This is the new story I am starting. I’m going to try to get a chapter a week out of this and Stone. (Revised as of March 26): Dawn
Chapter 1 – Sunny
Although I didn’t know her name at the time, I first met Sunny on a Monday early in November 1965. She was panhandling on Haight Street, at the bus stop where I got off from my short commute to UC Med Center, where I was in first year premed. There was a newsstand there where I bought my daily Chronicle and Examiner, and any other magazines I liked. She was about 40 feet away, so as to not bother the news agent, shaking her little tambourine and hoping passersby would drop a coin in the hat beside her.
She was extremely cute, and as an 18-year-old student I quickly rated her as a 10. She had extremely long blonde hair, and a smile that suited her name. She was quite well endowed up top, but thin everywhere else. I dropped a dollar in her hat as I passed, and when she noticed she thanked me. Her eyes told me ‘Now I can eat tonight’. There were only coins in the hat under my one, and not many of them.
The next three days were miserable with outright rain on Tuesday and Wednesday and an evil drizzle on the Thursday, and I didn’t see her as I went to school. But on Friday it was dry and overcast and as the bus home from school neared the stop, I could see her there. I dropped another one in her hat and was rewarded with that brilliant smile again. I decided to take a shot and talk to her.
“I missed you the last few days,” I said.
“Nobody ever gives when it is raining,” she said. “I could spend eight hours out here and not catch anything but a cold. I work in the 24-hour laundromat down the street when it rains, folding clothes for tips. I made enough to think about going to the concert at the Avalon tonight. Your dollar means I will be able to take the bus instead of walking.”
“Who’s playing?”
“Jefferson Airplane, some new guy named Santana, and Big Brother, who have a new singer, Janice Joplin.”
“That sounds like an interesting line-up. Are you going with anyone?”
“No, I’m solo. I just moved down here from North Beach, which has gotten dead lately, so I don’t know anyone down here yet.”
“You know me. I’m Mitch,” I stuck my hand out. “I don’t suppose a pretty girl like you would want to go with me?”
“Sure, if you’ve got the $2.50 for admission plus bus fare. I’m going to work here till six, so if you drop by, we can catch the 6.05 bus. It’ll get us there early, but I don’t like working after 6. There are some goons that come by then and hassle me. I’m Sunny, short for Sunshine.”
“I’ll be here, Sunny”
“See you, Mitch.”
I headed on to my apartment, nearly skipping in delight at snagging a date with such a hot girl. I rent a one-bedroom a half block away that I share with another student. Ben pays $10 a month and sleeps on the rollout bed/couch, while I pay $15 and get the bedroom. There is one bathroom and a tiny kitchen, but usually we eat out or order in. Students seldom cook.
I was back at the bus stop at 5:55, and Sunny gathered up her money, sliding it into a large bag she toted around. She then plopped the hat on her head and hooked her tambourine to a string around her neck, so it hung just below her breasts.
We got to the Avalon at 6:20, and since the hall wouldn’t open till 8, I offered to buy her dinner. There was a little Italian place nearby, so we went in and I ordered a pizza, a new food Sunny had never experienced before. She clearly liked it and ate four of the eight slices before I finished my second.
“Take another,” I prompted, noticing her eying the remaining pieces hungrily. “I never eat four.”
“Thanks,” she said quickly grabbing the larger of the two remaining slices. “I haven’t eaten much this week, trying to save money for the concert.”
She ate the last slice more slowly, and I was able to get some background out of her. Apparently, she had been raised in Tulsa, but moved out here five years ago after grade 10 and had been living on the streets ever since. That made me pause. Unless she left high school at 13, she was older than me. I fessed up immediately that I was only 18 and she laughed. “I’m 20, but don’t worry. A couple years difference doesn’t matter when you are our ages.
I told her I was at UC Medical Center and that impressed her. I was also from a small town, but in-state. Eureka, California is about as far north as you can get and still be in the state. I was on a scholarship, but also had a trust fund from an uncle, so money was not a problem for me. We chatted about a lot of things and found we both had a love of the new music. I was jealous that she had seen the Beatles play the Cow Palace in August, when I was still in Eureka. Sunny said she also like reading but said she couldn’t do much of it living on the streets. You really can’t tote books around when you are on the move. She did clue me in on a bookstore in the north end called City Lights Books and her description made me eager to check it out.
After I settled the bill leaving a nice tip on the $5 cost of the pie and our drinks, we headed out and got to the Avalon. There were a few people in line, and we filed in behind them when the doors opened.
The concert was great, and we staggered out after 11, in time to catch the night bus home. Sunny mentioned at the Beatles show had only been a half hour, 12 songs, and she really couldn’t hear the music due to all the screaming fans. It also cost $5.50 for a cheap ticket, and really was a waste of money.
On the nearly empty bus Sunny leaned into my shoulder and I felt I might have a chance.
“Where will you stay tonight?” I asked.
“Probably in the laundromat. It is fairly safe in there. I’ve gotten used to sleeping with the lights on.”
“You could sleep in my apartment,” I said. “I have a big double bed. And the lights go out.”
Sunny paused, and then took a deep breath. ‘Please say yes,’ I said to myself. But what she said completely floored me.
“Would it bother you to sleep in the same bed as a girl with a penis? I have to ask, because sometimes guys get violent when they find out how I am different.”
It took me nearly three blocks on the bus to answer: “Well, I am not a violent person. But I can’t see you as anything other than a girl. A pretty girl.”
She looked around at the nearly empty bus. The only other passengers were several rows in front of us, looking to the front of the vehicle. “Reach under my dress, and my bra,” she offered.
I did, and to my surprise I didn’t feel my first female breast. Instead it was terrycloth. I pulled out a folded-up hand towel.
“Careful. Don’t open it,” she warned. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to fold those into that shape.” She took the towel back and returned it to her bra, then used her hands to shape it to her satisfaction.
We got off the bus soon after, and I led her to my apartment in an old Georgian house that had been broken into apartments. We crept in quietly in the dark, past my snoring negro roommate, already in bed. Inside the bedroom I could turn on the light and leaned in to kiss the pretty blonde standing next to me. I have never kissed a boy before, and soon realized that I still hadn’t. She kissed like a girl, and there was a stirring below my belt. But Sunny stopped it, saying she needed to go to bed since Saturday was a busy day for her. I reluctantly let go, and undressed. Sunny didn’t, and just crawled into the bed with her sundress on, only taking off her hat, sandals, and tambourine.
The next morning, I woke up when I felt her get out of bed. Did I have my hand over her waist while I was asleep? As she padded towards the door, I told her the washroom was the door to the left and immediately wondered if she would meet Ben. Then I looked at the alarm clock and saw it read 9:18. Ben would already be at his job at the grocery, where he was a packer at $1.25 cents an hour. Sunny and I would have the place to ourselves until after 6. Then I remembered her saying she was going to work the streets today. I made up my mind to delay that as long as possible.
Sunny came back to the room excited. “You have a shower. Do you know how long it’s been since I had a shower? Up in North Beach I used the Y, but there is nothing down here. I’ve had to take towel baths in the laundromat late at night.
“Just wait a second while I use the facilities. You can shower or bathe after that.”
I dashed off to do my business, and then headed back into the room. When I came in, I saw Sunny standing there, wearing only her panties, which had a very small bump in the front. I will admit to staring. Her bra and her towel-boobs were lying on the bed, along with her sundress. Her long blonde hair hung down to her bum, but what caught my eyes was her chest. Two boy nipples on a completely flat, hairless chest that was thinner than it had looked when she had the bra on. It was like a girl head on a boy body. She turned around and dropped the panties too, but I didn’t get a chance to see anything as she darted off to the bathroom. Her hips were thin and boyish, I noticed as she dashed away.
I heard water running in the bathroom. It sounded more like a bath than the shower. If she hadn’t had a proper bath in weeks (months?) she deserved the full treatment. I picked up her things and got a whiff: they were rank. I gathered them up and headed down to the basement laundry room and put them in the coin-operated washing machine along with a few of my things.
I was back up in the bedroom when a refreshed looking Sunny came out of the bathroom, holding a towel around her head and another wrapped around her body: girl style. And she really looked like a girl again with a towel over her nipples, although a flat-chested one.
“Where are my clothes?” she asked.
“In the washing machine,” I said. “The wash cycle will run another 22 minutes, and then I’ll head down for the dryer which will probably be 20 minutes.”
“Don’t put my bra or panties in the dryer,” she warned. “I usually hand wash them, but as long as they don’t get into the dryer, they should be okay.” She reached into her bag, and pulled out another pair of panties, which she shimmied into under the towel. However, the towel on her head fell off, revealing her long and very wet, but now clean, hair. “I apologize. I think I used up a lot of your shampoo. But my hair really needed cleaning.”
“No problem,” I said. “Why don’t you get under the covers. I think I have a brush somewhere. I’ll brush your hair till it dries.”
So, for the next 90 minutes, minus a few breaks to head down to the basement, I brushed that long beautiful hair, as we chatted. I learned about Sunny’s past in Tulsa. She had always known she was a girl, but her father kept trying to make her into a mini-me. He bought her a bike at age eight and taught her to ride, even though she hated it. It all blew up on him when she was being chased by some of boys who bullied her, and she hit a curb and sprawled on a wrought iron boundary fence. It was only a foot high, but she landed on her crotch. The bullies fled, of course, but the lady who owned the house called an ambulance when she discovered Sunny bleeding from the groin.
She lost a testicle in the first operation, and about a year later she lost the other. The doctors explained that she would have to take a testosterone drug when she was a few years older to order to boot start her puberty. This terrified her, and when the time came she palmed the pills instead of taking them. After a month she was tested again, and the doctor found her blood off, so doubled the testosterone dosage and prescribed for a 90-day supply with pills twice a day instead of once.
When her mother found the hidden cache of the first pills there was a loud and long screaming match between her parents and her, winding up with the decision that she would take the pills with her mother watching. She took two that evening, and they were the last ones she would use. At about four that morning, she left the house and walked to the bus station, getting a 7 a.m. bus to Oklahoma City. From there she decided her meager cash would not get her to the west coast, so she hitched out of the city. She was not feminine at the time, with the short haircut her father insisted on, and male jeans and a t-shirt, looking like a teenage runaway, which of course she was.
There were several shorter rides, but she got one in a truck headed to Denver, and later one from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, her goal. She knew a boy from town was there somewhere and wandered the city for two weeks until she saw him coming out of a seedy looking boxing gym.
She spent the next four years living with him, paying her way by giving him her testosterone pills. He wanted to bulk up, and did so, gaining nearly 100 pounds of muscle over the following three years. Then the pills ran out, and he ran off to join a travelling wrestling group, leaving Sunny to fend for herself. She was no longer a boy. She had grown her hair and it was now 30 inches long. Part way along the way, she started wearing dresses and with her unchanged voice, hairless chin and naturally pretty face, she passed easily as a skinny girl.
For a year she couch-surfed with friends she had made with the latter-day beatniks and gradually started to panhandle with a tambourine she bought for a dollar at a swap meet. She didn’t make much until she bought a bra and learned her trick with the towels. Being busty resulted in a five-fold increase in her takings, although still only a few dollars a day.
Finally, with the beatnik scene dying in North Beach, she had moved to the Haight a few months earlier, discovering the laundromat and getting her panhandling spot on the street.
I didn’t have nearly as interesting story. I lived in Eureka my entire life and was a bit of a nerd, or as it was called in those days, a square. I did well in school, getting all A’s, but not so well in real life, only getting two dates all through high school, and that was only because I was tall, and the girl was into tall guys. Just not tall guys like me.
But the result was that I aced my SATs and was able to pretty much pick and choose my university. I wanted somewhere warmer than Eureka, which is the same latitude as Canada. (I know there are two states to the north of us, by I learned in High School geography class that the northern California border was the same latitude as eastern Canada.) And Eureka was only 100 miles south of that border. I wanted to become a doctor, so UC Med was my preferred site, although in the rainy cool San Francisco winter I sometimes wished I had chosen LA or San Diego. San Fran in the winter was nearly as wet as Eureka. My trust fund paid tuition, books and a food plan on campus, as well as rent off campus. There was also $50 a week for spending money, and so far, I had never used more than $30, saving the rest.
After I went down and brought up the laundry from the wash, Sunny got out of bed and put on the t-shirt I had worn to the concert (and had thrown in with her stuff). She hung her damp bra and panties on the shower rail in the bathroom, and then came back to bed, still looking incredibly cute to me in spite of no breasts. My shirt was huge on her and hung down halfway to her knees.
“This is comfy,” she said with a grin. “It is mine now.” That was followed up by one of those Sunny smiles that left me willing to give her the shirt off my back, let alone that rather worn one that my parents had gotten me at some vacation they took.
She crawled back into bed and had me continue brushing her hair, which was now half done, and looked fabulous. Over the next half-hour I finished it, and then Sunny started folding up the towels in her particular pattern. When she was happy with them, she bounced off the bed and zipped into the bathroom, coming out wearing the still damp bra under my shirt.
“You look … uhm, bigger,” I noted.
“You noticed? It’s the towels. They are clean and fluffy, so they look a bit bigger. I like having big boobs. It makes me look more like a real girl.”
“It’s almost noon,” I noted. “Want to go out for lunch?”
“More pizza?” she said hopefully.
“No, but there is a nice deli a half block down Haight.”
“Oh, I have seen that, but never ate there. It is a bit out of my price range.”
“Well, I am treating, so it doesn’t matter. But you are going to have to put something on your legs. They look cute and all that, but the decency cops might object.”
“Yeah. I wish I had some shorts. I won’t wear jeans: they look too boyish.” She pulled the shirt off and put on her newly cleaned sundress.
We went to the deli and each had a huge sandwich and a pickle. When Sunny was done, licking the crumbs off the plate, she noted that she should get her tambourine and head out to her spot near the corner.
“How much money will you make?” I asked.
“Probably less than $5 at this time of the day,” she replied.
I laid a $10-bill in front of her. “Take this and you won’t have to work today,” I said. “Spend it with me. I like having you around.”
She picked the bill up slowly, as if she had never had one before. “Just for hanging out? Nothing else?”
“Well, I’m hoping you will spend the night again, but nothing kinky expected. Just like last night.”
“Last night was heavenly. Sleeping in a real bed. Okay, you’ve hired your own personal hippie chick for the day. What are we doing?”
“Come with me,” I said, and we left the deli for a thrift store a few stores down. “You need shorts, maybe another dress or two so you aren’t forced to sit in a towel in my bed while laundry happens. Don’t worry about the cost: I’m paying.”
Sunny was in heaven. She picked out five dresses that looked like they might fit and went to the little dressing room to try them on. Three of them were adorable, and I ordered her to take them all, along with both pair of shorts she tried on. The dresses were only $2 each, and the shorts two for $2. While she was in the changing room for the latter, a clerk asked me if she could help.
“Do you have any bras in 32D,” I asked. I had peeked at the sizing when I washed her old bra.
“Oh, that’s an odd size, the woman said. Let me look,” she went away and came back just as Sunny was coming out of the dressing room, reporting that both pairs of short fit fine. Since she was wearing a dress, she hadn’t been able to show them off to me.
“Sorry sir, we only have this one,” the salesclerk said, holding up the bra with its big cups. “It is only $1 though.”
“We’ll get it,” I said. “along with all this other stuff.” I turned to Sunny. “Do you want some more panties?”
“The ones in that bin are on sale four for $2,” the clerk offered helpfully.
“Get eight then,” I ordered and a giggling Sunny went off to pick while I took the rest of the goods to the till, and paid for them, along with the panties Sunny dumped on top of the pile after making her choices.
“Thank you, Mitch,” she said. “But you know this means I will have to keep them at your apartment. I can’t be toting such a big bag of clothes around on the street. It kinda ruins the homeless-waif look I am shooting for.”
