Chapter 13

Four days later I was with Owl in our room. I was on my knees in the corner by the window, scrubbing the floor. It was coated with paint droppings and shellac and other goopy artist's combinations. Owl isn't neat. It was around three-thirty in the afternoon. Busy sewing machine sounds came from Paul and Cheryl's room down the hall. Stereo from below.

Owl came up the stairs and entered our room. "Hey, the fuzz caught Blackbird."

"His name is Andy Winter."

"Well, they got him. They stopped a car he was in with some other colored guys and found a roach in his pocket."

"Why did they stop them?"

"Who knows! A cat downstairs heard it from a guy in Hollywood."

"Oh." I continued scrubbing. I really didn't want to think about Andy. When I did I felt guilty and mixed up. I kept wondering if my dislike of him had been based on race. Should I have tried harder to be his friend?"

Owl walked over and watched me use Comet on the floor with a wet rag. "You're destroying the aesthetic effect." His bare feet left tracks on the wet floor boards.

I looked up. He was grinning. I said, "Is that your excuse for wearing those dirty cut-off jeans for months without washing them?"

He peered down at this paint-spotted, grimy, tattered Levis. He was usually clean, but those things. ... He ran fingers through his long blonde hair. "You're right. I'll wear them in the tub when I take a bath."

"Take them off and I'll throw them in the wash tonight when Rill and I go to the laundromat."

"Take 'em yourself."

I saw his penis begin to grow in the short right leg of the jeans. We hadn't made love for two days. I was eager and he was, too. I smiled. "All right, I will!" I dropped the rag in the bucket of water I had brought up and got to my feet. I was barefoot, too, and wore only an old black miniskirt and my white flower-painted sweater. I had gathered my hair back in a pony tail with a rubber band.

I reached out, smiling, and unsnapped his fly. His penis was creeping down his leg, lengthening, hardening, pressing out against the material in a long, rigid bulge. As I ran the zipper his curly blonde pubic hair came into view. I reached down and squeezed his erection. "Why did it get hard?" I put on an innocent, amazed, wondering expression.

"It wants to go off."

"It does? Where?" I went to my knees before him and tugged his opened Levis down his hips a little at a time. The first thick inches of him were revealed emerging from the pale curls.

I pulled his jeans lower, past his hip bones, and the only thing holding them up was the big hardness in his pants leg. I had exposed about six inches of it, and there was inches more. I got a weak, itchy feeling in my belly, in my uterus.

I pulled his Levis free and his penis, long, white, slightly curved to the left, sprang up and out at me. His jeans were gathered at his ankles but I had eyes only for the beautiful pulse-throbbing mauve-and-white thing before my face.

I wasn't smiling anymore. I was like a worshipper. I extended my tongue and licked the sensitive underside of the head. I had my hands on his thighs and felt the tightening of the muscles. I fitted my mouth over it and sucked the tip. I slid my hands around to his tensed buttocks and pulled myself closer, pushed more and more of the mouth-filling white hardness inside my lips until the head pressed the softness of my throat and I began to gag reflexively.

Owl said huskily, "Let's hit the bed."

I stood up and we kissed. We didn't press our bodies together so he had room to slip his hand under my sweater and fondle my naked breasts. I was turned on! I opened my skirt and dropped it. I stepped away a few seconds to pull my sweater up and off. I peeled down my panties, stepped out of them and my skirt and tossed them on a chair.

Owl had climbed onto the bed. The springs squeaked. He said, "You're something."

I looked down at my naked body. "I'm saggy and low-slung. You're the one who's beautiful." I climbed onto the bed beside him and took his dirty-lensed glasses from his eyes. I stretched and put them on the floor beside the bed. I reminded myself to clean them for him afterward. I loved him. I felt maternal toward him. And I felt good old-fashioned lust for him.

