By Mara Thygeson,
It was the sixties era of free love. Most of my Berkeley High girl friends bounced on the trampoline of random sex with guys they didn’t know. I wasn’t into casual sex. Ever since reading Wuthering Heights at age eleven, I was saving myself for eternal love.
My best friend, Fiona, and I read about evening classes at The Free High School in The Berkeley Barb, advertised as “Bold Experimental Expressionism, taught by grad students.” It was the spring of 1968, our sophomore year. We ambled up the broken steps of a dilapidated Victorian. Inside the house was crowded with Goodwill couches stained in red wine. Beaded curtains hung from doorways and jangled against my arms as I walked into rooms hosting classes ranging from Marxism to Gestalt. Pungent aromas of incense, cigarettes and pot swirled. It felt like I’d wandered into a psychedelic version of Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread house. Most of the women teachers were braless with rivers of hair. The men sported shaggy locks, hipped out in shades, and ogled us high school girls.
We strolled into creative writing. The class changed its structure weekly in meandering debates that lasted too long: what was more significant, the moss on the rolling stone or that the stone rolled? It was like writing poetry stoned, thinking it great until the next morning, when you realize it’s smoky crap.
It was a soft, breezy May day. Cherry trees blazed with massive white blossoms. Fiona and I sailed out of Berkeley High, happy and free; the weekend loomed before us. I nudged Fiona’s arm. “The Free High School is bullshit, but what the hell. Let’s check out the art class tonight.”
“I’m game, Ruth.”
My mother was gone that weekend at a literature conference on Chaucer. Hair freshly washed, wearing my Alvin Ailey dance t-shirt and Levis, Fiona and I hitched a ride to the art teacher’s house near the railroad tracks.
August Rover was tall and lean with mahogany skin and full lips framed by a black moustache and a big Afro. He was seriously handsome with high cheekbones, midnight eyes and sculpted hands. Quivers raced every time I looked at him. He gave me a juicy smile and motioned us to sit on his living room rug. Besides Fiona and me, there were two girls and two guys. August gave us white paper cups of red wine and passed a joint around as he explained the night’s project.
“Paint a mural freestyle, anything that enters your mind. Could be last night’s dream, a poem. Join each others’ images, get in the groove.” Eyes riveted to mine, he smiled radiantly. His unexpected attention excited me.
A huge white canvas was nailed to his living room wall. On the floor beneath was a rainbow of paints in gallon tin cans and big brushes. “Go for it,” he said, lifting his arms like a conductor. Fiona and the two girls dipped their brushes into a jungle of giraffes. The boys painted geometric shapes connected by dots. I joined Fiona and stood on tiptoe to paint vanilla clouds in a lavender sky. August walked by and encouraged us, his voice gentle; his eyes centered on me.
An hour passed. Energy between us accelerated. His mystical eyes invited me in; shivers raced my skin. Was he the one? My brush dangled by my side. Fingers touching mine, he took the brush from my hand and set it carefully in a silver pan, then motioned me to follow him into a clean spacious kitchen with high ceilings. We sat at a round Formica table staring at each other. My throat knotted with thirst. No words were spoken as he rose from the table and returned with a glass of orange juice. I drained the glass and thought, where do you come from?
“Chicago.” His eyes ignited fires. I sensed him send a thought, come closer, and slid my chair nearer. He lifted his arms, dark hands fanned out, pink palms open. I stretched mine toward his as he slowly brought them closer. His fingers closed over mine as we pressed our palms together, black and white like piano keys. We sent telepathic messages, inflamed with meanings that now, looking back from the ledge of years, I see were misinterpreted. While I had imagined us in Paris at the Louvre, August was probably tripping on my pink nipples. I thought he wanted to go on a Wuthering Heights soul-sharing cruise to forever love. Most likely, he couldn’t believe his luck, a beautiful young chick eager to fuck.
He gave me his phone number. “Call me when you get home.” My body glowed like a phosphorescent sea.
The canvas was a disjointed chaos of colors. “Great job!” August said, and mingled with the students, then turned to me with a look so naked my breath stopped.
Feet barely skimming the sidewalk, I rode the bus home with Fiona. She tugged my elbow. “What happened with Foxy? You were gone for ages. Did you ball him?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s a mind-soul thing.”
“Don’t be so naïve, Catherine of the moors. He just wants to ball you.”
Appalled, I turned away from her to the velvet sky. She’d lost her virginity to a cat she picked up at the U.C. Berkeley Student Union and never saw again. She knew nothing about soul love. When the bus finally got to our stop, I struggled to not tear up the street and leave her behind. The two-block walk to my house took ages. I bade Fiona goodbye, and bounded up the porch steps.
Fingers shaking, I dialed August’s number.
He answered on the first ring. “Are you feeling what I’m feeling?”
“Spinning.”
“Meet me at the Berkeley Student Union tomorrow morning at 8:30.”
I barely slept. The next morning, wearing a turquoise blouse, an olive mini skirt and black-heeled boots, I paced the bronze floor of the Student Union. Stomach taut, afraid he wouldn’t show, I wondered if last night was real. Ten long minutes later his tall, lanky body strode up. His eyes devoured me. Holding me close, he pushed a strand of black hair off my ear and whispered, “Ruth, I stayed awake all night waiting to see you.”
We went to breakfast at the Mediterranean on Telegraph Ave. The restaurant thronged with people and noise. I saw only him. Our croissants sat untouched on red plates. After a quick call, he took me to a friend’s empty apartment nearby. Next to me on a purple couch, he asked how old I was. His mouth popped. “Fifteen! I’ve never been with a girl that young. I thought you were eighteen.” He told me he was twenty-five, had married at eighteen, had a six-year-old son, and a bitter divorce two years ago. As I took in the shock of our age difference and that he was a father, he surprised me with a long juicy kiss that made me lightheaded.