“You aren’t homeless anymore,” I told her as she clung to my arm. “You can stay at the apartment as long as you want, at least for the next four years until I graduate. Longer probably since I will hopefully get into medical school after pre-med.”
“Can we go in there?” Sunny said as we passed a little Italian market. “I want to spend some of my money.”
“I will pay,” I said, but she insisted that we use her money. She bought a lot of groceries: basics like bread, eggs, and milk and other things like spices, fruits and vegetables, and pasta. “I am making a real dinner for you boys tonight,” she announced. She spent a lot of her ten, and I wound up carrying two big paper sacks of groceries, with Sunny taking over her thrift shop loot.
In the apartment Sunny put the groceries away while I cleaned up some of the mess in the apartment: mainly pizza boxes and other take-out food containers. That only took a half hour, and when I was done, I took the folding chair we called furniture and sat and watched her cook. She was lovely, darting to and fro, with her thin body moving like a ballet dancer.
Just after six, she had been at it for over two hours and the smells coming from the kitchen were tantalizing. Then Ben came in and stopped in his tracks. “What smells so good?” he asked.
“Ben, this is Sunny. Sunny, meet Ben,” I introduced. “Sunny is making us supper.”
“Wow, Mitch. I didn’t know you were so good with the ladies. Sunny is beautiful.”
“Thanks Ben. I hope you like spaghetti and meatballs,” she said.
“Anything with meat. I’m famished. Eight hours of pushing shopping carts around for ten bucks. No tips at all today,” the big black man said.
“It will be ready in ten minutes. Can one of you big guys set the table?”
“Uhh … we’d have to build a table first,” I confessed. “And this is the only chair.”
“Do you at least have plates and silverware?” Sunny sounded a bit disgusted.
“Oh yeah, my mom sent down a four-place setting,” I noted. “And there are some serving platters in the lower right cabinet.”
“Okay. Well, would one of you big guys set the floor then?” she asked.
We ate sitting in a circle on the floor, and it was the most amazing meal we ever had. And we had ordered spaghetti in several times in the past.
Ben leaned back and patted his taut, muscular stomach. “That was excellent. I’d offer to marry you, Sunny, even though I would probably get lynched with a cute white girl like you. San Fran is pretty liberal, but I don’t know if it extends to cross-race couples.”
I cleaned up and did the dishes, and listened as Sunny told Ben about her life, leaving nothing out.
“So, you are a tranny, then” Ben asked.
“And you are a nigger,” she replied. Ben reacted as though she slapped his face.
“I am transsexual,” Sunny explained. “Calling me that other term is just as bad as me calling you a nigger.”
“I apologize,” Ben said. “I think from now on I’ll just call you Sunny. Besides, I’ll probably get called that a dozen times at the shipyards tomorrow.”
“And remember, this is not something to be spread around,” I told him. “I’m surprised she even told you.”
“Well, if we are going to be roommates. Although I will be staying with Mitch,” Sunny said. My heart leapt. She is going to stay.
“You lucky bastard, Mitch,” Ben blurted out and then stopped abruptly as he realized that Sunny was not a normal girl, and what he was envisioning would necessarily be different.
Chapter 2 is ready. And I am lucky enough to have Eric editing this story. He edited my earlier story, River, and as a benefit he lived in SF during this time. We hope to get a new chapter out each Saturday. My story Stone will also continue one or two chapters per week: Dawn
Chapter 2- Come together, right now
On Sunday I woke up in the most delightful way. Looking down, I saw an outrageous mass of blonde hair bobbing up and down on my penis. Soon, my morning hard-on was gone and I saw Sunny’s gorgeous smile looking at my face, with traces of my semen running down her chin. I reached over to the box of tissues at the side of the bed and handed some to her.
“Thanks,” I gasped. “That was wonderful. A great way to wake up.”
“No problem,” she smiled. “You deserve it. I won’t do the other way. That is how two boys do it. And I’m not a boy. But this is something a girl does for her man. And I kinda enjoyed it.”
“Does that mean I am your man?” I asked hopefully.
“If I can be your girl you are,” Sunny said and I impulsively kissed her deeply.
When they finished Sunny teased him: “I’ll bet that didn’t taste so good. You don’t know where that mouth has been.”
“I know exactly where it has been. And you will never taste bad to me.”
“What’s on today? No sense for me to go out and busk.”
“There is a little flea market a couple blocks away,” I said. “I thought we might go down there and see if we can get some furniture. Too bad Ben is working. He’s got more muscles than me for carrying big stuff. He works till four, and the market is open till six. If we see something too heavy, we’ll see if he can tote it for us.”
“He works pretty hard for his money, doesn’t he?” Sunny noted.
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard for a black man to get anything more than minimum wage. And $1.25 cents an hour doesn’t bring in much. His tuition and books were funded by some Negro College Fund thing, but it doesn’t cover his rent or food off campus. He makes $80 a month, working two days, and his rent is $10 a month. He tries to buy a meal once or twice a week for us, but mostly I buy them.”
“Until now,” Sunny said brightly. “From now on my men will eat healthy food, home-cooked.”
“Oh, so Ben is your man too?”
“Yeah, for meals. But the bedroom stuff is strictly for you.”
“That’s good, because I’ve seen Ben naked and I think you would choke on that thing.”
They dressed and headed out to the market. Due to Sunny waking me early in her special way, we were there before nine and there was still a good selection at the market, with a few vendors still setting up. First, we bought two wooden chairs for a dollar each and carted them back to the apartment on our shoulders.
Next, we went back and paid $5 for an old wooden table. It was round, and already marked up a bit on the edges, so we rolled it home like a big hoop, only sweating in getting it upstairs in the living/dining room area of the apartment. Finally, it was back a third time to got another chair, which didn’t match either of the other two, but only cost another dollar. Sunny wrapped up the trip getting some bowls, pots and utensils, spending just over two dollars. So, the entire morning just cost us a bit over $10 and the apartment was starting to look like a decent place, and not some college-boy crash pad.
We hadn’t had breakfast before we left, in order to get to the market early, so Sunny made us a late breakfast of eggs on toast. I just felt so special eating with this beautiful girl, who I still considered far out of my league. When I mentioned it again, Sunny told me that for her having a guy who did not obsess on her imperfection was worth keeping.
After we pair washed and dried the dishes together, I went into the bedroom and emerged carrying an old manual typewriter. “Sorry, but I’m going to leave you on your own for a while. I’ve got to hand in a short paper on Monday, and that professor docks ten percent for anything handwritten. So, I’m going to type it.”
I set the machine down on the new table, then put in a sheet and started to hunt and peck type at my 10 words a minute speed. Sunny looked at me for a few minutes, and then stood beside me, looking at the scrawl of my handwritten paper.
“God, you write like a doctor already,” she admonished. “Slide over and let me have a go at it.”
I stood, and then was amazed at the machine gun sounds coming out of the machine. Sunny’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “I didn’t take phys. ed. in high school, so I was in the secretarial typing class. It was the only class during that slot I was interested in. I took it for two years, and after the first year I was one of the best girls in the class, although no one knew I was a girl back then. It drove the girls, and their teacher, nuts to think that a ‘boy’ could type faster and more accurately than they could. What’s that word?”
I looked: “It’s pharmacology. That’s what this class is, so I just draw a squiggle when I write manuscript.”
“Right, squiggle and blur means Farmer’s College. Got it,”
“No,” I nearly shouted. “Pharmacology. Not Farmer’s College.” I spelled it out.
Sunny paused and looked up at me. “Listen mister, if you yell at me you can spend the rest of the day and half the night typing your own damn paper.” But she had a huge grin on her face that said she was not offended. “You are so easy to tease. I love that.”
I looked at the paper, and saw the word had been typed perfectly, and spelled correctly. The machine gun started up again, and I followed along as she typed.
“Wait a second,” I said. “That section would be better if you added a sentence or two before it.” I dictated at a normal speaking voice, and Sunny was able to keep up, and then went back to the manuscript. Soon she put a fourth sheet into the typewriter and a few seconds later had typed the last 12 lines. She turned the sheet over and found one more page of manuscript, but it was in a sort of table.
“What’s this?”
“Oh, those are my references. They match the little numbers you typed in earlier. They need to be in alphabetical order. Can you sort them as you type? The prof is picky about following APA style guidelines.” I went back into the bedroom and got my style guide manual and had Sunny type the references in proper format. She was done a few minutes later.
“Wow, that only took a half hour. If I typed it, it would have taken four hours at least.”
“So, lots of time for me to make dinner.”
“What are we having? I could order in. Do you like Chinese?”
“No, I mean yes I like Chinese, if I could afford it. But I bought two chicken breasts in the market yesterday. I will make rice and peas for the side, and another salad. Sound okay? I have a killer sauce for the chicken.”
“If you make it, I know it will be good,” I said. “I’ve got a bit of reading to do for tomorrow’s afternoon class.” With that I sat down on the sofa bed, which was folded up and started to read. Every now and then I looked up and saw Sunny doing her cute little dance around the kitchen. It made me smile. How could I be so lucky?
A couple hours later Ben came in, looking absolutely exhausted. But he smiled as he saw Sunny and smelled the food she was cooking.
“Furniture? We have furniture now. When is dinner? Do you want me to call for something cheap?”
“No Sunny cooked for us again,” I said.
“Fifteen to twenty minutes,” she said.
“Oh good. I have time for a quick shower,” Ben said heading to the washroom. As he passed me, I realized that he did reek. I guess toting around 50-pound boxes of fish will do that.
So, it was up to me to set the ‘floor’ as Sunny called it. I used the table instead, after stowing my typewriter in my bedroom closet. The dinner was excellent, with Ben wearing an old robe. His closet was the one near the front door, and he dressed as Sunny cleared the table. Sunny had put canned peas into the rice and it made the meal a treat.
“Excellent meal again, Sunny,” Ben said in his deep voice. “I hope Mitch is planning to keep you, because I’ll miss all of this.”
“I hoping she’ll keep me,” I said and then noticed Sunny’s mouth was open wide. Turning I saw Ben was pulling up his boxers, with his big black snake curling up and in. He had inadvertently flashed her.
“Sorry,” he said contritely.
“Don’t worry,” the stunned girl said. “If we are going to be living together it is inevitable that things like that would happen.
After Sunny and I washed and dried the dishes Ben pulled out his bed and got into it. He really was exhausted and had an early class on Monday. I went into the bedroom and got my text out again, while Sunny said she wanted a shower.
As I was reading, I heard sounds coming from the shower. Sunny was singing, and I heard the most velvet soprano sounds. She was singing White Rabbit, a song the Airplane had played on Friday night. She had told me then she hadn’t heard it before, but she was able to recreate it perfectly after only hearing it the once.
She came into the bedroom in her towels. I heard Ben say “What a beautiful concert before bed.” She walked over to me, carrying the brush and plucked the book out of my hand and set it on the nightstand, handing me the brush.
“Please?”
“With pleasure,” I said. “I love your long hair.”
“Washing it twice in such a short time this once must be good for it. It was so dirty. But I don’t think I’ll wash it again until next weekend,” she said. “I’ll have to get something to hold it up when I shower or bathe.”
“It does feel cleaner this time,” I noted. “The brush just glides through it. You learned that song so well since Friday.”
“Well, it is a great tune.”
“Do you know more?”
“Yeah, pretty much every song I have heard. I seem to pick them up easily.”
“You know, you should sing when you panhandle,” I suggested as I brushed that beautiful hair. “Your voice is good enough. No, your voice is great. Way better than good enough. I’ll bet you bring in more money if you sing instead of just shaking the tambourine.”
“You think so,” she mused.
“Totally. If it doesn’t work, you can stop, but I’ll bet if you play more will pay. It is like a concert.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
The next morning, I woke up alone in bed. I missed having the treat I got the day before, but I heard voices outside my door. Sunny had gotten up early to make Ben a breakfast before his early class: another eggs on toast.
“I really need to get some bacon,” she apologized to him. “But it was nearly a dollar a pound at the market, and I couldn’t afford it. Maybe Mitch will take me to the store tonight.”
“He sure will,” I said as I entered the room, and the conversation. “I doubt you have enough food left for another night, and I don’t think Ben and I want to go back to delivery food.”
“Amen,” the big black man agreed.
“I got up early because of Ben’s early class,” Sunny said with her glowing smile. “Do you want yours now, or just before you leave for your first class?”
“Now, please,” I said, bathing in the radiation of her smile.
She plated me up more eggs on toast, and then made herself some. Ben darted out the door as we were eating.
Nearly an hour later I followed, although not before giving Sunny a long and sensuous kiss. It went so long that I had to run the half block to catch my bus.
It was four when I came back and saw a huge crowd at the newsstand. I pushed my way to the front to get my papers and saw that Sunny was singing and dancing in the front of a crowd of people, her long blonde hair fanning out around her as she spun about.
“I got your Chronicle back here,” Mario said. “Miss Sunny said I should save one for you. Lots of Examiners left but the Chronicle sold out before lunch. People, they come, hear Miss Sunny, and stay to listen. Many buy stuff from me. Best day this year, by far.”
I joined the circle around my girlfriend. God, I love saying that. She saw me in the middle of a Beatles song and gave the biggest smile. When the song was over, she ran and jumped on me, nearly knocking me over. Luckily she didn’t weigh much and I was able to swing her around.
“That’s all for today, folks,” she said. “I’ll be back here tomorrow if the weather is nice and sunny. Special thanks to those who helped fill the hat.”
I noticed many of the crowd come forward and drop a quarter or less into the hat. At least three men dropped ones in.
“So, I don’t need to pay today?” I joked as she went and picked up the hat, with one last person dropping a quarter in.
“No. I sing to you for free,” she said kissing me. When we broke off, she went to Mario, the magazine vendor and gave him all her change. “Mario always needs change, and I prefer bills. I’ve had him change my coins for me three times today. Look what I earned?” She pulled her purse out of her bag and showed a ten and six ones.
“And this, Missy Sunny,” Mario said. “You come tomorrow?” He handed her three ones and some change.
“I hope so, Mario,” she said, giving her a bright smile. “Unless it rains.”
“Mario asked me to move closer to him when he saw me start to draw crowds. He says it is helping his business. I usually go till six, but I’ve been singing since nine and my voice is getting tired. But I made nearly $20! That’s nearly three dollars an hour. I feel rich.”
“Not too rich to bunk with some poor college students,” I said tentatively.
“Are you kidding. It was you that turned my life around. You said I should sing, and I did and look at all I made. This money is going straight to the market, and there is nothing that will be too expensive for my guys.”
She didn’t spend it all, but I had two big paper sacks to carry up to the apartment. Sunny only hummed as she packed all the food away. There were two small steaks on the counter and the oven was already on to bake potatoes. She had fresh fixings for the salad and peeled and sliced up raw carrots for the side.
“What’s this?” I asked noticing a rather aromatic concoction in a bowl.
“Don’t touch that,” she said with the smallest note of alarm in her voice. “That’s my starter. Now that I have a place to live, I can start to grow a new one. I use them for sour-dough bread. I’m hoping that it will be ready for the weekend, and then I’ll show you guys what real bread tastes like.”
Ben was already home, sitting on the sofa surrounded by books. He didn’t have weekends free to catch up on homework and assignments, so he made good use of the evenings to keep up. I went over to the table and cracked my own books. I usually went to my bedroom to study, but it was much more fun watching Sunny do her little dance in the kitchen. Finally she ordered me to put the books away and set the table.
The meal was wonderful. I can’t remember the last time I had a better piece of meat. Sunny had used copious pepper and other spices. The baked potatoes had butter slathered onto them. Real butter, not that white stuff called margarine. The carrots had been cooked in water, but then Sunny coated them in a rich mix of melted butter and salt, making them taste more like candy than a vegetable.
“Another great meal, sweetheart,” Ben said as he pushed his plate back. “You could get a job in a restaurant and I would eat there every day.”
