Chapter 6
Two days later, in the afternoon, I sat by the window of Owl's room and practiced on my guitar while he painted. I liked the painty smell. I liked being with him even if he ignored me for hours. I watched him peer at his canvas through his rimless glasses that were always dusty and fingerprinted. He worked by dipping a toothpick into semi-liquid paint, applying the point to the canvas, depositing the small drop...
I put aside my guitar and said, "I'm going down to help Robin." The stereo was playing below us, one of my Bob Dylan records.
Owl went, "Mmmmm." He brushed his hair aside and smiled at me. "The flowers look good in that light."
I was in a flood of hot sunlight. I looked down at the weird purple and yellow and orange blooms he had painted on my white pullover sweater. The design was a purple stem that split to each breast area, and the flowers, like alien sunflowers, were rounded and made alive when I moved my naked breasts underneath. I loved it. He was doing some of my other clothes, too. But I was self-conscious about wearing the sweater out of the tribe house. I had worn it only twice. The paint was still tacky in places. I had to be careful when I put it on and took it off. Some orange and yellow smears had even appeared on my breasts. I dug it.
I said, "Flower child, me." I passed close by him and touched his front for an instant, feeling the soft length of his penis. We had made it the night before, five times, and it had been so utterly good and sweet and fine I was afraid to start something again for fear of wearing him out and making him think I was insatiable. And I was afraid he would refuse me, so I had to let him decide when and how many times.
Owl slap-caressed me on the rump as I passed. I went downstairs and saw Rill and Sparrow sewing in the front room. Sparrow's baby crawled naked on the floor. Zeke was on the other sofa, reading again. I never had seen a man read so much.
I called, "Rill! Let me know when you're going to Safeway." She nodded and smiled.
Bobby Dylan's voice cried from the stereo, "No, no no, it ain't me, babe? it ain't me you're lookin' for, babe...."
I walked down the hall and stepped on the head of a nail sticking up from one of the hardwood boards. It didn't pierce the skin of my foot because I had some good tough calluses. I had been going barefoot a lot all summer, not just while I was with the tribe.
I went into the kitchen, got a hammer from the tool drawer and, returned to the hall and pounded the nail down good. No one asked what I was doing. I put back the hammer and returned. I went into Robin's room. Her door was wide open.
She was sitting at her work table, twisting a piece of silver with small needle-nosed pliers. Her arms emerged thin and white from her pale yellow cotton shift. She was very slim, skinny, actually, but there was a lot of strength in her. She was wiry.
Robin looked around at me with those big brown eyes of hers. She smiled and said, "Lark," in welcome. "Anything I can do?"
"Yes, you can cut some chain into certain lengths for me." She patted the wooden bench. "Better get a pillow."
I took a corduroy throw pillow from her neatly made bed and sat beside her. She seemed tiny next to me, and frail, and so child-like. Her short haircut made her look boyish. But there were small pointed naked breasts under her loose shift that proved her a girl when she leaned back and her dangling ankh and chain nestled against her chest.
She handed me a spool of thin silver chain and a pair of polished steel wire cutters. "Measure off and cut six nine-inch lengths. Then six eight-inch pieces, then six seven-and-a-half-inch pieces."
"Okay." There was a steel ruler screwed to the edge of the table. I began. I was careful because the chain cost about a dollar a foot.
Robin said, "I've got your ankh made, but I can't give it to you. Zeke has to decide when you're ready."
"I love being with the tribe. How long will it be, do you think?"
"At least two weeks."
"I can hardly wait."
She smiled and looked at my painted sweater. "I like what Owl did to that. You ought to have him paint flowers on your breasts like he did on mine a month ago."
"He did?"
She laughed. "Umhmm. Want to see?"
"Yes." I was curious and intrigued and a tiny bit jealous.
Robin pulled her shift up her legs, then wriggled and rocked to get it under her narrow rump. I saw her legs for the first time. Her right leg from just above the knee down was in a shiny metal brace. Both legs were like matclisticks. They hung down like dead things.