I kissed him as his hands came to my body. His right hand slid to my loins and a finger discovered I was wet and ready. It went in and slid out slowly, curved to eel over my clitoris, until his fingertip reached the hard little button and played in slippery circles over and around it.

I moaned with arousal and clasped his penis and pumped him in long slow strokes.

I noticed, after our kiss, in brief panting seconds before we kissed again and joined playful tongues, I noticed that he was blinking rapidly, and he seemed to be seeing something...

I asked, "What's the matter, darling?"

His eyes closed tight and he shuddered. He whispered, "Acid flare-up. I've been taking too much ... I go up when I don't ... want to."

"Is it bad?" I pressed close, to give him my warmth and love, to reassure him.

"Sometimes. I'll come down in a few minutes." But then he put his arms around me and began to sob. He pressed his face to my breasts and wet them with his tears.

"Oh, Owl, darling..." I stroked his hair. "It's all right. There's nothing to be sad about." I was puddling-up myself, weeping in sympathy, full of love for him.

I spoke softly, reassuringly, lovingly, for about ten minutes, and held him close to give him my warmth. He stopped sobbing and breathed quietly.

Then he moved his head slightly and took one of my nipples into his mouth.

My arousal had been in abeyance, set aside, but now it surged back and I wanted him more than ever. I trailed my fingertips along his now-soft penis and knew it was growing again. I clasped it and felt it fill my hand, lengthen magically, as if there was a long piston deep in his body that emerged and filled the wrinkled softness of his penis when he willed it.

Owl asked me, "Want to get on top this time?"

"Okay." We hadn't done it that way for a while. I dug it. I could control things, give him pleasure and take as much as I could stand before he came. A hot trembling feeling started in my belly. I was restless and squirmy. His fingers were slipping into me again, slow and deep, two of them, then a third, and I could have taken his whole hand to the wrist to the elbow!

I was panting, making small sounds I was both ashamed to make and proud to make, because while I had been with the tribe I had slowly learned to accept my sexuality, almost to glory in it, to let go and express honest lust when I felt it. But I was still a little self-conscious about moaning and writhing and letting my pleasure and delight and sexual needs surface uninhibitedly before my orgasms took me and blew my mind.

I rose up and straddled Owl. I rose high on my knees and held the hot, bowed, eight inches of him in my small hand and leaned over and kissed him, took his mouth with mine and nosed the narrow, pointed head of his thin penis into my slippery vagina.

Our tongues fluttered and played and my nostrils flared and I moaned in my chest and I sank down onto him ... and his heat and iron hardness slid up into me ... deeper and deeper until I had to tear my mouth free to breathe and gasp, "Oh, darling, if you were any longer I'd feel you in my stomach!"

I was tight against him, all of it was in me, and deep inside I was dilating; something was opening and closing, and the tip of him pressed against very sensitive tissue was sending weirdly intense sensations through me, like sheet lightning along my nerves. I had to raise up a bit, so acute was the pleasure-pain.

I began slow, deep moves to make that galvanizing contact with each heavy, greedy, downward thrust. A sparkle of pleasure came from my clitoris each time, too, as I ground myself against his pubic bone, then rose and drove all of it in again and again and again until I was spasming and clenching and going crazy, not caring about anything but the vibrant, electric, syrupy hot, shivery climax that was tearing me apart.

I made it big and was resting limp on Owl's chest, moving my hips slowly to savor the glow, the small pleasure sparks and diminishing sensation, knowing he was still hard and long in me, knowing in a moment I could begin again and next time take him with me and feel the added emotional-sensual jolt of him spurting in me, jetting his hot, thick sperm against the intensely sensitive mouth of my womb when we heard the sudden loud commotion downstairs, under our room. The stereo was turned off and the heavy rumble of several unfamiliar male voices came up to us. Then we heard Sparrow's angry voice yell, "You got no right to search!"

Owl stiffened under me. "Cops!"