“She couldn’t afford the cut in pay to work in a café,” I bragged. “She made nearly $20 with her music today.” She didn’t say anything, but the cutest blush appeared on her face.
“$20!” Ben almost shouted. “I’d have to work a week to earn that. It must pay to be white. And gorgeous.”
After the meal we boys cracked the books again, and Sunny puttered around in the kitchen again. About an hour later wonderful smells started leaking into the bedroom. Soon I had to come see what was happening. I saw Ben looking up as well.
“What is that wonderful smell?” I asked.
“I’m making cookies,” Sunny announced. “Chocolate chip. They will be out of the oven in about 10 minutes, and then you will have to wait 10 minutes until they are cool enough to try.”
I pulled my new girl onto my lap on one of the chairs and she started to giggle. I squelched that by kissing her, and she eagerly reciprocated, finally jumping up to check her oven. More, stronger smells as she pulled a pan out and popped another in. Lots of cookies.
The next five minutes must have been hell on Ben. I distracted Sunny and I with more kissing. Finally, Sunny told us we could have two cookies each and we eagerly stood waiting for her to scoop them off the cooling rack. She wetted the pan down to cool it, and then spooned another panful, ready to go in when the second batch was ready.
“34,” she announced as she scrapped the mixing bowl to get the last bits of goodness out. I think there will be eight in a bag for each of you to take to school. And I want you to share, not wolf them all down yourselves. Another eight for Mario at work, and there should be some for you after school tomorrow.”
“Ha, I could wolf them down on the bus, let alone at school,” Ben said. “Aren’t you going to have any?”
“I’ll have one,” she said, taking one off the rack. “I don’t want to eat too many. I’m starting to gain weight now that I’m eating every day. They won’t be so tempting when they aren’t warm.”
“You? Fat?” I said with a chuckle, careful not to spew cookie over the table. It was too good to waste. “You could gain 10 pounds and it wouldn’t show.”
“If I could put it in the right places I would,” Sunny said. “I knew a girl on North Beach who was taking something called Premarin. It gave her some nice boobs and nice hips. Now that I might be getting some money, I might ask her who her guy is. He was charging her $50 a week.”
I looked up sharply. “One of the things we learn in pharmacology class is that it is dangerous for you to self-medicate. Promise me you won’t start anything until I look it up and find out what doses are correct, and whether there are any side effects.”
“Okay. That’s an easy promise to make, since I haven’t really got any money yet,” she said. On Tuesday we both had later classes, but I wanted to get in early to check out this Premarin thing. Sunny was up and made us bacon and egg breakfasts, with hash browns made from the potatoes left over from dinner. We each left with our little bags of cookies. I saw Ben eat one on the stairs down, and another waiting for the bus. I was a good boy and didn’t eat any until I got to school. I didn’t share with classmates though. I shared with my teachers: they were the ones who gave me my marks.
When I got home the Tuesday crowd was even larger than yesterday. Mario had saved me a Chronicle again, and only had a few Examiners left. That paper only came out at one and was nearly gone three hours later. Mario said he had increased the Chronicle order, and still sold out, as were several weekly magazines.
I stood out of Sunny’s sight while she was finishing her song. It was the Beatles classic, with the words gender swapped to He Loves You. I noticed her voice was a bit lower than usual. Perhaps seven hours a day singing was too much for her. I stepped into the ring of people and got her massive smile when she saw me. Again, she ran and leaped onto me, but this time I was ready and simply swung her around.
She thanked her fans, who started to move away, many of them dropping a contribution into the hat as they dispersed. Sunny gathered up the change and handed it to Mario to convert to bills. He gave her just over $4 back.
“Oh my,” she gushed. “I made over $21 today. Will it keep up? Who’s playing at the Avalon Friday and Saturday? Look in this. A guy selling Oracles gave me one as a tip.” She fished it out of her bag as she put her money away. I looked through it and quickly found the Avalon ad at the back with the concert listings.
“Friday is ‘Los Angeles’ night. Scott Mackenzie … never heard of him … but the Mama’s and Papa’s, they are good. And a band called Buffalo Springfield. Saturday night is the same as last Friday: the Airplane, Santana and Big Brother.
“Yes, and you and I are going to both shows. My treat.”
“Okay, but I’ll buy dinner.”
“Pizza again,” she said hopefully.
“No there is a little Chinese place just a bit past the hall. They have a killer buffet set up. Let’s go home now.”
Wednesday and Thursday were just as lucrative for Sunny, but on Friday it was raining. It rains in San Francisco in November, especially when it is almost December.
I had no late classes on Friday, so I came home an hour early. Sunny had spent the day cleaning and baking. I have to admit, the apartment looked spotless. Having a girl around really made a difference. There was another batch of cookies: peanut butter this time. Two different pies and a chocolate cake. She apologized that it was from a mix.
“Where will we put the safe?” I joked. “There is no way we can leave Ben with all this food and expect any to be left tomorrow. We’ll have to go to the pawn shop and buy a padlock or something.”
“He will be good. I’ve fixed him a plate of leftover roast beef from yesterday, and he will have to be good if he wants to take the beef sandwiches I made for his lunches on the weekend. But I do want to go to the pawn shop. Is it still raining?”
“A bit. We should go to the thrift store and get you a nice coat or jacket. And a rain slicker. It might be pouring rain when the concert is over tonight. The pawn shop is just another block down from there.”
We got out of the thrift shop quickly. Sunny got a cute coat that reminded me of the Carnaby Look that was all the rage. The yellow slicker was less attractive but would keep her dry. In the pawn shop Sunny looked at the acoustic guitars. I didn’t know she could play, but she clearly could the way she tested them out.
“I really like this one,” she finally told the clerk. “But I only have $60. Can you do anything better?” The sticker price was $125.
“Not that much better,” he said curtly. “That’s less than half price. I have a business to run here.”
“I bet you only paid $50 for this,” Sunny said. “What about $80. I’ll borrow $20 from my friend here.
“Borrow $40 and I’ll let it go for $100, with the case.”
“I need the case, but I’m not worth $40 to this guy. And it’s so miserable outside I’ll bet you haven’t taken in $80 all day.” She held out her sixty, and I forked out another $20 from my wallet, which conveniently emptied it. I had taken $40 out and put it in my shirt pocket for the concert tonight. I made sure the man saw it was empty.
He stared at the four 20s for several minutes, and then snatched them out of her hand. “There’s $3.20 in sales tax on top of that. I suppose I’ll have to eat that too,” he grumbled. I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out a five. “There. $85. Tax included,” I said.
The man reached for a guitar case and tried to give us a cheaper one. Sunny noticed, and said: “Uh, uh.” That isn’t the one it was in. I want that case.” She pointed to the better case, and the clerk reluctantly put the guitar into it. Sunny gladly put the strap around her neck and nearly glided out of the shop.
Chapter 3 – With a Little Help from My Friends
After dropping Sunny’s new guitar at the apartment we headed off to the concert after she made sure that Ben’s dinner was warming in the oven. We saw him coming in as we were going down the stairs, and she threatened him with his life if he ate any more of the desserts than two cookies and one piece of one of the pies.
We got off the bus at the Avalon and went to the Chinese buffet, where Sunny delighted in choosing small portions of so many of the tasty offerings. I, on the other hand, piled my plate high. I didn’t need to watch my weight. Or did I? Would I lose Sunny if I grew fat like so many doctors do? I decided not to go for seconds, like I normally do.
Our fortune cookies topped off the meal. Sunny’s said “New endeavors strike a chord of success,” which she said referred to her guitar. Mine was “Success comes from hard work.” Sunny was perplexed at the meaning to that until I told her that I had a major paper to write on the weekend worth 25% of my Pharma grade. She decided that the fortune referred to that.
The music at the Ballroom was tremendous as well. Sunny did her thing, wandering through the crowd and smiling at people, which inevitably resulted in them wanting to chat with her. She met a girl named Grace Slick who plays for a band called The Great Society but was hoping to get signed on by the Airplane. She brought Grace back to where I was sitting, and I recognized her as the lead singer from last week’s Airplane concert.
“You were singing with the Airplane last week. You were tremendous. I loved your song about Alice in Wonderland.”
“Yeah, I’ll be singing that with my own band this weekend. We are on the undercard tomorrow. I was just filling in with the Airplane. Their regular singer was ill, and I filled in with them. We really gelled well, and a couple of the members wanted me to take over permanently. But I would never take another girl’s gig. Plus, I am in my husband’s band.”
When we watched Big Brother and the Holding Company, I noted that the great girl singer we saw last week was missing. Grace explained. “Janis, with an s, was just testing out with the band last week. She is back in Texas now, or will be soon, to do something things with her school. I suspect she will be back soon.”
Grace noticed that as the band was playing, Sunny was singing the songs to herself. “You know all those songs? I thought you only heard them the once last week?”
“Yeah,” Sunny said with her smile, “I have kinda like a photographic memory, but for songs. I hear a tune once and it just sticks in my brain.” With that she sang White Rabbit from memory. Grace’s jaw dropped.
“I only wrote that song after an acid trip last week,” she said. “It is incredible to hear someone else sing it. Especially so well.”
We hung with Grace for most of the concert, including her husband and his brother, both members of their band. Sunny was with us off and on. She often brought more people to the table.
On the bus home Sunny was buzzed. “There was something in the Kool-Aid,” she admitted. “Now everything is freaky. The light show at the concert was amazing. It felt like I was inside all the colors.”
I had to steer her to the apartment, as she wanted to stop and stare at everything, like the neon signs on the stores and even her reflection in a puddle. I was bushed and headed straight for bed. Ben was sleeping on the sofa, so Sunny picked up her new guitar and brought it into the room. She then opened the case and started to play. I fell asleep listening to her playing: she was really good.
I woke up in the middle of the night, 4 a.m. by the clock, and Sunny was still playing. I told her to come to bed, but instead she just ignored me, and I fell back asleep.
It was me that prepared breakfast that morning, and Sunny ate the bacon and eggs, marveling at how flavorful everything tasted on her lingering acid trip. Then she went to bed and slept for nearly 10 hours. She came out at supper time, no longer high, and asked what I had been doing.
“I wrote the draft of my major paper for Pharma,” I told her. “Do you think you will be up to typing it tomorrow? It will be 20 pages. If you can’t do it, I will need to take Monday off to type it at my speed.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll be fine, unless I can get some more of that wonderful Kool-Aid. Do you know it turned me into a real woman last night? I could actually feel myself touching my vagina. A real vagina.”
I didn’t want to burst her bubble by suggesting what she had really been touching, and I suggested we order in for supper. We got a pizza, two actually, and Ben arrived home just before it came in. He wasn’t as sweaty as he got on Sundays at the Wharf, so we all dug in immediately. Sunny was impressed by the new food again.
“They are different,” she noted. I had ordered different toppings on the two pies.
“Yeah, one is Hawaiian, with pineapple. The other is bacon, mushroom and pepperoni. Which do you prefer?”
“I like them both,” she said. “What was the one we had last week before the concert?”
“That was pepperoni and red peppers,” I said.
Sunny and Ben devoured most of the pizza while I just ate my four slices. There were two slices left and Ben claimed them for his breakfast. There was a sausage vendor at the grocery market he worked at on Saturdays, and he had one for an early lunch, spending 25 cents out of his meager salary. After our meal, while Sunny cleaned the dishes I talked about buying a television. I had nearly $100 saved up, and that would buy a good used black and white set. I really wanted to watch the Gemini 6 and 7 space launches coming up in a month. We all agreed that a set would work, although we would need something to put it on, since the apartment still lacked furniture.
“I had a good week, I’ll buy something at the swap meet,” Sunny proposed. “We need a hutch or something along that wall. The TV can sit on top.”
The next morning I was awakened again by Sunny down on my groin. She had lately become comfortable enough that she no longer wore her bra and fake boobs to bed, so when she finished I bent down and started to nibble her tiny boy nipples. She flinched at first.
“Those are boy parts,” she complained.
“They are Sunny parts,” I replied. “And I love every bit of you.”
“Okaaaay,” she moaned. “It does feel really good.” And that is how I gave Sunny her first orgasm.
After breakfast we got the typewriter out and Sunny started typing. She has the ability to type a paragraph behind me: her photographic memory, I guess. Anyway, it worked well, since I often decided to change what I had in the draft I had written on Saturday. By lunch we had finished all 20 pages, and the references: a nice stack of paper ready to hand in.
“Subject One,” Sunny said after we finished, “that’s me, right?”
“Yes, it is,” I admitted. “I hope you don’t mind. When you started talking about self-medicating, I changed my plan and researched Premarin and its effect and dosages. I think it is the best thing I’ve ever written.”
“So Premarin isn’t safe then?”
“It looks like it can cause problems, especially if self-medicated. The paper I referenced from Norway said that it could be safer when taken alongside Progesterone.”
“Okay, I won’t take Premarin then,” she said. “But I really want something. Can you keep researching for me?”
“Sure honey. I love you as you are, but I know how important looking more feminine is to you. Maybe my prof will have some ideas. He’s been a doctor for 20-plus years, so he should know of something.”
The afternoon was spent shopping at the swap meet. Sunny bought a cedar chest instead of a hutch for the TV to sit on. The Television repair shop was closed on Sunday, but there were several sets in the window that we looked at and dreamed buying. Plus, the store was halfway from the swap meet to the apartment, so we were able to rest our arms from lugging the cedar chest.
Monday turned out sunny, and Sunny went to her spot, this time taking her guitar instead of the tambourine. It paid off, and she netted nearly $25. We were able to go to the TV shop and were able to compare the pictures on five different sets. We chose one for just under $100, but with the four percent sales tax it was nearly $105, taking all the cash we had.
I carried the machine back to the apartment. It had a 15-inch screen and was billed as a portable, although by the time I set it on the cedar chest my arms were like jelly. It took about an hour to get the set hooked up, and to adjust the rabbit ear antenna to get four channels that came in clearly, and a couple others that were pretty snowy. Channel 7 was ABC, Channel 5 was CBS and channel 4 was NBC. There was something else on Channel 2 that came in clearly. When Ben came in from his late class, he found the two of us engrossed at watching some dumb game show.
At first, I thought we could order food in again, but none of us had money, other than the $10 Ben had earned Sunday. So, while Ben was showering Sunny raced to the kitchen and started making a healthy dinner from the meager supplies she had.
The food was not ready until 15 minutes after Ben finished showering, but he plopped down next to me on the couch and stared at the little flickering screen. There was a TV at his parents’ house, so he was used to it (like me) but it had been months since we had watched.
Sunny made me set the table, forcing me away from the addictive box. We ate, with the tube blaring away, and Sunny announced that in the future there would be no TV at the dinner table. I sort of agreed. Normally we would talk about our days during dinner, but with the box blaring, the conversation was limited or eliminated entirely.
I had turned my paper in on Monday, and through the rest of the week other courses were reviewing for exams or handing in papers. The following week was the last one of the term. On Monday we would get our Pharma papers back, and then there were exams in some of the other courses. Then the nearly month-long Christmas break. I planned to take Sunny up to Eureka with me for three days. We would spend four days in a motel: I didn’t want to stay in the house, even though Mom nearly insisted. I knew she wouldn’t let Sunny and me share a room, and Sunny’s secrets might be exposed if she was in with one of my sisters. The motel was a good idea we agreed, and it would only cost $8 a night. Even with the money spent on the TV I would have enough from my fund, with some left over to buy Sunny a little gift.
The following weekend we went to another concert. It was Sunny’s treat since she had made good money playing her guitar and singing on the street, and I was broke until my fund check would come in. This time we went to a different ballroom called the Fillmore on Friday, and back to the Avalon on Saturday. On Saturday we met Gracie again, and she introduced us to a guy named Peter Albin, the band leader of Big Brother and the Holding Company.
“Gracie tells me you know some of our songs,” Peter said.
“I know all of your songs,” Sunny said. “At least the ones you played the other week when Janis was here.”