She said, "I expect you're curious. I was born this way. The nerves and muscles didn't develop. I can put a little weight on the right one and use my crutches to get from here to the bed and the bathroom, but mostly I use the wheelchair." She smiled and shrugged to show she accepted it and didn't mind talking about it.
She freed her shift and pulled it up without a trace of shame or hesitation. She wore white cotton panties, the plainest, cheapest kind, and no bra. She bunched the thin cotton under her chin.
"See?" She smiled and looked down at her little breasts.
They were lovely, exuberant, shaped like small ripe pink-and-white pears. They stuck out firmly, and her nipples were tiny stems of deep pink with a cast of green in the wrinkles and with other colors on the white skin and areola tinted faintly in the outline of flower petals.
Robin said, "He used vegetable dyes and nontoxic paint. I was beautiful for a while, but it's mostly been sucked and licked off."
I said enviously, "You have beautiful breasts. I guess they get a lot of attention."
She nodded happily and lowered the shift. She picked up her tools and went back to work. "But it isn't because people are sorry for me, and are giving charity in bed. My legs don't make any difference."
I asked curiously, "Robin, how old are you?"
"Twenty-two? What are you?"
"Nineteen." I snipped off a length of chain. I asked, "Alone you alone? I mean, do you have parents somewhere?"
"I was an orphan. I guess my real mother and father threw me away. The state trained me to do this-jewelry work. They even got me a job with a big shop downtown, but I hated it. It was all repair, fix, and like that. They didn't want me to create or do anything original. So when I saw some of the stuff the hippies were doing I knew I could do better, and then I met Zeke and Rill ... "
Robin's voice took on a deeper tone of love and warmth when she spoke of them. She obviously worshipped Zeke and his wife.
I said, "You do beautiful work."
She made a face. "Some of it is good."
I helped Robin for an hour. She showed me how to do simple filing and shaping. We talked steadily. I liked her more and more.
Then I went with Rill to Safeway and helped carry groceries. I helped in the kitchen-made the salad myself and everyone complimented me on it at supper. I knew I was fitting in. There was a groovy contentment in me, a bubbly glow that's hard to explain because I think very few people ever really experience it once in their whole lives. It's a sense of belonging, a knowing that you are accepted and loved and needed and useful and a part of a good thing.
That night about ten I was lying on the bed on my stomach trying to write a lyric for a song while Owl sketched me on a big pad from a chair a few feet away. He was using colored pencils. The stereo was booming away beneath us in the living room.
Abruptly he flipped the pages angrily and stared at the new, black sheet. He closed the drawing pad. "Fuck it."
"What's the matter?"
He brushed his long hair away from his eyes. "I don't know." He picked at loose threads at the cut-off part of his paint-stained Levis. He frowned."I think I need a trip. I feel stupid and ... sort of out of it ... lost. There's something tickling in my mind I can't find. Something trying to tell me I'm doing something wrong in my painting. But it won't come out! Almost words ... almost thoughts ... " He angrily broke a flesh colored pencil and threw the two pieces out of the window. "Fuck it."
I was anxious. "Where would you go?'. '
Owl stared at me oddly, then laughed. "I mean an acid trip, inside."
"Oh." He had never mentioned taking LSD before. "Want to trip with me?"
"I don't know." Smoking a little pot was one thing, but taking LSD was something else. I was scared of it.
He said, "You've been reading all the horror stories."
"I guess I have. But it is kind of dangerous, isn't it? Bad trips do happen."
"Oh, sure, but here, with me and all the good vibrations from the tribe, you know, you wouldn't have anything to worry about."
"Well ... I don't think I should if you do. I mean, isn't there supposed to be somebody around who isn't on drugs, just in case?"
"I've been on lots of trips. About a dozen. Alone, sometimes. I never freaked out or anything."
"Well ... I think I should just watch you the first time."
"It'll be a long time ... just watching me. Eight hours at least-till morning."
"That's all right. I don't mind."