“Come here.” He wagged his tongue at me. Terrified, I froze. He held my hand. “You’re afraid I’ll screw you. Is it because I’m older?
I shook my head. “It’s love I want, not sex.”
August nibbled on my ear. “I’m only trying to love you.”
But it wasn’t the way I wanted to be loved. Not so fast, not like this — in a stranger’s messy apartment with a man I barely knew. My soul lover would be patient and wait till I was ready. August’s mouth grazed mine and melted into lengthy, nerve-tingling French kisses that led to the bedroom and the rumpled bed. He unzipped my black boots with a practiced grace, and pulled me on top of him. His hips rotated under my pelvis, lips sucking mine, thrilling and scary. My breath was rapid as his hands roved from buttock to buttock, and pushed my skirt up. Then he lifted me off him and was swiftly on top of me, moving down, kissing my bare stomach and gliding further into dangerous territory. Alarm and pleasure chimed. He tugged my black tights and started to pull them down. Panicked, I grabbed his hands. He stopped and looked up at me. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to screw you. I want to make love to you.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but his voice reassured me. His body glided up and he kiss me again, then began his descent down my body. The tussle resumed, him pulling my tights down, me resisting. He sat up cross-legged. “I feel like a lecher.” His voice was harsh.
“I need to know you better, for love,” I whispered.
“Can’t you feel love tugging inside you?” His voice was poem soft. “I want to make love to you, kiss your thighs and nibble your breast.”
I shivered. No one had ever spoken to me like that; I felt like a river flooding the banks. I wanted him, but not on that bed, not then. I wanted our relationship to grow slower so I’d know if he was the one. I blurted, “I’m waiting for true love.”
“That’s a bullshit cliché. You’ve never been treated like a woman. I’m trying to treat you like one, but you won’t let me and you want me, too. I’m loosing patience. Time’s running out.” His voice slammed me like hardball. “I have to split. I’m meeting friends at one to go sailing on the Bay.” Pulse pounding, we straightened our clothes and left the apartment.
Outside, the street bright and noisy, the sun hurt my eyes. He touched my bare, lower arm. Electricity heated my skin. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This was such a rush. It probably won’t work between us. You’re too young.” Dazzled by his beauty, my chin quivered. I didn’t want to lose him and couldn’t give him what he wanted. He wrapped me in his arms and deep kissed me. “I don’t know what this is all about. I need time to think.” He walked me to my stop. When the bus came, he said, “I’ll call you.” I sat at the back of the bus and watched him disappear.
That night I didn’t eat. Since meeting August I’d lost my appetite. Curled up on the couch with a copper afghan, I watched Wuthering Heights in black and white. I thought Catherine a vain fool, pursuing the status of wealth over Heathcliff, her soul mate. It took a long time to fall asleep.
The next morning August called. “I decided that this relationship is worth sustaining. Let’s spend tomorrow together.” His words lit candles through my body. I feasted on eggs sunny side up and wheat toast buttered with raspberry jam.
I forged a note and cut school to spend the day with him in San Francisco. In Golden Gate Park, on a bed of soft grass under a massive oak, we feasted on a baguette, Camembert, his rich woodsy taste and swollen kisses.
We looked at paintings at the De Young Museum. August was keen to see an exhibit on the Surrealists. Until August, I’d never heard of the Surrealists. He pointed out Giorgio de Chirico’s work. “See the massive architecture and eerie perspective enhanced by light and dark.” We strolled to the next painting. August’s hand waved like a wand over a Magritte painting of a giant comb on a couch.
We strolled past the aquarium and the planetarium holding hands, shoulders and hips rocking into each other. He told me about growing up in Southside Chicago and the smack-dope scene he went through. “I got my girlfriend pregnant, married her, and had a baby at eighteen. She took our child and split. Nearly killed me.” Every word he spoke punctuated we were worlds apart. Even though I knew logically it wouldn’t work between us, there was deep comfort being with him, as if we were lovers from a past life.
Later, alone in my bedroom, I reflected that if August really loved his son, he’d be in Chicago with him instead of sailing through Berkeley, seducing young women. He was like my father, a man who had enraptured women, and abandoned my brother and me.
I saw August for the last time Friday night; I was the only one who came to art class. He brought out his journals from when he was twenty-one. “I want to share who I am with you.” It was the bravest gift anyone ever gave me. “Put them in my mailbox at the Free School when you’re finished reading them.”
He walked me to the bus stop. We stood with our arms around each other, pelvises locked, swaying in the cool night breeze. He nibbled my earlobe. “How was your week?”
I laughed. “All I did was think of you.”
“Yeah, me, too, baby.” When he called me baby I traced his cheek with my finger. Part of me yearned to give him everything. Tilting my head to the stars, I glimpsed my soul mate in the future. Patient and tender, he’d wait until I was ready.
”Good luck finding true love.” His eyes were so wistful I knew he didn’t believe it possible. His arms hung at his sides; my body ached. Knowing our time was about to end, part of me yearned to rush back in and give him everything. The bus came. Eyes wet, I boarded the bus, carrying his journals with my dreams intact.
Mara Thygeson in based in Bolinas, California. She has published fiction in The MacGuffin, Pacifica, Steam Ticket Journal, and Choeofplerin. She is also a plein-air painter: maraswatercolors.com. “Adventures of a Young Virgin,” is a stand-alone excerpt from her novel-in-progress, “The Land of Laughing Porpoises.”