“Awesome. Any chance that you would sing for us in our set later tonight?”
“Aww, I didn’t bring my guitar,” Sunny said.
“You could just do vocals. Maybe shake a tambourine a bit,” Peter said.
“Sure. I sing on the street over on Haight,” she said. “Most people like it.”
So, 25 minutes later I was watching Sunny on the stage. She was much prettier than Janis, but her voice was nearly as powerful. On some of the songs she added a softer, mellower tone to the tune, as opposed to Joplin’s hard-rocking style. The audience seemed to love it: the cheers were outstanding. When she managed to make her way back to the table she was buzzed, both from her performance as well as some Kool-Aid she picked up on the way back to the table.
Peter came over a while later and sat down next to her, on the other side from me. “The band had a little chat most of us would like you to become a regular. You’ll get $120 a week for our show here, and more if we play somewhere else as well. And if we get a record deal, we’ll be in the big money.”
Sunny was lost in the light show for the next act, clearly stoned, but her photographic memory stored all the words, and eventually she answered, just before Peter was about to leave for being ignored. “But what about Janis?” she asked. “I thought you had offered her the gig.”
“Well, we kinda did,” Peter said. “But she will get over it. She’s good and won’t take long to get another gig.”
Again there was another long gap before Sunny spoke again: “No. I won’t steal some other singer’s gig. Besides, when the weather gets better in a couple months, I will be able to net $150 a week on the street.”
“Okay,” Peter said. “Here’s your cut for singing tonight.” He dropped a pile of twenties on the table. Sunny ignored the money and stared at the light show for the longest time.
“Thanks for letting me play with you. It was a blast,” she finally said. Peter finally wandered away, and Sunny got up and moved closer to the stage. I picked up the twenties: there were six of them, and I pocketed them to give to her later.
On the way home, Sunny was clearly tripping. She said she had a second cup of Kool-Aid. I wanted to admonish her about over-dosing but realized that there would be no sense doing so when she was stoned. Instead I just steered her to the apartment and into our bedroom. We probably woke Ben on the way past: Sunny was singing some of the Big Brother tunes.
So I went to bed to a guitar and vocals concert again. I wasn’t as tired as last week, so I didn’t fall asleep as fast. She is really good, I thought. Too good to be singing for quarters and dimes on the street corner. Maybe she should take the gig with Big Brother. They seemed to be a band on the way up.
On Sunday we made love again. Sunny had three orgasms to my one, but that could be due to her still being tripping. I touched her little penis for the first time. She flinched, but when I referred to it as my ‘Sunny Handle” she giggled. It was only about three inches long, and a bit thicker than a finger. She had no testicles, so I could grasp it right to the base. And there was no hair. She didn’t shave it: there had never been hair down there, she later told me. I thought it was cute. She wouldn’t let me put my mouth on it, and all during our love play it never swelled at all. It was just a little floppy appendage that shouldn’t be there.
We spent the day watching TV. In the early morning there were religious shows on all the channels, to our dismay. The only one we watched was a stop animation show called Davy and Goliath which was religious, but a cartoon. After lunch, there were political shows on, which interested us less than the religion. Finally, the football game came on. Ben and I were stuck to the set while Sunny got up and cleaned the apartment, and later started playing her guitar in the bedroom.
On Monday I went to class, where a TA handed out our marked papers. There were more than a few groans from the other students, but for me it was just confusion. My paper seemed to have no mark, only an ominous ‘See Me,’ scrawled in the upper right corner where I had expected to see a mark.
I went to the prof’s office, telling the elderly woman at the desk I needed to see the prof.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked in a somewhat snooty tone.
“I have this,” I said holding up the front of my paper.
“Please be seated and I will find out if Professor McBrien will see you,” she said, picking up the phone. The conversation was a short one. “He’ll see you now. Room 15C.” She pointed the direction, seeming to be upset that I was being seen quickly without an appointment.
In spite of being pointed in the proper direction, it took a minute to find 15C in the warren of tiny offices. I knocked, and was told to come in.
“Ah, Mr. Carter, I’m glad you came by so quickly. I’m only on campus on Monday’s for my two classes,” he said.
“You wanted to see me?” I held up the paper with the notation on it. The prof took the paper and laid it out on his desk.
“A most extraordinary paper,” he said, and I was left to wonder if that was really, really good or really, really bad.
“Is there a problem with it?” I asked timidly.
“No, not at all. I just have trouble believing it was written by a first-year student. A reference to a paper from Norway. I have trouble getting more than a reference from our textbook with most students. You wouldn’t happen to have that paper handy, would you?”
“I have it right here,” I said reaching into the Humboldt Times carrier bag I had used in my newspaper carrier career in Eureka. I found the bag handy for carrying books and other things and had the paper in it. “It is due back at the library on Friday, but I was going to take it back today. They had to order it in from UCLA.”
“May I see it?” I handed the 20-page photocopied paper over, and Prof. McBrien read through the abstract. “Most extraordinary,” he said when he finally looked up. “I need to take this paper. I will contact the library and either extend your deadline, or have it transferred to me. You see, I only work for the university one day a week, teaching first- and third-year courses. The other days I work in a clinic with five other doctors. I happen to have over two dozen women I have prescribed Premarin to, and a few have seen these symptoms. I wonder if the Norwegian treatment of adding Progesterone will help them?”
“Women?” I asked.
“Yes, Premarin is helpful in treating menopausal women. But that is the third-year course, so of course you wouldn’t be aware of it. Your paper dealt with a transsexual patient, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did,” I admitted.
“And this person is a friend of yours?”
“Yes sir.”
“So what dosages of Premarin and Progesterone are you planning to prescribe for her?”
I looked shocked. “I would never prescribe anything, or even suggest it. I don’t know what dosages would be appropriate, and I’m not licensed yet.”
“Right answer. So what would you suggest to your friend?”
“I have told her about the dangers of self-medicating, which is apparently common among transsexuals. I hope to find a good doctor who can help her legitimately.”
“Another good answer. I wonder if he … or is it she? … would be interested in seeing me? I don’t have any experience with transsexuals, but it seems like a good area to develop some knowledge in.”
“She, definitely a she,” I said. “I think she would be delighted at the chance to get hormones.”
“Well, I’m not saying I will write her a script immediately. I will need to work her bloods and otherwise examine her.” He picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Phyl, do you have any spots free for me this week? Tomorrow at 2:00?” He looked at me and I nodded. Sunny would move heaven and earth to come to an appointment. The professor hung up the phone and looked at me, and then at my paper sitting on his desk.
“You will want to take this with you,” he said, stroking lines through ‘See me’ and instead writing ‘Excellent. A plus, 100%’ in its place. “I think that is the first 100% I’ve given a first year in over 22 years of teaching here. But then yours was the first paper that taught me something. Usually it goes the other way around.”
I dropped the paper in my bag, and nearly danced out of the office. That mark would give me an A plus on the course. I still have exams to write in three other subjects: English, Spanish and Psychology, and to pick up my paper from Sociology, but I expected A or better in all of them. And luckily nothing was on the schedule for tomorrow, so I could bring Sunny to Prof. McBrien’s clinic downtown. Luckily, he had written the time on a printed appointment card. I’ll have to look it up on the map of the city I bought when I moved down here.
I got off the bus before noon, and Sunny already had a big crowd around her. Mario told me I would have to wait another hour before the Examiner came in, so I had him put a Chronicle away for me, and then headed down to the deli, waving and blowing a kiss to Sunny as I passed her.
I came back with three sandwiches wrapped ‘to-go.’ Mario got one, and when Sunny paused after a song I invited her to have one. I pulled three Fanta orange sodas out of my newspaper bag. Mario seemed embarrassed, but Sunny grabbed my keychain and popped the top of the soda and took a long drink, finishing half the bottle before I even got mine and Mario’s open. We then all sat at the back of the newspaper stall and ate our sandwiches, although the little Italian man had to pop up every minute or two to serve a customer.
“That hit the spot,” Sunny said as she finally put the soda down to open the sandwich, again with a giant deli pickle, which she licked suggestively with a leer at me before putting it down to raise the big sandwich. “I get so dry while I’m singing. I have my water, but it gets warm. That was sooo cold.”
“How’s business?” I asked. .”
“Pretty good. I think Mario has nearly $10 for me so far.”
“I give $5 for the lunch,” Mario offered, but I refused, telling him it was a gift. “Then newspapers are free for you all week,” he insisted.
After about 15 minutes Sunny got back up and got out her guitar again. Her singing was a wonderful background as I sat behind Mario’s and read first the Chronicle and then the Examiner after it came in. I wondered what Sunny’s reaction would be when I told her about the appointment tomorrow. I didn’t want to say anything while she was working, since I felt that might put her off with excitement.
Sunny 4 – We Are Family
Sunny finally put down her guitar and thanked her small audience, who responded by dropping coins and ones into her guitar case. I had just finished the Examiner and handed it back to Mario, who would be able to tear off the front-page date to get reimbursed from the newspaper. Sunny came over to hug me, and get her change converted into bills by the Bank of Mario.
“I have a surprise for you,” I told her.
“Goodie. What?”
“We have an appointment tomorrow with my Pharma prof. He wants to do some tests and maybe in time write you a ‘script for hormones.” Sunny stopped in her tracks, a wide smile breaking over her face. She dropped the guitar and leapt onto me, kissing me deeply.
“Hormones? I’m getting hormones,” she cried out.
“Whoa, not so fast. This is only the first appointment. They will take your blood and do some tests. They might have to do the same again later. If all goes well, he could give you a prescription later.”
“I don’t care. Even if it is just the first step of many, I know it means I will get prescriptions eventually. I’m going to have to save my money.”
“Well, the good news there is that legal prescriptions are way cheaper than what you would pay for black-market drugs. And if we can arrange to buy them through the Medical Center, they may even be cheaper.”
Sunny didn’t walk home, she glided. Dancing around, spinning and causing her long blonde hair to form an umbrella around her head. I wound up carrying her instrument case. She insisted in stopping at the little market near the apartment, and I worried that she would shout out to everyone that she was going on hormones, but she contained herself and just bought five pounds of flour and two pounds of sugar.
When she finished dancing up the stairs in that cute way she had, she burst into the apartment singing a song she seemed to make up on the spot called I’m So Happy. She danced into the kitchen and took down her batch of starter, putting the flour and the sugar on the counter and scooping out half of the starter into a big bowl. She put some flour and a bit of sugar into the remaining starter, kneading it gently to feed the new ingredients in.
The rest of the starter was dropped into a huge bowl she had bought at the swap meet, and then she added other ingredients: sugar, flour, water and salt, and started mixing it all together with her hands. Soon it was a smooth doughy mass and the gunk that had been on her hands at first had been incorporated into a smooth ball of dough. Then, she put a clean dish towel over the bowl and set the dough into a corner. Finally, she went and washed her hands again.
“Tonight we will have real bread to celebrate,” she said. “This will be the first batch from this starter. It looked ready. The second batch will be better, and the third batch will be perfect. I just have to let it have the first rise. I should have finished my show sooner. It will take an hour and a half to rise the first time, then I knead it, and put in in the pans for another 90 minutes. But we will have hot bread before bed.”
The next morning Sunny was up early, and made Ben a breakfast of bacon and eggs, along with the rest of that wonderful bread. We had eaten nearly all of the first loaf at night, slathered in jam or peanut butter, and finished it for breakfast. I got the end crust slice, which was only fair because Ben had gotten the other end the night before. He teased me, saying that he would fight me for it, which was laughable. Ben was four inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than me, and it was all muscle. If we actually fought, he would cream me.
Sunny made peace, announcing that he could have the first crust on the second loaf. Tonight. She said her starter would not be ready for another batch for two more days, so we had to make that loaf last, or switch to Wonder bread, which made me shudder.
Ben had to go to school. I’m not sure if it was a late exam or something else. It was raining which normally bummed Sunny out. But today it meant that she wouldn’t have to give up a day at the newsstand to make up for her appointment with the professor.
It took two buses to get to his office, so we left in good time. Sunny now had rain gear from the thrift shop: a pink raincoat and the cutest little yellow boots, and a floppy yellow rainhat. It kept her mostly dry waiting for the bus, and then running to the professor’s clinic.
Inside we came across another receptionist from hell. We were 15 minutes early and she handed Sunny some papers to fill out. Five minutes later Sunny handed them back in. The woman studied them like she was marking an exam.
“Sunshine Aquarius? What kind of name is that?”
“It is my name,” Sunny replied.
“What about a middle name?”
“Don’t have one.”
“And you left the employer section empty,” the woman said.
“Don’t have one of those either,” Sunny said. The woman’s dour attitude was not bringing her down at all. “I’m self-employed.”
“Doing what? How can we be sure you will pay your account if you have no health plan?”
“No health plan either. And Mitch said the professor said this was free.”
“Mitch did, did he? The doctor,” she emphasized the title as though calling him a professor was some kind of slur, “wants you to get some bloodwork done. Go into room 8 and a nurse will be right with you. Hopefully you can be ready on time for the doctor.”
Sunny looked nervously at me as she stood, clearly not happy at us being separated. The woman frowned, and Sunny slipped away through the doors.
She came back at 2:00 sharp, giving me a big Sunny smile when she saw me.
The woman killed that by announcing that the doctor was ready for her, in room 5. She immediately frowned and turned around to go back into the clinic alone.
I spent the next 15 minutes nervously waiting. Sunny later told me that all that time was taken by her explaining her history to the doctor, who had immediately become her friend when he said: “Please sit down, miss.”
The dour receptionist then called me and sent me back to room 5. The professor had asked Sunny to disrobe and put on a paper gown and mentioned that he would call in a nurse for propriety’s sake. Sunny had asked if I could come in instead, and he agreed. The fact I was a pre-med student of his probably made the decision easier for him.
I helped Sunny out of her tie-dyed sundress and into the scanty paper robe with the doctor out of the office. While we were waiting for him to return, she explained what had happened and said: “I really like him. For an old guy his isn’t square at all. He treats me like a lady.”
The doctor came back in and examined Sunny in depth, spending a long time looking at her little penis, and also her breasts. She had worn her bra and the towels to the clinic but had to take them off with her dress.
“You know that if we do go to hormones, they might not result in much breast growth. Possibly an A or B cup. What size was your birth mother?”
“She was small. Probably a B,” Sunny guessed.
“Well, the fact that you have had no male puberty might help. But you certainly won’t get to a D or DD cup, whichever your bra is. But there are ways that small women can get a boost, as you seem to have discovered with your towels. We might be able to get some padding that is more appropriate. Enough to get you to a C cup at the least.”
“I don’t care,” Sunny said. “I like having big boobs, but if it means having my own natural breasts, I’ll live with that.”
“I’ve never treated a transsexual patient before,” the professor said. “But I did quite a bit of reading last night and this morning. If we go the hormone route, then it will take about a half year to see significant signs of change. As well as breasts you can expect to see the rest of your body change. Your waist is very slender already, but your hips will widen, giving you a shapelier form. Do you shave now?”
“No sir. Not even my pits. Never had to.”
“And I noticed that your groin is hairless as well. This might change a bit if you take hormones. Your beard will not develop, but you might grow hair in the areas a girl does at puberty. Your voice didn’t change with puberty and fits into a female range right now.”
“That’s twice you’ve said ‘if’ in reference to hormones. Does that mean you might not prescribe them?” Sunny said with definite fear in her voice.
“Well, it all depends on your blood results,” he said. “But I would say that if you come back in on Friday, I am 90% sure we will be able to do something. It is just a matter of what dosages will be appropriate. Ask Phyllis for an appointment on Friday. Is morning or afternoon best for you.”
Sunny looked at me. “Morning would be best. Then if the news is good, we can get prescriptions filled right away,” I suggested.