"Okay, little chicken. But you'll be missing something!" He went to a corner of the room and pried open the metal case of a water color set. He took out something, and pressed the top of the case together again. He returned and showed me a foil-wrapped cube. "Sugar. Just like in the papers." He unwrapped it an put it in his mouth. "Good-good."
I smiled. Then I got off the bed. "I've got to go to the toilet. I'll be right back."
I did have to go to the toilet, but I went down the hall to Zeke's room first. There was nobody there. I went downstairs into the sound and found him sitting on the porch on a pillow. He was sitting yogi style and was talking with Blackbird. Rill was beside him. Blackbird looked mad and was saying as I came near, ". . . no dictator or anything! We oughta vote on it!"
Zeke said, "We did vote on it three months ago, before you came to us." He saw me and said, "Yes, Lark?" It was a cut-out of Blackbird, a sort of put-down, to dismiss him and talk to me right away.
Blackbird must have been furious. He shouted, "You fuckin' white mothah! You think jus' because-" He broke off an said, "Shit!" and jumped off the porch. He walked away fast, toward Lincoln Boulevard.
Zeke sighed. I saw him put his arm around Rill's waist. She was fondling her breasts under her sweatshirt. I was used to seeing it. It seemed natural.
I said, "I'm sorry I interrupted.. " I sat before him on the wooden boards. "I want to ask you about drugs. I don't know the tribe rules."
"There are no rules. I am against all drugs except as a medicine. Pot isn't a drug. But I know Owl uses acid once in a while, and so does Robin. That's their business. I only ask that they ... any one of the tribe ... be careful and discreet. That goes for pot as well. We all have to be careful. The police would love to have an excuse to bust us all."
I nodded. "I asked because Owl just took a dose of acid and wants me to do it, too."
Zeke said, "It wouldn't be wise for you. I believe you are stable enough, but I think Owl is marginal. His talent drives him. Maybe it is good for him to have visions ... I don't know." He put a warm hand on my arm. "Go up and stay with him."
"I was going to."
He smiled and squeezed my arm.
I leaned forward impulsively and kissed him on the mouth. "Love you." I went inside and went to the toilet.
When I returned to the upstairs and entered the room, Owl was stretched out on the bed. The light was out. He had lit a candle. He asked, "Why'd you go downstairs?" He had taken off his glasses.
I said truthfully, "I wanted to talk to Zeke about it."
"And he said don't do it." Owl nodded and closed his eyes. "He's scared, too."
I wanted to argue, but decided not to. I sat in the chair Owl had been sitting in when he had been sketching.
After a few minutes Owl said, "Hey ... you don't have to stare. Just be near. Come over and lay beside me. Play for me."
I got my guitar and sat next to him with my back propped against the cracked veneer headboard with a pillow. I started picking out Lord Randal. I sang softly.
I played and sang off and on for two hours. Then Owl whispered, "Stop..." I stopped and waited. He didn't say anything more. I watched him but he didn't seem any different. But I did notice in the dim, flickering candlelight, his corneas, under his closed eyelids, moving quickly in little jerky moves. I wondered what he was seeing, inside...
I waited, then eased off the bed and took off my black hip huggers and sweater, not the decorated one, and my panties, and crawled back into bed. I moved under the covers. I wanted to cover him, too, but didn't know if I should.
Then he rolled over, almost onto me, and began to make small protesting sounds. But that stopped and he was quiet.
It was getting chilly in the room. I finally pulled the blanket and sheet free of him and covered us both. It was late about one o'clock.
The candle had burned down to a pool of wax. It guttered and went out.
I listened to the sounds in the house.
After a while the stereo beneath us was turned off. Talking quieted. Zeke and Rill came up to go to bed. Blackbird didn't come up that night.
The house became quiet. Sparrow's baby cried for a few minutes. I heard her moving around.
Quiet....
Quiet....
I had almost drifted off to sleep when Owl stirred and whimpered. He touched my hip with his hand and rolled toward me. He nestled against my warm, naked body and began to cry softly. I didn't know what to do. I put my free arm around him and kissed his cheek.