We moved apart quickly. I left the bed to get dressed. Owl sprang up and crossed the room. He took apart a water color set and quickly unwrapped a sugar cube hidden inside. He popped it in his mouth.

I paused, with my panties half on, and asked, "Should you ... ? "

Heavy clumping steps sounded on the stairs.

Owl said quickly, "Rather have a bad trip than jail." He bent to pick up his ragged jeans.

I had my skirt on and was picking up my sweater as Owl yelled angrily, "What do you want?"

"Sorry to interrupt, kids, just checking for runaways."

The sewing machine and hand-tool sounds from Paul and Cheryl's room stopped.

I drew the sweater down over my breasts and turned to face them. It wasn't modesty that made me turn away, it had been reflex and a feeling that my body was for the tribe and not outsiders. Especially not the super square cops.

The man had his wallet open and was showing us his badge. I barely glanced at it. He was about forty and was giving out all kinds of up-tight vibrations. His eyes didn't like us, didn't like our way of living, and showed he was only too glad to interrupt our fun.

I asked, "Do you have a search warrant?"

"Don't need one." His eyes darted around constantly. He moved slowly around the room, looking, inspecting, delving. He asked, "What's your name, girl?"

I saw Paul and Cheryl emerge from their room and watch from the hallway. The cop and detective noticed them. I answered, "Lark."

"Last name?" He drew a notebook from his inner coat pocket. He checked a list of names. "Don't play games with me, honey. I want your full legal name. If you don't give it I'll take you in. It's a misdemeanor to refuse to identify yourself and answer reasonable questions." He looked up and waited.

I was a little scared and had an icky feeling in my guts. I tried to be calm. I said, "Juli Margaret Lund. I'm nineteen and I have a perfect legal right to be here."

He checked his list and read aloud. "Juli M. Lund." He looked at me with new interest. "You're it, Juli. You'll have to come with us."

"Why?" I was shocked. Then I knew mother and father!

He confirmed it. "Missing juvenile report from your folks. They say you're only seventeen." He looked me over again. "You look to me about fifteen!"

"Well, I can prove I'm nineteen!" I went to my small purse on the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed and took out my paisley patterned green leather wallet. I took out my driver's license. "See?" I handed it to him triumphantly. "Mother and dad are lying! They just don't want me to be a hippie and live the way I want to!"

The uniformed cop by the door snorted and said, "You call this living?"

The detective studied my I.D. and then tapped it with a finger thoughtfully. "Well ... why don't you come with us anyway. We'll call your folks and get them over to the station and straighten this out. Filing a false report can be a serious business." He handed back my driver's license. "Why don't you put on some decent clothes?" He gave Owl a raking, contemptuous, and maybe an envious glance, and went to the door. He motioned the uniformed cop out into the hall. "We'll check the other rooms. Don't try to run, Juli." He half closed the door when he went out.

I was suddenly near tears, and was furious as well. My fists were clenched at my sides. "Damn them!"

Owl said, "Cops are cops."

"No, I mean mother and dad!"

"Oh, Well, you're going to have to go with them."

"I suppose so. I wish Zeke was here." I moved into Owl's arms. "You shouldn't have taken that cube. Go downstairs and tell Rill after they've gone. Don't stay up here alone."

"I'll be okay. I've tripped alone a few times."

But I was worried about him. He'd just had a flare-up, and now was going up again in a bad scene.

We heard the policeman hassling with Paul and Cheryl in their room. Sparrow came upstairs and stuck her head in the door. "They find anythin'? "

I said, "Just me." I explained. I whispered to her that Owl was tripping. Then I put on a pair of pedal pushers and a loose blouse. I refused to wear a bra. I took my purse and went out into the hall just as the officers emerged from Zeke's room. Sparrow and Paul had followed them in there to make sure they didn't tear the place apart looking for drugs. Zeke had taken the microbus and was visiting a tribe in the mountains near Ventura. He would be gone most of the day.

Finally we all went downstairs and I was taken out to a police car.