“Yes, very good. And I recommend you use the pharmacy in this building so the drugs will be issued at no cost. We have always carried Premarin, but I had to order the Progesterone in. I’m told it will be here on Thursday. I’m treating this as an experimental study. We might have to end the free drugs in a few years, but not until after we are well under way and I am ready to write a paper on the experiment.”
Phyllis was less than pleased to find out that the treatment was pro bono. She made a notation on the papers Sunny had filled in, and then gave us an appointment slip for Friday.
Sunny ran at me once we were free of the clinic. I had learned to step a bit aside and spin her about when she did this. She only weighs 96 pounds but hitting me head on even that small weight could still knock me back a step or two.
“I’m so happy,” she crowed as we walked in the rain to the bus stop. “Getting hormones is the first step to me becoming the real me.”
“You are already the real you to me,” I said. “But I am so glad that you are fulfilling your dream and doing it in a safe way.” We rode back to the apartment, with Sunny floating along six inches off the pavement the whole way. I realized I was going to have to work to keep her grounded until Friday. Luckily it was dry but overcast on Wednesday and Thursday, so she was able to go to the news stand to play, making over $25 dollars each day. She said that many of her regulars had complained that she wasn’t there on Tuesday. She warned them that she would be away on Friday as well, for a doctor’s appointment.
On Friday we broke into the second batch of Sunny’s sourdough bread and, as promised, it was better than the first batch. It made for a tasty breakfast before we headed off to the doctor’s. Ben headed off to his supermarket. He had gotten full time hours until almost Christmas, while keeping his Sunday hours at the Wharf.
Phyllis was her usual cheerful self when we got to the clinic just a few minutes before 10. “Miss Aquarius,” she sneered, recognizing Sunny. “The doctor just buzzed and said you are to head right in. Both of you. To room 5 again.”
Sunny was dancing about like a little girl who urgently needed to go to the bathroom. When the doctor saw her, he immediately detected her excitement and wanted to put her at ease.
“Calm down Sunny,” he said. “You will be leaving here today with a prescription.”
She let out a squeal of delight and jumped up and darted over to hug the older man, gushing her thanks. It took a few seconds for the professor to recompose himself. “Your blood work came through with no anomalies. There is almost no trace of testosterone in your system, and a small amount of estrogen. We did a genetic test, and found that you have XY-chromosomes, normal for a male. There is a new XXY-chromosome, but our test did not find that.”
“Will the hormones change me to an XX?” Sunny asked excitedly.
“No, unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You will be XY for all of your life. But the hormones will fool the body into thinking you are XX, and you will develop in that way.” “Almost as good,” Sunny said.
“Now, if they’re no other questions, take these prescriptions down to the pharmacy downstairs. Both drugs are pills taken orally each day. You can take one immediately, but after this you should chose a consistent time of day to take them, either early morning or before bed. I want to warn you about taking more than the recommended dosage. It will not speed things up, the extra medicine will just be expelled in your urine. And I will not write another script, so you will wind up having no pills for a time, which will slow down your development. Understood?”
“Yes sir. I will be a good girl and only take them as ordered. And Mitch here will keep me to that, won’t you.”
I shook my head yes, and with that he gave Sunny the two prescriptions. We were out of the room, and the office immediately, and headed down to the pharmacy after getting an appointment set up in two weeks for the doctor to check that all was going well.
In the pharmacy there was a bit of a delay as the clerk was unable to find the progesterone drugs. I mentioned that Dr. McBrien had ordered them in and they were supposed to come in on the Thursday shipment. That clued him in to looking in some unopened boxes, finding the drugs there.
We immediately headed to a nearby café, where Sunny ordered a soda and took the first two pills. I also ordered us sandwiches to make an early lunch.
“I don’t feel any different,” she said with a frown, even though the medicine had barely had a chance to reach her stomach.”
“You won’t,” I pointed out. “And not tomorrow, or next week. Next month you might be able to detect some early changes, but the doctor said it will be six months before the effects are evident.”
Sunny looked at the pill bottles. “There are 90 pills in each. That is three months. If I had bought street drugs, this would have cost $50 for just a month. And they were free.”
We arrived home at 1 p.m. and Sunny headed off to the newsstand. I started into my Anatomy and Physiology textbook, a huge five-pound bear of a book that I hoped to read before classes in that subject started in January.
At about 4 I went down to get my Examiner and found Sunny was willing to go until 6 to make up for missing the morning. We weren’t planning to go to a concert tonight, so it made sense. Mario was a bit pale looking as I chatted with him, then I headed back to the apartment to read the paper before going back to my textbook.
Because Sunny was late, I ordered Chinese food for delivery at 6:30. She arrived just before that, with Ben soon behind. I paid for the Chinese meal, and we all sat around the table to eat.
“I’m worried about Mario,” Sunny said. “He didn’t look good when he closed up at 6. He could barely get his awnings down to close the kiosk.”
“I noticed he was looking pale when I bought the Examiner,” I agreed.
“Oh, he was a lot worse by close,” she said. “He couldn’t even work the padlock. I had to lock it for him. Then he staggered away without even getting the key from me. Did you know that he has worked at that stand for 22 years, from six a.m. to six p.m. without missing a single day?”
“If you have his key, how is he going to open tomorrow, assuming he does? He looked to me like he needed a sick day.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Sunny said. “I guess I’ll have to go out before 6 and give him the key. At least I will find out if there are any people wanting a tune at that time of the morning.”
Sunny was not alone in the early dawn light the next morning. I accompanied my girlfriend as we walked towards the newsstand. I planned on getting my morning Chronicle and heading back, but as we got near the stand, we didn’t find Mario, as we expected. There were five bundles of newspapers leaning against the kiosk but no sign of the little Italian.
“Should we open up?” Sunny suggested, getting the key out.
“Well, at the least we can move these bundles inside,” I said as she popped the padlock. I carted the bundles in, and while I was moving the last a man approached: “Chronicle please.” He held out a dime. Sunny had already untied the twine on one bundle, planning to get me my paper, so she held a paper out and took the money.
Sunny sold 10 more papers as I struggled to lift the awnings of the kiosk, which formed the walls of the stand when it was closed. When everything was open, I unbundled the other papers and set them out. There was a steady stream of customers that just kept building. I don’t know how Mario handled it himself; both Sunny and I were kept hopping for several hours. It was nine before it slowed down enough for Sunny to set out her guitar case and start singing.
People tended to get off one of the buses and head straight over for their papers, so I started watching the arriving buses to guess how many customers I would get. Soon I quickly noticed Mario getting off a bus. He looked terrible, carrying a little tin box. “Mr. Sunny,” he said in his accented English, calling me the name he had apparently given me. “You opened my stand?”
“Yes Mario,” I assured him, helping him to the chair at the back of the kiosk that I hadn’t had a chance to sit on yet. I handed him the small pile of dimes that I had gathered. He opened his little box and put the change into it. It was his cash float. I wished I had that earlier, as I had scrambled to find nickels for change for those who only had a quarter.
Sunny finished her song and hurried over. “Mario, you are sick. What are you doing here?”
“I have to be here,” he moaned. “If no Mario, then newspaper will send someone else and Mario has no job.”
“Wrong,” she said. “Mitch will look after the stand today. And tomorrow too, since you don’t look like you will be well then either. Look, there is a bus a couple blocks away. I think it transfers to North Beach. Is that where you live?”
“Si. Ma mere and the bambinos,” he said, breaking into Italian with his fever.
“I’m taking him home,” Sunny said, getting three quarters from her guitar case for bus fares. “Look after my guitar. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I put the guitar in the case and brought it into the kiosk as soon as the rush from that bus ended. Then it was several hours that flew by as I kept busy handling the traffic in the stand. Just after lunch a truck dropped by and tossed out three more bundles of newspapers: The Examiner. I untied them and put them out.
The afternoon was slower than the morning. Then I had barely a chance to read the Chronicle front page during lulls, but I got more spare time to work through the Examiner. It was four o’clock when Sunny finally popped off the bus.
“I was starting to worry about you,” I told her as she came back to the kiosk.
“Oh, when we got there, I helped Maria, Mario’s wife, put him to bed. Then I found out that she had expected Mario to bring groceries home to feed the kids. I loaned Maria $20 and she went out for a bit to get food while I looked after her kids. There are five of them, from age six to a newborn. One was in school. Mitch, I got to change the baby’s diaper! Twice,” she was super Sunny excited. “The baby was so cute. I mean all of them were. I want kids so much.”
“Well, I don’t think your hormones will help with that,” I suggested, expecting that to damper her glee. It didn’t.
“The other kids were cute too,” she gushed. “When the baby was asleep … I fed her a bottle … the other little ones gathered around me and I told them stories. Fairy tales and Mother Goose stuff. It was like being a mother to them. When I finally had to leave the three of them actually cried to see me go. I told Maria I would come and visit to give her another chance to go shopping. I want to go back right now.”
“And leave poor Mitch alone?”
“No. I’m going over and sing you some songs. We have to keep the stand open until 6 p.m. Mario said a man from the newspaper drives by every few days to check he is open.”
“Any chance of getting a sandwich from the Deli for a starving newspaper seller? I haven’t eaten since our breakfast. When was that? A month ago?”
Five minutes later Sunny returned with a sandwich for me. Apparently, she was hungry as well and had almost finished hers by the time she got to the kiosk. She had two sodas as well and they went down well. I had not brought my canteen, and vowed that I would on Sunday, since Sunny had promised Mario that I would work the stand then.
Sunny sang and I sold newspapers at an increasingly slow rate as the afternoon passed. Finally, just before 6 I started shutting the kiosk up, lowering the awnings and moving the small stack of Examiners inside for Mario to deal with when he was back. There were no Chronicles left, other than one that I had started the crossword on.
Sunny also packed up, and brought the padlock out of her guitar case, key still in it. Once I had locked up, I tried to hand her the key, but she shook her head.
“No, you keep it. You will need to open tomorrow.” I just groaned. It was not hard work.
Ben would laugh at me being tired the way he works lugging fish crates on Sundays.
But 12 hours is a long shift even while sitting a lot and I was almost crawling back to the apartment.
Sunny still seemed perky so she made a nice pasta dinner while I collapsed on the sofa-bed. We ate, and then I went to bed at 8, and slept through till 5:30 when the alarm told me I had to do it all again.
Sunday I was at the kiosk before 6, although without Sunny. I told her to come by later.
No sense both of us being exhausted. Sunday had less traffic, but the Sunday paper (only the Chronicle had one) cost 25 cents instead of a dime, so sales were about the same as Saturday’s.
Monday I was getting into the routine. The one thing that this did for me was to convince me how important my education was. This working for a living thing was annoying. It was rainy, which cut sales more than a little, but it also meant that Sunny could go to Little Italy and visit Mario. When she returned just before 6 she reported that the patient was feeling better, and insisted on coming to work on Tuesday. She told him he was to come in at 10, not six, and he could relieve me. I looked forward to it. She also reported that she had been able to look after Mario’s little family while Marie went shopping again. This time she had cash from Mario, who also repaid the loan from the last trip.
On Tuesday Mario arrived at 9, not 10, looking much better, although still a bit pale. I didn’t argue about getting off early and went home and slept for four hours. At 4 I returned, and Sunny sent Mario home early. He took the key with him so he could open at 6 on Wednesday. I just had to snap the padlock closed when I packed up at the end of the day.
Sunny – Chapter 5 -- Sunny in the Sky with Diamonds
The next week of December was fairly routine. Sunny spent four days at the news stand, and the other one, which was rainy, she spent with Maria, babysitting her kids. She took her guitar, and alternated reading with the small tots surrounding her, with two on her lap and the others cuddled in on either side. After several stories, she switched to her guitar and played for them. They loved her renditions of Peter, Paul, and Mary songs. Puff the Magic Dragon was their favorite, but they also loved Lemon Tree, If I Had a Hammer, Blowin’ in the Wind, Tell It on the Mountain, and The Times they are A-Changin’. She also added a few folk songs, and some Religious tunes, like Amazing Grace.
Maria used the morning to do her shopping. She noted excitedly that Mario had decided that she should look after the money in the family and was now giving her all the take from the stand, less a bit of pocket money for himself. Sunny merely smiled. She had laid into Mario the other day pointing out that in America the husband and the wife shared the duties, unlike in Italy. That seemed to have more impact on him than when she had pointed out that his family could have starved when he was delirious with fever the week before. To Mario it was acting ‘American’ that seemed more important. Apparently, the discussion had borne fruit, and Maria said she now was responsible for paying rent and the bills and getting groceries from the rest.
In the past she would have bundled four of the five kids up (one was in Grade 1 and at school) and taken them with her to the market. Even on a dry day it would have been difficult with kids clamoring for treats not on her list. Having Sunny come by on a rainy day meant she could go alone and shop more efficiently.
Maria was back before lunch and taught Sunny her special tomato sauce recipe for the spaghetti lunch she had planned. After lunch, when the tots were napping, the two women baked, making cookies with Sunny’s recipe while Maria taught Sunny how to make biscotti and cornetto, both of which she intended to make for her boys in the apartment.
The kids woke up before the baking was done, so Sunny made icing bags with colored icing and the older ones decorated the sugar cookies she had made. Maria held the baby on her hip and Sunny looked on with envy, hoping that soon she would have hips that could hold a baby.
After the baking and decorating was done, the kids, each with a cookie in a tiny hand, gathered around the pretty blonde and she sang for them again. To the surprise of the kids, their mother joined in, singing some traditional Italian songs and lullabies. Sunny listed to her pure, sweet voice and soon was able to strum a simple accompaniment to the tunes. Again, when it was time for her to go all four cried for her to stay. She had to promise to come again next week in order to get them to stop.
Of course, I heard all of this when she got home. I had tidied the place up a bit, but not well enough for Sunny. She went over the entire apartment, and I had to admit that it did look noticeably better.
While she made another batch of sourdough (I had eaten the last of it for lunch) we talked about Christmas, only a few weeks away. I had no choice but to travel back to Eureka or my mother would come and drag me home. But I left Sunny the choice as to whether she would come. My family knew I had a girlfriend and had left an open invitation for her to join in.
You have to understand my family. My Mother had four sisters and had three girls plus me. I was the baby of the family, with my sisters from three to 12 years older. Thus, the girls were all married and had kids of their own. And my aunts had nine adult daughters among them, and they had over 20 cousins. Thus over 40 people would be at the Christmas dinner, depending on whether the pregnant ones gave birth before or after. Plus, there were husbands: only one of the girls was a single mom.
I guess the summary of all this is that our little house in Eureka was always crowded at Christmas, and I had no desire to throw Sunny into the middle of all that chaos. We would stay in the little 12 room motel at the edge of town, a healthy walk to Dad’s house. I phoned and found that they only charged $8 a night for a double bed. When I booked for Dec. 23 to 26 I was told that if I didn’t want maid service on Christmas day, it would be $2 less, or only $30 for the four days. That suited me fine and I booked the room. I know Mom would be furious, thinking I should stay in my old room. But I also knew she would not allow Sunny to bunk with me, and I didn’t want to risk her exposing her secret if she stayed with one of my sisters. And this way we would be able to get away from the madness if we needed to.
“What about Ben?,” Sunny asked as I explained all this to her. “He can’t be here alone on Christmas Day.”
We asked him when he came in, and he said that he had no plans. His parents were separated, and Ben didn’t think much of his father’s new girl. His mother usually went down to San Diego for the day, with his siblings, and he didn’t want to do that. So Sunny invited him to join us.
I felt it important to give out some warnings. “Eureka is a pretty white town,” I said. “I don’t know if there are any Negroes there at all. There weren’t any in my school. The motel is under new management. The old owners were as racist as they come. It's not like there was a sign over the door that said, ‘Whites only’ but everyone in town knew about it.”
“What about your family?” Sunny asked. “Will they welcome Ben?”
