school visitors, some of whom wanted to know about American Impressionism. Opportunities for art history graduates were narrow if they couldn’t type, no matter how sweet their scalps smelled, how salty they tasted. The advantage of her job was that sometimes she could take time off to help in a difficult Jesus treasure hunt.

  This one was Jesus Christ Satan, a solo practitioner of good and evil, spangled and caped over a red satin dress, iridescent, clumping along with his crooked staff, his puppy, his cat on a string, and occasionally a follower. His hair was put up in pink ribbons under a tin helmet with Viking horns on it. People tended to notice, even during those special times; maybe it was the red dress, non-natural fiber. I already knew him, but darned if he didn’t give me the slip for a week once he heard I was looking. Sometimes he lugged around clay tablets under his cape. People feared he might use them to sock sinners, but I sensed a middle name—Jesus Christ Moses Satan—a
nd these were merely his ten commandments. Thou shalt end the war in Vietnam, thou shalt daily dose on acid, thou shalt not fuck with me, and so on. I asked for him up and down Haight and Page, down the Panhandle, on Cole, Stanyan, and Central, deep into Golden Gate Park. Everywhere his congregation cried out: “Dug him yesterday, looked kind of uptight, man.”

  His shoes clumped; he believed in sandals, but these hiking boots happened to be more practical for a wandering freelance prophet and savior in the San Francisco Gomorrah. In the case of Jesus Christ M. Satan, it wasn’t parents. He stood apart, beyond family. He had been the art director of an advertising agency in New York and there was an urgent query about missing funds. His art director training accounted for his attractive decor (sometimes battery-powered Christmas lights flashing under the black-and-red cape); LSD accounted for his new role as King Messiah of both Heaven and Hell; he owed his taste for embezzlement to innate character.

  It was frustrating. I knew him, but now I couldn’t locate him. He was wriggling out of view like a magician out of a cage. Jesus C. Moses Houdini Satan. In a shiny red dress, slippery.

  And then Priscilla spotted him on Polk Street, hastening along with his animals doing their best to keep up behind the billows of cape. He was noticeable, but I was looking at Priscilla and Priscilla was looking at the world, saw him first, and ran up, inquiring with her happiest smile, “Mr. Satan, that’s such a cute couple of God’s creatures, I wonder if you got them at the pound or a pet store—”

  “Not talking to womenfolks this week,” he said.

  By that time I had him by the elbow, cornered him in the crowd at Travel Agency for Trips, had my own questions and statements, had a firm grip on the arm of the Ruler of the Here Below and Beneath. “Jerry,” I said, “since I’m not a womenfolk, I’m sure you and I can have a nice conversation.”

  The folks lined up at the Travel Agency for Trips at Polk and Vallejo weren’t buying many plane tickets to LA, Denver, or Disneyland. They were buying tablets to take them farther than far out as they sat in the front row of movies and watched 2001, grokking and grooving, or Reefer Madness at midnight, hooting and hollering, their fingers in the crotches of the neighbors in the seats on both sides. J. C. M. Satan also sold high-test dynaflow acid from a pocket of his embroidered, button-loaded cape. As the Savior of the World, he embraced what came to hand, occasionally changing acid into sugar and the other way around.