His left hand slid to my breast and clutched the right one ... but so gently. After a while he stopped crying. He sighed deeply five or six times. Then he whispered, "I wish you were with me, Lark."
"Are you still ... tripping?"
He nodded slowly against my shoulder. Then he moved away and opened his Levis and pushed them down . . .down under the covers ... and pushed them free of his feet, and thrust them out to drop to the floor. And he returned to me gently, to my body, with his warmth and love.
He touched me differently that night, when he was high. He touched me so lightly, so delicately ... so sensitively. I was aroused quickly, just from his touching of my breasts. I could feel his penis hot and long against my left hip, actually throbbing with his pulse, and I wanted it in me so badly, but I didn't know if I should do anything.
He whispered, "I love you...."
I kissed him. "I love you."
He sighed again, "It's so beautiful up here. Your skin is hot polished marble that's soft." Under the covers his hand slid on fingertips and thumb pad down to my belly and moved in slow circles around my belly button ... then lower to the patch of my pubic hair ... and lower still to the wet lips of my vagina.
I was trembling slightly. I opened my legs. I turned my head and kissed his hair and wished his mouth was there for me to have.
One of his fingers curled into me. It slid into my heat and slipperiness, down into my vagina as far as it could easily go, then out slowly, wet and nice, to slide its length upward over my vibrant clitoris.
I moaned.
The finger went in again and I wanted the long, hard, burning flesh that was alive against my hip. I wanted it to fill me. I whispered, "Oh, darling ... "
Owl said, "You're so alive inside ... it's where you really live...." He lifted his head and kissed me.
I swam into his mouth with my tongue. I put my arms around him. I made small passion sounds in my throat that I couldn't help. His finger was still in me, still sliding in and out slowly, tantalizing me, making me restless and syrupy and hotter than ever.
He took his mouth from mine and said in a wanting, soft voice, "Get on top of me...."
We had done it that way once the night before, and I knew he liked it. It had advantages. I could control things. But deep down I wasn't content with the position, as a woman. It was too linked-up in my mind with domination and masculinity. I didn't want to be the master. But once in a while it was okay.
I moved over Owl, over his hips, and straddled him with my knees. The covers fell away from our naked bodies. It was chilly and dark in the room. I reached down between us and grasped his long, hot penis. I raised myself a little more and brushed the velvety glans against the lips of my vagina, and lowered on it and felt it sink into me. I wanted to stop and take it little by little, but my insides were already on the edge of a climax-clutching with seething tension needing to feel him deep, needing the sensation of him all the way in. I couldn't help letting my weight slide his penis up and up! I gasped and leaned forward to get maximum penetration. I ground myself against his pubic bone. I could feel my vaginal lips crushed against his wiry hairs, and could feel the size of him in me, and could feel the itchy pleasure-pain of pressure against the mouth of my womb deep, deep in my belly.
My breath came and went in whispery, trembling gasps. My hair hung down the side of my face and brushed my breasts as I moved.
He said, "Slow ... do it slow ... "
I tried, but it was so good! I lost control after a minute and was in a golden bubble, my whole body! And nothing existed but us and our love and my pleasure! I was taking him and taking him and taking him! Just wild and crazy and shuddering spasming inside, all molten and shivery. And as my bubble faded I heard Owl sort of wailing and felt his fingers digging into my buttocks and felt him very big in me, almost too big, and he was pushing into me and spurting ... spurting ... It made me feel so complete and melting warm with love for him. I relaxed on him and felt his heart beat as he felt mine and we kissed and breathed fast.
Owl whispered, "That's where God is."
"Yes." I was still glowing.
We slowed down. I knew I was heavy on him but I didn't want to move. Finally I slid sideways and molded to his side. I pulled the covers up over us. We were messy but I didn't care. I drifted off to sleep.
I came awake hours later, at dawn, and in the cold gray light Owl's face was beautiful. I wondered what he had experienced during our lovemaking while the acid was affecting him. I decided next time he wanted to trip, I would, too. Once wouldn't hurt me. I wanted to know what it was like, to be with him and to be "in."