“My parents are cool,” I said. “Dad was in an integrated unit in the war. And Mom said her school was integrated. The little town she came from was too small for separate school systems, so she had negro girlfriends, even back in the early 50s. There might be some of the aunts and uncles who are put out by sharing supper with a negro, but my parents will deal with them, I’m sure.”
“I can put up with quite a bit,” Ben said. “You get used to that kind of people. I try to ignore them.”
We then checked out ways to get to Eureka. When I came down to start school I had to go to Sacramento first, making the five-hour drive take eight hours.
“We can probably hitch-hike faster,” Ben suggested. “We take a bus out to the edge of the city, then hitch from there.” At that time hitch-hiking was popular and many people would give rides. It had grown during and after the war, when soldiers would hitch home on passes or when discharged and it was fairly safe, if you were careful. By the 60s there were a lot of veterans paying back for rides they had gotten. A lot of kids would hitch to San Francisco for the following Summer of Love. And Sunny had hitched west from her bad home life a few years earlier. Now it would be easier for her, looking like a beautiful woman instead of a runaway boy.
With travel plans solved we decided we would all go to the Avalon tomorrow. Christmas was on Saturday, so no concert was booked for Christmas Eve that week. Friday would be the last concert of the year, other than something called an acid test on New Years Eve. A special guest act was being brought in from Los Angeles: The Mamas and the Papas. They were a new band that just released California Dreamin’, a song Sunny had just added to her act. Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Grateful Dead were also playing.
The night started off well, with dinner at the Pizza Place Sunny adored. We then got to the Avalon, and there was already a line, although we got in near the front. The foursome just in front of us were smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that had a strangely sweet smell to it. They shared it, passing it around until it was too small to hold, then used a paper clip to take some final puffs on it.
Someone pulled out another, and one of the guys, who had been staring at Sunny while waiting for his turn offered her what he called ‘a toke’. Sunny was game for anything once, so she took a long puff, holding the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could before exhaling, like the other group had been doing. She handed it to Ben while she was holding her breath, and after inhaling he passed it to me. With my background in Pharmacology I was a bit leery, but finally decided to partake, although with a shorter puff that I exhaled quickly.
I passed the item to the first person of the other group, coughing. By the time it got to me again I had witnessed the others and tried to emulate them, passing the toke on without exhaling. When I finally did, I still coughed. I found out the cigarettes were ‘marijuana’ although the others called it Mary Jane or weed. Two more cigarettes were shared around and by the end I was not coughing any more. It seemed to be enjoyable.
Then the doors opened, and we entered. Or tried to. I found that when I raised my foot to the first step, it moved away from me, and I had to chase it around. Finally, I caught it, but the second step disappeared entirely, and I stumbled. Luckily Ben caught me before I fell, and with his assistance I was helped up the other steps and into the hall. Ben led me to a nearby table and we sat. Sunny had floated off to mingle with the friends she had made here, and to find some of the Kool-Aid. I had no interest in LSD, being totally buzzed on the weed.
I found I was more popular than normal. Having a negro guy sitting with you seemed to make a difference, and all of the friends I made wanted to sit at the table to soak up some of the negro coolness vibes. Most of Sunny’s friends came by and I introduced them to Ben, who disappointed them when they learned he was a student/laborer and not a musician. They already thought I was a square, but Ben didn’t get that label.
All the acts were great and the finale by The Mama and Papas was special. You could tell that they were going places. There was a tall guy wearing a Russian looking hat, and a shorter guy. The Mamas were two girls. One was pretty with long blonde hair, although not as long and not as blonde as Sunny. To my eye she was not as pretty either. She sang and played tambourine (both the guys had guitars). The other girl made the band, in my opinion. She was heavy set, nearly fat but she had a voice that harmonized with the others at times but dominated when she soloed. She didn’t play anything; her voice was her instrument.
They got a standing ovation, a rarity at the Avalon, especially for the last act of the night when everyone was stoned on something. I think I was coming down from the marijuana high when we left. At least the steps were behaving normally. Sunny was quite out of it. I don’t know how many Kool-Aids she had, but I suspected it was more than two. She was floating down the street, singing California Dreamin’, pitch-perfect in spite of her condition.
We got on the bus with Sunny sitting on my lap so Ben could sit beside. She sang all the way home, wiggling her little butt into what turned out to be an embarrassing erection when we finally got off at our stop.
“Did I do that?” she giggled, looking at the tent in my trousers. Even Ben smiled. Probably more at my discomfort than anything else. If he ever had an erection like that, he would have split his pants. I made a vow that Sunny would not sit on his lap while she was my girl.
When we got to the apartment, Sunny towed me into the bedroom and then pushed me to the bed in order to give me some relief. She joked, saying my sperm tasted better when she was stoned. After wiping her mouth, she got her guitar and started to play softly while I fell asleep.
I awoke to a scream. It was Sunny, sitting on the side of the bed, holding her small tummy.
“What’s wrong, love,” I said, getting up to hold her.
“It’s the baby,” she sobbed. “There is something wrong with her.”
I was flummoxed for a few minutes until I realized in her drug-high she again thought she was a real woman and this time was pregnant. “It’s like those babies in your picture book. With no arms.”
Again confusion, but I soon realized she was referring to the pictures of Thalidomide babies she had seen in my Pharmacology text. The book used that disaster as an example on how some drugs could cause birth defects or side effects.
I held her for a half hour until she started having labor pains and she pulled away. She went over to her shelf and took down a baby doll she had bought at the swap meet. At the time she told me it was because she couldn’t have one when she was little.
As she walked back she tore off the arms and legs, and finally sat next to me, bringing up the baby torso from her legs. “Look Mitch,” she sobbed. “She has no arms or legs.” After that she went to her side of the bed, lying down. “Don’t worry honey,” she said, “I will still love you and look after you forever.” Then she put the baby under her nightgown to her chest, and mimed breast-feeding. I sat up for a few more minutes, but Sunny closed her eyes and looked asleep, so I quickly fell under again.
The sun was shining through my window when I woke up again. “Did the baby wake you?” Sunny asked, still nursing the limbless doll. “When you are out of the bathroom, I want to give the baby a bath.”
It was noon when Sunny finally crashed from her bad trip. Apparently, she had not slept during the night, so it was eight p.m. when she finally woke again. She stared at the doll, and its dismembered limbs as I led her to the other room to finish up the pizza before Ben ate it all. She was hungry and ate four slices, cleaning up the order, before speaking.
“It was horrible, Mitch,” she sobbed, and I put my arms around her. It started out so well. I was a real woman again. And I remember you making love to me, and your thing was in my thing and it felt so perfect having you inside of me. Then I got morning sickness. Did you hear me dry heaving at the toilet? Next I grew bigger and bigger and I could feel the baby moving around in my womb. Then it all turned horrible.”
“That was when you screamed,” I said.
“Yeah, I don’t remember that,” she said. “But the baby grew and grew inside of me, and I got labor pains. I pushed you away. Fathers have no business at a birth. I got the doll, and when I put it between my legs it became real. When I pulled it up it was a real, life baby. But without arms or legs. It had tiny hands right at the shoulder, and little feet where the legs should have started.” She sobbed.
“It was horrible,” she cried. “I gave birth, something I can never do, and I did it wrong. I did something that made a monster instead of a baby. But I couldn’t help but love her. She did nothing wrong. It was all my fault. I nursed her. I had real big, natural breasts, and she suckled from them. It felt perfect if my eyes were closed. I put my little finger out and she grabbed hold of it with her tiny little fingers. Perfect fingers. But on an armless hand.”
“It’s all right,” Ben said. “It sounds like you had a bad trip. Acid can do that. I hope it won’t happen again.”
“I won’t,” the blonde vowed. “No more Kool-Aid for me. I’ll share Mitch’s canteen in the future. I never want to go through that again.”
The next day was Sunday, and we all went to the swap meet and split up to buy Christmas presents for each other. We would all go to the apartment and hide our gifts, and then head down to the deli to wait for the others. In an hour we were done and had finished our sandwiches and headed back to the meet to buy presents for others that would be at Christmas. I suggested Ben just buy something for my parents, his hosts. Sunny picked out a pretty paisley scarf for my mother, and he found a box of golf balls for my father. Sunny got my mom a set of cookie cutters, and a pipe stand for my Dad, although that might also count as a gift for Mom, because she was continually complaining about the mess his pipes caused in the ashtray. I got Dad a new handmade pipe from a hippie at the swap meet. It was a corncob, like Roosevelt used to smoke in all the old pictures, so I thought he might like it.
I had a lot of other presents to get. My aunts and the sisters and their husbands were in a Christmas Club thing where you drew names and bought something for one person in the group and got one gift in return. I had always considered it totally unfair, because my sisters all bought their husband’s gifts, and I, with no wife, had to buy for whichever brother-in-law my Mother said she drew the name of in my place. It was always a little game at the gift giving where an uncle would say thank you to another uncle for a present he gave, but had never seen before.
But this time I had Sunny with me, and after I described Uncle Frank to her, she said she would find something. And she did, getting him a nice tie: he was a banker.
It was all the little nieces and nephews that were the big part of my shopping. Christmas was their special time and they all expected a gift from Uncle Mitch.
Sunny shone at this. Kids were her specialty. She bought books for each of Mario’s kids, and a book in Italian for Maria. I bought Mario a gift. Sunny found it. It was a little cash box like the one the man had been using, probably for 22 years. This one was like new, and had slots inside for the coins, and an area underneath for the people who bought magazines and such with bills.
There was a great book stand at the swap meet, and we were able to get presents for a dollar or two. That was important because there were a dozen little ones to buy for. Sunny gave me her last five dollars after buying books for Maria’s brood. We worked together in buying like new books for the kids in the family. I spent my last dollar on a package of wrapping paper. The kids and the people at Christmas had to have wrapped gifts. We decided not to wrap our presents to each other which would be bulky to hitch-hike with. Ben bought tape and we went home to an evening of wrapping presents.
I pretty much just wrapped the presents for my parents, Mario, and Frank’s tie. Sunny wanted to do all of the kids’ books. I think she could envision the little ones opening them, even the kids she hadn’t met yet.
Finally, we had most of the presents wrapped in our knapsacks. Ben and I would each carry one, and Sunny had stuffed a few in her guitar case, including Frank’s tie and some smaller books.
On the night of the 22nd we three exchanged gifts. I bought Sunny a used stereo record player in good condition. She bought me a set of WWII combat fatigues at an army surplus booth. And Ben (who I had told what I was getting Sunny) hadn’t gone to the market at all. He bought her the new Beatles album, Rubber Soul, and a Peter Paul and Mary album containing Puff the Magic Dragon. He also got me a record, the new California Dreaming single and an album from the Grateful Dead that would have become a collector’s item if I had managed to keep it. Sunny got a canteen for Ben from the Army Surplus guy.
We all loved our presents and admitted that we loved each other more. Then we headed to bed, with Ben promising to wake us early for our hitch-hiking trip.
Chapter 06 -- Standin' on the turnpike, thumb out to hitchhike
The next morning saw us at the bus stop before dawn. Ben had it all planned out. We took the bus to the intercity bus station downtown, and all paid a couple dollars each for the bus to San Rafael, a town on Highway 101, which ran right into Eureka to the north.
We walked to the outskirts of San Rafael, just before the speed limit increased, making it easier to snag a ride. Sunny stood on the shoulder of the road while Ben and I stood off to the side, hopefully not to be noticeable until a car slowed for Sunny. Ben stood with his hood up facing away from the cars in case of someone not wanting to pick up a black person.
Three cars slowed down for Sunny, but the first two sped up when they saw the two of us approaching. The third hesitated until Sunny had the door open, and then let us into the back seats. That ride lasted about 10 minutes, and about a half hour later another one took us 40 miles up 101. After a short wait we lucked out. A young salesman stopped, and said he was going all the way to Eureka to visit some clients in that town. He was even staying at the same motel as us.
Sunny pulled out her guitar and asked the man for requests. He turned out to be into country music, and Sunny surprised me by singing Patsy Cline’s I Fall to Pieces. Then she sang some of the more country Elvis songs, and finally started adding in some of her lighter Peter, Paul, and Mary repertoire. The miles rolled by for the salesman and us as we listened to her sweet voice. Four hours later we rolled into Eureka before noon. The hotel check in was not until afternoon, so we walked over to my parents’ house.
As we got near, I saw my father in the driveway, surrounded by parts from the family sedan. “Hi Dad,” I said to the legs sticking out from under the car. “This is Sunny and Ben. Want some help?”
“Did you suddenly learn auto mechanics at college?” my dad said as he wheeled out to face me. He stared at Sunny for an uncomfortable time. She was that pretty.
“No. But my roommate, Ben, is really good with that stuff. He can probably help you.”
I left Ben asking my Dad what was wrong, and headed into the house, leading Sunny to the Kitchen where my oldest sister was sitting at the table with Mom. She lived in town, while the other sisters had moved away. Norma’s husband Grant was a loan officer at the local bank and would be working today and a half day tomorrow, but Norma was a housewife, so she had brought her four kids over early to ‘help’ Mom get ready.
Mom practically attacked me with a hug. I had always thought Mom hugs were the best, but lately I had to admit I preferred Sunny hugs. “This is your girlfriend?” Norma said in amazement as she scoped out Sunny. “We were all wondering if she was real or an imaginary girlfriend like the imaginary friend you had when you were younger.”
“That was when I was three, maybe four,” I retorted. “I got real friends when I started school in Kindergarten.”
“She’s very pretty,” Mom said. Both Sunny and I said thanks at the same time. Just then Melanie came into the room. She was 14, and the oldest of my nieces and nephews, and she also stared at Sunny. “I want my hair like that, Mom,” she announced. Melanie had a Jackie Kennedy style cut like so many girls of the early 60s did.
“Well, your hair is nice,” Sunny told her. “It is getting a bit long for that style, but if you let it grow you might have it as long as mine in four or five years.”
“Five years!” Melanie said. “That’s forever. Did yours take that long to grow?”
“Yep. Almost five years. You could have long hair like this by the time you graduate High School.”
“I’m going to show Sunny the house,” I announced.
“Are you sure you are staying at the motel?” Mom whined.
“Yep. We haven’t checked in yet, but we are booked in a room there.”
“You could stay in your old room,” she begged.
“I could, but what about Sunny?”
She froze at that. “She could stay with one of the girls.”
“The girls that are all married?”
“Well. Maybe with the kids in the den. I’m sure we have a spare sleeping bag.”
“The motel has a bed for us and that’s what we are using.”
“Are you doing anything in the kitchen I can help with?” Sunny said, tactfully changing the subject.
“We will be starting pies in a couple hours,” Norma said. “Tomorrow will be the busy day. The turkey will be in the oven on Christmas morning, so we will have to do the ham tomorrow, along with the potatoes and all the sides. Mom is the general of logistics and we are the soldiers.”
“Well, I’ll help too,” Sunny said, gaining a huge smile from Mom. She felt that it was the place of the womenfolk to cater to the men and children and was glad Sunny wasn’t afraid of a little work.
I showed Sunny the house, and finally we got to the den where Norma’s three little kids were watching cartoons on TV and Melanie was looking bored. Until Sunny pulled out her guitar.
“You play guitar?” the young girl said. “I would like to learn that. Did it take five years to learn?”
“No, although I have been playing for a couple years. But if you can take lessons you should be able to play well in a few months. A few weeks and it will stop sounding like a cat being strangled.”
The smaller kids giggled at the imagery, and Sunny sat down and started to play Puff the Magic Dragon for them. The cartoons were forgotten and Sunny sang several more songs as they gathered around. Then Sunny handed the guitar to Melanie and taught her a few basic chords. There were no cat-strangling sounds, and the teen girl was ecstatic at what she could do. She looked up and saw her mother standing at the doorway, a grin from one side of her face to the other.
“Look Momma,” she beamed. “I can play Sunny’s guitar.”
“Well, I just came down to look for Sunny. She wanted to help with the pies.”
Sunny stood up, and Melanie tried to hand her the guitar. “No. You keep playing. Just don’t let the little kids mess with it. Put it in the case when you are done.”
As they walked back to the kitchen, Norma spoke: “It looks like we need to get a new gift for Mel for Christmas. I wonder if I can borrow you tomorrow to go look for a guitar for her? Where do they sell them?”
“Well, they have cheap ones in Woolworth’s for $20 or so, but if she sticks with it, she’d need a better instrument in a couple months. The best places for good value are pawn shops. That’s where I got mine, for $100. You could probably get a good first guitar there for half that. It would last for the first couple of years. Maybe in a few Christmases you can get her a better one if she is still into it.”
“We have one pawn shop in Eureka,” Norma said. “I’ll call and see how late they are open tomorrow. Mom will have lotsa help when my sisters and aunts all get here. I’m sure we can sneak away for an hour.”
Sunny made three pies that afternoon, a chocolate, a pumpkin, and a lemon meringue. Norma made the apple pie, and Mom made a peach pie, both of which required more time (and less cooking skill) only slicing fruit and braiding a top crust. At the end of the afternoon there was a rush of little feet into the kitchen as the aromas from the baking spread into the den. Melanie carefully handed Sunny the guitar case.
Ben and Dad came in shortly thereafter. It was hunger, not aromas that brought them in.
“This lad is a wonder with a toolbox,” Dad proclaimed. “He got the old Studebaker running like it did from the showroom.”
“The timing was just a bit off,” Ben said. “Some new plugs and a bit of other work was all it needed.”
Ben had an uncle who worked for the Army in the motor pool during the war. When Japan surrendered, army surplus Jeeps were being practically given away. While working jeeps were initially selling for $100 or so, ones that didn’t run were sold for as little as $20 and his uncle bought dozens of them and fixed them up and sold them for as much as $200 each. That was the start of his little garage and he moved into fixing up jeeps for those who had bought one and worn it out. He also moved into fixing sedans and station wagons for the post-war automotive boom. His initial clientele for this had mainly been other colored people at first, but as time went by word went out the cars fixed by Henry stayed fixed and were a better value than other repair jobs, bringing in a bigger customer base.
Ben had started working for Henry when he was 10, more as a way for the man to give money to Ben’s divorced mother than anything else. It was only $2 a week at first, when the boy simply cleaned cars and tidied up the shop, but in a few years the boy was doing simple mechanical things: changing tires and wheeling the cars in and out of the garage. Eventually his pay was up to $20 a week and his mother started insisting he save half of it for college. Ben did one better than that, buying up a few old cars his uncle felt weren’t worth saving, getting them running and selling them for a hundred dollars or two.
The dinner was simple. A small roast, broiled potatoes and carrots, but it was home-cooked, and everyone complimented Mom on her efforts, even if Sunny and Norma had a hand in the meal. Sunny’s chocolate silk pie was dessert and everyone loved it, especially the chocolate-loving children.
After the dishes were done by Sunny and me (to my mother’s astonishment). Norma had phoned and found out that the pawn shop was opening at 7 and closing at noon on Christmas Eve, so she planned to pick us up at the motel before 7 and we would all spend the rest of the day at Mom’s.
It had been a late dinner, and Melanie had begged Sunny for another guitar lesson before we left. Dad wanted to try out his retuned car with the mechanic on hand, so we got Ben and headed to the motel at about 10.
We slept, with Ben on a cot the motel owners had supplied free of charge. Unlike the prior owners these were eager to get business from anyone with money, no matter what race. They had also proudly shown that they were listed in The Negro Travelers’ Green Book guide from a couple years before.
We woke up a bit after 6, and all had done our washroom duties and dressed nicely. Today Sunny and Ben would meet the rest of the family, so we wanted to look spiffy. Norma picked us up at 6:50 and drove us to the pawn shop, which had a rather meager collections of guitars for sale. Three were beginner models, and not any better than the ones from Woolworth’s, although a bit cheaper. The other two included a high-end model that would be suitable for a professional musician, and a middling model, which Sunny decided was appropriate for Melanie, although overpriced. It was priced at $150, which it might have been worth in a music store after being completely refitted and cleaned. But this was not. Sunny played it for a few minutes and it held its tune. She made an offer of $60 for it, probably what the pawn shop had paid for it.
After a bit of haggling, to the amusement of Norma, she settled at a price of $100, which gave the shop a decent profit while getting Melanie a good first guitar at a price they could afford.
The next stop was at the grocery store for some supplies that Mom had requested we pick up, and then finally to the house.
“What can I do?” Sunny asked Mom, while Norma scurried off to her room to wrap her last present.
“Do you peel potatoes?” Mom replied. “No one else likes doing that and we need a pile of potatoes for mashing.”
“Sure,” Sunny replied. “I can do that.” Her eyes opened when Mom handed her a five-pound bag of Idahos, and several pots. She started right in on them.
“It’s wrapped,” Norma said when she came down to the kitchen. Problem is the wrapping doesn’t do a thing to hide what it is, so I left it upstairs under the bed. I want it to be a surprise on Christmas morning.” She started working on the ham that would be first into the oven, with Mom cleaning up the big turkey that would follow it.
“Hi Sunny,” Melanie said with a smile when she popped into the kitchen. “Any chance of another lesson? I wish I had a guitar to practice on when you are away.”
“Well, you could borrow my guitar. I set it on the sofa. Or if you want to help me here, I’ll get through them quicker and we can have some practice and a sing-along.”
“I’ll help you,” Melanie said, and Norma’s eyes widened. Normally her daughter would die rather than help in the kitchen. “What do I need to do?”
Mom got out another paring knife, and Sunny showed the girl how to peel potatoes. Soon after Norma’s other kids noticed that their older sister had disappeared and explored until they found her in the kitchen. They immediately decided that the work must be a game, so they clamored to be allowed to ‘play’ too. At six and eight they were too small to use a knife, so Sunny got two more pots of water and let the older ones wash potatoes. She encouraged them by continually telling them they were doing a good job, even when they didn’t and soon they were doing a better job.
The youngest boy, only four years old, was mostly just playing in the water, splashing it all over, including himself. Norma finally picked him up and took him upstairs to get dry clothes while Sunny and Melanie dried the floor and stressed to the little ones that keeping the water in the pots was part of doing a good job.
An hour later they were done, and Mom congratulated them on doing a good job. The potatoes were put into pots to boil, with Sunny promising to return with her helper in an hour to mash them.
“Oh no,” Mom said. “We only pre-boil them on Christmas Eve. They’ll get the finish boil tomorrow just before we eat so they are hot and creamy.”
With that Sunny took Melanie into Dad’s den where they had a short lesson on the guitar. It only lasted 15 minutes before the group of little ones heard the music and invaded, wanting Sunny to sing. And it was 14, not three of them. My other sisters had arrived, as well as a few of my aunts and uncles and suddenly there was a mass of kids hyper with pre-Christmas.
Sunny took them into the den, and they nestled around her as she took the guitar and started to sing. To her surprise Melanie joined in. She had a lovely voice and while she didn’t have Sunny’s photographic music memory, she remembered the words from Puff the Magic Dragon and Tell It on the Mountain. Her older siblings joined in on the chorus to Puff and soon all the kids were singing, although not necessarily to the song that Sunny was playing. She played for two hours until the Moms appeared, carrying plates of hot dogs. The horde left and while they ate Melanie and Sunny had another short lesson. When the kids reappeared Sunny sent Melanie back to the Den with the guitar to practice while she started to read stories to the little ones.
Soon all the little ones were calling her Aunt Sunny, to her delight, as she read the story books over and over, sometimes repeating the same one time and again. There were tears from some of the smallest when Sunny said she had to go help the Moms with dinner. Finally, Melanie decided it was too noisy to practice anymore, so she volunteered to take over as the designated reader. But before she started, she sang and played Puff the Magic Dragon, the one song she had memorized and Sunny listened and decided she would be a player, hardly making any errors in a song she had just learned, on an instrument she was a beginner with.
Sunny went into the kitchen and started making a macaroni salad in a large enough batch to be one of the sides for the Christmas Eve dinner, leaving most of it for the Christmas Day feast tomorrow. For a while she was working next to Norma.
“You are working wonders with my daughter,” the older woman said. “She adores you and wants to be like you. She’s never offered to help in the kitchen before, and she normally despises her brothers and sisters, yet there she is reading to them. She seems to have grown up by several years over the last few days.”
“She wants to be like me?” Sunny denied. “That can’t be. I’m just a hippie street performer struggling to get by.”
“Well, you have my little brother wrapped around your fingers, too,” Norma said. “And he’s going to be a doctor someday. You’re beautiful, talented, and little kids flock to you.”
“They know I love them,” Sunny said. “I … I can’t have children of my own. My bits down there aren’t right.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Norma said. “But perhaps you can adopt some one day. I’m sure a doctor’s wife would be looked on well by the adoption agencies.”
Not likely, Sunny thought. They would find out about her prior life and she would never be able to adopt. They would declare that she was a man, and two men could never adopt children.
The supper was a light one, with sandwiches and parts of the sides made for the feast. There was a lime Jello with grapes in it, Sunny’s macaroni salad, and a potato salad. The kids ate hot dogs again. It seemed that kids can eat hot dogs seven days a week and never tire of them. That crew just devoured them. Sunny and Melanie sat at the kids table and served the smaller ones. I heard several claim they didn’t want any of the sides until Sunny said she had made her macaroni ‘just for them’ and they then clamored for the dish. A few also liked the Jello with some saying they wanted ‘Just Jello’ and others insisting that they got a lot of the grapes.
After dinner the kids, who ate faster, fled and Sunny and Melanie gathered their plates, and then cleared the adult table as well as the older generations sat back and watched. Norma, in particular, was amazed at her daughter helping out. At home apparently she had to be forced to help out at a meal.
Once the table was cleared, Sunny started filling the sink with water.
“No,” Mom ordered. “You two cleared up. Some of the other girls will do the dishes.”
“Oh, it is alright,” Sunny replied. “Mel and I will get it. I’ll wash and she can dry. She probably knows where everything goes.” Melanie nodded reluctantly.
“No dear,” Mom insisted. “You two can go and calm down the youngsters. You seem to have a talent for that.” Melanie looked relieved, and Sunny finally agreed. Tending toddlers was becoming her favorite chore.
Sunny started off singing Puff again. The kids couldn’t get enough of the song.
“You sing nicer than Melanie,” a six-year-old claimed.
“Yes, but you are going to have Melanie as a sister or cousin forever,” Sunny said. “I’ll only be back here if Mitch invites me. Maybe by next year he will have another girlfriend.”
That statement caused general dismay among the crowd, and a few seconds later I had a delegation of the entire group standing around the chair I was sitting in.
“You has to keep Aunt Sunny,” one of the little girls insisted. “Marry her so she will be our forever aunt and not some other girlfriend.”
“Well Sunny and I are a bit too young to get married yet,” Mitch said. “Although I hope when the time comes, we can become a permanent couple. I’m going to invite Sunny back every year, and if you guys are good for her, I’m sure she will come.”
That response worked, and the small herd crossed the room and settled in around Sunny again. Melanie took the guitar from her, and went looking for a quiet nook to practice in. Sunny read stories over and over for the next two hours. Finally Mom came into the room with a cardboard box, saying “Do you all know what time it is now?”
“Stockings,” was the general response from the smaller set, and Mom started handing out stockings, calling a name and we all came up one at a time to take ours, just like we had done since we adults were little. Near the bottom of the box mine was called, just after my sister Norma. The little ones found places to set theirs on the couches and chairs in the living room and around the Christmas tree. There were six hooks on the mantle and my sisters and I, along with Mom and Dad hung our stockings there.
“Sunny got no stocking,” an alert little one noticed.
“Not this year,” Mom said. “But Santa can put her things into Mitchell’s.” That seemed to end the dilemma. I could see her eyeing the mantle to see where another hook could go next year. I only hoped that it would be needed. Sunny had grown to be such an important part of my life that I couldn’t imagine living without her.
“Now it is time for bed,” my sister Brenda announced. She only had two toddlers, but they were cute ones. There were groans from some, claiming they wanted to stay up late and meet Santa, while others said that Santa wouldn’t come if they weren’t asleep when he came. Sunny got the final word in though.
“If you are all in your sleeping bags in five minutes I will come down to the den and sing you three songs.”
“Puff,” one little girl squealed.
“Puff three times,” a boy suggested.
“Hurry,” Sunny warned. “You only have four minutes left.” That kicked off a stampede to the den.
The adults sat in the living room, until Sunny came back a half hour later. “I think they are all asleep,” she said. “It took five songs though.”
“You sing beautifully my dear,” Mom said. “And the kids love it. Did you write that song about the dragon?”
Sunny laughed. “I wish. It is a tune that Peter, Paul, and Mary sing. It is on their latest album and I have stolen it for my own shows.” That led to her explaining how she performed on Haight street in the city and was now making good money now that she was singing with her guitar instead of just dancing with her tambourine, due to my suggestion.
After Melanie finally agreed to go to bed Mom went to the front closet and brought down her stash of stocking stuffers. Filling them was her personal chore for Christmas, and she would never let anyone else help. The other parents went to their hiding places and brought out toys ‘from Santa” for their little ones. We missed most of that when Dad offered us a ride to the motel. Sunny did get to see Norma come down the stairs with a wrapped present that could only be the guitar.
Chapter 7 – She was playin’ soft while Sunny sang the blues
We got back to the motel at about 11 and were soon in our beds. Or at least Sunny and I, Ben was in his cot, hanging out on all four sides. Sleep came easy, but at about 5 a.m. Sunny woke, nearly as excited as the kids in the house would be when they woke up. I gave my girl a Christmas kiss, and wanted to do oh so much more, but with Ben in the same room we refrained. Ben woke groggily from the noise of Sunny showering but was happy to dart in when she came out wrapped in a bath towel. I could hear him showering as I brushed Sunny’s long, blonde hair. I was getting quite good at it, and when Ben came out, completely nude, showing off his magnificent body, I darted into the bathroom and had my own shower, thankfully with hot water since we were probably the first in the motel to use the water.
Soon Sunny was ready and we went out into the cold, heading to the house. It was still before seven when we got there, and the place was quiet. Mom had told us she would leave the back door open for us, so we crept in and sat quietly in the kitchen until the rest of the house roused. Sunny started making coffee. With over a dozen adults in the house more than one pot would be needed.
Before she was finished, she heard the first pair of footsie-clad feet enter the living room, quickly followed by a shrill shriek of “Santa came, Santa came.” I took over the coffee-making so Sunny could go and watch the little ones come in, in groups of two to four, but always with excited smiles on their faces as they made their way to where they had put their stockings the night before, and where ‘Santa’ had piled their gifts. The last shriek was from Melanie, who recognized her gift as soon as she saw it and hurried over to rip the paper away from the guitar case even faster than the little kids had with their presents. She opened the case to pull out the guitar, and quickly strummed a few chords to show that it was in perfect tune. She carefully set in back in the case to protect it from the mayhem that surrounded it and walked over to a smiling Sunny.
“You did this, didn’t you?” she accused.
“Nope,” Sunny said. “It was all from a Santa that loves you. He might have given me some tips on how to use it, but it was all. I’ll point out some of the features he showed me to you later.”
Mel was not fooled. The moment her parents appeared she leapt on them before I could even give them their coffees. “Thank you Mummy,” she said. “This is the best Christmas ever.” Then she turned to hug her father, who she knew must have approved such an expensive Christmas present.
Coffees in hand, the adults largely congregated in the kitchen, except for Sunny who doesn’t drink the brew. She just stood at the door to the living room, eating up the joy that she saw on the little faces within. Apparently Santa had gotten everyone the things they wanted. Melanie’s sister Kathy got a small record player, and Sunny soon realized that this was the gift that would have been her older sister’s until the guitar entered the picture. She edged over to Melanie and mentioned that she should buy records from her baby-sitting money and give them to Kathy in return for the right to play them on the player. Sunny knew that most people who didn’t have her eidetic memory for music often had to play songs over and over in order to memorize the words and the chords.
The mayhem went on for an hour, while the Moms worked on a breakfast. There were sausages, scrambled eggs, toast and my aunt’s hashed brown potatoes. The adults ate first, and then the kids were ordered away from their toys while the Dads gathered up the reams of wrapping paper into a huge sack for disposal.
When the little ones returned to the slightly less messy room, they gathered up their toys and generally handed the ones they didn’t want to play with right away to their Moms, and each took one toy or another down to the den to move the mayhem out there. Someone had come down and rolled up the sleeping bags.
Ben and I moved down as well, noticing Sunny and a still-glowing Melanie sitting in the office with her new guitar. When we sat down, planning to watch a little Christmas TV, it didn’t take long for some of the little ones to come over. Ben had spent most of the prior day outside working on cars or doing some lawn work for Dad, so the youngsters hadn’t seen him before supper, which he had eaten at the other table from them.
“Why you so dirty?” a little voice asked, as she rubbed on Ben’s wrist, to see if she could get the black off. Others watched as my roommate explained that that was his natural coloring, and that he had little brothers and sisters their age that looked the same. He turned over his hands to show the lighter part of his skin. The kids aahed.
“Kin you read to us?” was the next question, and when Ben nodded a little one flew off to the stack of books and brought back a half dozen.
Toys were largely ignored for the next hour and a half, as Ben and I sat reading to the smaller children. Ben had a little blonde girl on his lap, and I had a boy, a cousin of hers, on mine. I knew the names of all the children, but Ben had trouble with so many new little faces.
Melanie came in with her guitar then, and the attention left us as she played a short concert. The first song was Puff the Magic Dragon, and the second was Blowin’ in the Wind. She played both well but that was the end of her repertoire. The little ones wandered back to their toys and Melanie packed up her guitar and headed to the kitchen, where Sunny had gone when she left the girl after teaching her the new song.
In the kitchen all the adult women were working. Sunny and Melanie, the new girls, were working on the mashed potatoes for the army that was eating. The ham was already cooked and cool, and Dad was slicing it off to the side. Carving was the only job that a man was allowed to do in this kitchen. When he finished the pig, the huge turkey that had roasted most of the night would be out of the oven and ready to carve. The meat would go onto two large platters, for the adult table, and two smaller ones for the children’s table. Sides were corn, potato salad, peas, carrots, and dressing. There were countless variations on salads and jellos in various bowls from Mom’s collection, some of which were only used at Christmas. Her fancy china set adorned the big table, and the less valuable day-to-day china was on the kids table. It was two o’clock when the meal was to be served, but hungry bodies were led to the kitchen two hours before by their noses and Mom moved the mealtime ahead.
When the meal finally started, Sunny and Melanie sat at the kids table and plated meals and cut the meat up for the littlest ones, while the older kids helped themselves, occasionally with ‘eyes-bigger-than-stomachs’ which led to food being left on the plate. Dad’s dogs would eat well tonight. But even the fullest stomachs seemed to have room for pie when it was offered, at least by the kids. Many of the adults suggested that they would have their pie later, after the main meal had settled a bit.
At the end of the meal I stood up and started to clear the table, announcing that the cooks should be allowed to relax while the men cleaned up. Only one uncle and two brothers-in-law seemed to agree with me, while the other men disappeared into the den or living rooms. Some of them seemed to feel that they could only digest the big meal by lying down, or at least back.
Mom jumped up as well. She didn’t trust the men to handle the leftovers, which she packed away in her wide selection of Tupperware filling the fridge even more than it had been before the meal. But my sisters and aunts stayed in their seats, relishing not having to clear the table they had set so abundantly. Only Melanie and Sunny cleared, doing the kids table.
“I’ll wash,” I announced when the food was put away for leftovers.
“Not my fine China, you won’t,” Mom said. “Thanks for the help clearing, Mitch, but clearing is enough. Sunny may help though. I don’t think that the little ones need to be entertained today, when they all have new toys.”
“I’ll head out and look after them,” Melanie said, efficiently getting out of washing dishes. She had enjoyed being treated as an adult by the other women when she was helping prepare the meal, but now her teenaged laziness caught up with her. Plus, she could play on her guitar if she sang to the kids.
With so many hands washing and drying, the cleanup only took an hour. I was amused by the sound of a plate smashing to the floor. Apparently it was not only men who were clumsy.
At about 3:30 the kids were called back into the living room to clear the presents from under the tree. The morning mayhem was just things from Santa. Now it was the time for other gifts. The adults had their ‘secret Santa’ gifts, one each. But the kids scored big time with every child getting a gift from Mom and Dad, the aunts, and the grand-aunts. As well, every child bought something for every other child (or their parents did.
Dad sat on the stool as ‘Santa’ near the tree and called out the names on each package. Because there were so many, it was not one-at-a-time like some other families, but Dad grabbed one, reading the name, then handed it to Melanie or Sunny (the elves) to deliver to the recipient as fast as possible. Eventually the huge pile of presents was down to the last few, including some cards that had been placed on the tree, usually containing cash for the recipient.
My present from Uncle Noah was a briefcase, since I was in college now. It must have been well over the $10 limit the adults were supposed to spend on each other. Sunny got a pretty shawl from my sister Audrey. Even Ben scored. He hadn’t been put into the ‘secret Santa,’ but my Dad had put together a small tool kit using some of his best hand tools along with a few he had picked up at the auto parts store.
Pie and coffee for the adults followed, and small voices claimed that they could eat another slice. There was enough for half slices for each, to their contentment.
After six some of the families started to leave to allow them to get home in decent time. All the nephews and cousins waved goodbye to me, but Sunny got a big hug from each. At least eight children came over to me and warned me that Sunny had to come next Christmas or I would be in big trouble.
Eventually it was just three of my sisters left, who would be spending the night in the house. Sunny, Ben and I said our goodbyes, and then Dad drove us to the motel, saving us another walk. Mom gave me one of her famous Mom-hugs and whispered in my ear that Sunny “was a keeper.”
At the motel we all crashed as soon as possible after a busy day following a short night. We woke at about 10 the next morning and went across the street to a restaurant, back in business after Christmas.
While we were there, Sunny found us a booth adjacent to a young family of five and befriended the kids by asking what Santa had brought them. Sunny chatted with the elder two kids while waiting for our breakfast, and then again after. Then she noticed that the mother was having trouble with the youngest tot, and her breakfast plate was sitting uneaten next to her,
“Do you want me to take the baby while you eat?” Sunny asked.
“I wish,” the mother said. “But the minute she is out of my arms she cries and cries.” Sunny then leaned over, so her hair draped down around her face. This entranced the child, who reached out one hand to grab hair. Sunny just pulled back a bit, making funny faces that soon had the little girl giggling. Soon she reached out with both hands, and Sunny scooped her up from her mother’s lap.
The woman looked amazed as her formerly cranky daughter was giggling on the lap of the thin blonde girl. She took a few seconds, and then turned to her food, which was cool, but not so cold as to be inedible, as long as she ate quickly and didn’t try to savor the food. Soon she was fed and offered to take her child back. The little girl refused, hurting the mother’s pride, but not so much. She really needed a break from Momness.
When the parents found out that we were hitching to the city, they invited us to join them. The kids cheered in agreement, and we all went out to the family station wagon. Sunny and the three kids crawled in the back compartment, while Ben and I sat in the rear seats, and the parents sat in the front. I had our bags and Sunny’s guitar in the middle of us. It was nearly noon when we pulled out, and we expected to be in sight of the Golden Gate Bridge by five. The family lived just before the bridge, but Ben noted it was easier to hitch into the city than out of it.
About two hours later Ben spoke with some urgency in his voice: “Pull over into the rest area coming up.” Stan, the father, did that without knowing exactly why. But by the time we got onto the exit ramp, the cause was apparent. Steam was flooding out from under the hood, and Ben had the man pull to the first parking spot, and then kill the engine. He had smelled the steam before any of the rest of us, and luckily, we were near the rest area.
The baby was asleep, and Sunny handed her to Fran, her mother. Then they, and the kids walked over to a near picnic table, where they sat down. Sunny decided the kids needed to get some exercise after the hours in the car, so she told them to race to various places in the park. The girl was over a year older than her brother, about six, so she usually won, until the last race when she decided to let up, letting the boy win one of the three races. Finally the exhausted kids flopped on the bench and declared themselves exhausted. This was followed by a cry for something to drink. Sunny just pointed to the water fountain outside of the washrooms and they headed in that direction. Sunny came back to the car, which had three heads under the hood. Luckily one of them knew what they were doing. Ben had the little tool kit out that Dad had got him for Christmas and was tinkering.
He said they needed water for the rad, and I got Sunny’s and my canteens out, pouring one into the other and then taking the empty one to the washrooms as I watched Sunny heading back to the picnic table carrying her guitar.
When I got back to the car the radiator cap was off and Ben was pouring water from the canteen into the rad, immediately stopping the steam. It took four more canteens full to fill the rad, and then Ben took out a wad of gum from his mouth and plugged it into a spot where steam had been squirting out minutes before. I filled the canteens again and took them over to where the rest of the family was listening to Sunny’s impromptu performance. The kids gladly had more water, as did Fran.
I went back to the car. Ben wanted to listen to it run and to make sure the gum was stopping the leak. The car probably could get to the Bridge before overheating again, even if the gum didn’t hold. After 15 minutes Ben declared himself satisfied and I went to get the family. Mom told the older kids to hit the bathrooms, and both claimed not to need to. But then Sunny said she needed to go and all five of them walked over.
The boy was out first, then Sunny, who took the baby while Fran did her business. The counter was barely clean enough, but Sunny washed it down and then laid out the baby and took off her sopping diaper. Fran came out with her diaper bag, and finished the job, wrapping the soaked cloth diaper in a different, evil smelling bag. Soon they were all off to the car, where Ben was holding the boy up so he could see the engine as he pointed out various parts and what they did. Ben dropped the boy and then he, I and Stan made a quick run for the washrooms as Sunny and Fran loaded the kids into the car. There was a three to two vote for Sunny to sit with the kids in the back (assuming the baby was voting for). Ben wanted to ride shotgun to keep an eye on the gauges and to make sure the car sounded right, so Fran and I were in the middle, although she spent most of the time turned around watching the kids and listening to Sunny’s songs and fairy tales.
Due to the stop at the rest stop it was getting very late when we got to Sausalito where Fran and Stan insisted that we stop for supper. Stan clinched it when he promised to drive us into the City. Sunny was in heaven: Fran was making a quick pasta supper, so she got to bathe the older kids, one at a time. Both behaved impeccably for her, and she was able to comb some baby gunk out of her hair. All three went down for supper, a filling spaghetti.
After eating, the kids insisted that Sunny read to them for an hour. That gave Fran a chance to feed the baby, but soon the little one was sitting in her sister’s lap as Sunny read several of their books. There was an argument when Fran declared bedtime, but Sunny defused that by offering to tuck the kids in. They wanted a bedtime story and she couldn’t read to both at the same time, so they got one more book downstairs, and then Sunny led them upstairs with one in each hand and put them to bed. It was 15 minutes before she was back down, and Fran announced she would hold the fort while the other three headed into the City.
Traffic was light. Not only over the bridge but inside the City as they drove towards Haight. Ben and I pointed out several bus stops that could have taken us home on a night bus, but Stan just kept going, finally stopping at Haight and Ashbury.
“Now remember to take the wagon into your mechanic tomorrow and get a new radiator,” Ben reminded Stan. “That is a patch up job, and it will fail when you least expect it. You got lucky this time.”
“No doubt,” he replied. “Imagine if we hadn’t met you. I would have driven a few more miles past that rest stop and the engine would have seized up if I didn’t get it turned off in time.”
Sunny had fallen asleep on my shoulder minutes after we left Sausalito, and I nudged her back into the land of the living. I was amazed again at how beautiful she was, with her long blonde hair arrayed about her. She had just woken up, and when she smiled at me, I fell in love all over again.
We stumbled out of the wagon, and as Stan drove away we started to make the half block walk home. We all crawled into our beds, and fell hard asleep, thinking that it would be another entire year before we had to do this again.
The next morning we awoke one at a time. Ben was first. He had to work somewhere. I think I woke up when I heard his toast popping. There was only a bit of Sunny’s last batch of bread left in the fridge when we were gone, and he got it, slightly stale, but still tasty with peanut butter. I was in no rush today. School wouldn’t start until after New Year’s Day. And Sunny could make her own hours. There probably wouldn’t be many on the street so soon after Christmas. I decided to wake her gently and bent down to lightly run my tongue across her nipples. I was surprised when they went erect, and larger than ever before.
“Ooh, wow,” Sunny said, waking up. “That feels different, and really good.”
“I think your hormones are kicking in,” I said. “It’s been a month now. We will have to film you today.”
“What? Really?” Sunny was up like a bullet and ran to the washroom to look in the mirror.
“No boob yet,” she said sadly when she came out, wearing only her briefs. And the nipples were only big because you were licking them. More please.”
She crawled back into bed and we pleasured ourselves for over an hour before getting up and dressing. We had a breakfast: eggs and no toast, and then Sunny got undressed again other than her panties.
The professor wanted to have a record of her development and had gotten a 16-mm movie camera from the university. Now I had it and was to take a series of photos of Sunny standing naked face-on, in profile, and from the rear, with her head not visible. But Sunny wouldn’t leave it at that. She pointed out that her long blonde hair made her recognizable anyway, so she developed a little dance that she did identically with each filming. The entire film only took under two minutes, out of the four minutes the camera could do, but the professor wanted to have them processed right away, so he could view them as soon as possible. So I dropped the used film at his office later that week and got a new blank reel for the following month.
When the filming was done, Sunny dressed and started a new batch of bread, while making a list of things we needed for the apartment after being away for a half week. We went shopping while the bread rose and were back in time to knead it and put it into pans.
Chapter 8 – There’s a man with a gun over there
There was a concert at the Longshoreman’s Hall on New Year’s Eve, and all three attended. A guy named Ken Kesey who had just returned from an epic bus ride across America was there and was in charge of the Kool Aid. Sunny abstained from it, remembering the bad trip she had gone through the last time, although Ben took a couple of hits. I had researched the drug, as little as I could find out about it in the medical journals and had decided I did not want to mess with the wiring of my brain, even if the stuff was still legal to take. Both Sunny and I did partake of marijuana cigarettes. Not that we bought any but sitting around the big tables it was hard to not get a joint passed to you from time to time, and it was considered rude not to partake. In fact, not smoking could quickly get you labelled a ‘narc’ (a narcotics officer) or a policeman.
Sunny spent quite a bit of time talking to a guy named Neal Cassady, and I started to wonder. The guy was handsome in all the ways I wasn’t and at one point he offered her a ride on ‘Furthur,’ the bus used in the cross-country odyssey of the year before. He apparently had been the main driver of the bus. But fortunately (for me) Sunny turned him down, and he wandered off to the Kool Aid table. Sunny came back to me and told me the guy had been Dean Moriarty in the famous Jack Kerouac book On The Road, which was one of my favorites. Apparently Cassady had lived in North Beach when Sunny had lived up there, although she was unsure that she was living as a girl then. Nevertheless they had never met before.
The light show at the concert was more trippy than normal. Instead of just colored lights moving about, some guys had come up with some way to project colored liquid gels that swirled about in a kaleidoscope of colors. It blew away the folks on the Kool Aid, and was pretty spiffy to those of us just stoned on weed.
Ben said he could still see the bubbles of color swirling about as we rode the busses back home.
January meant a return to school, term two of the eight I needed for my pre-med degree. Our rent in the apartment went up to $30 a month, but Sunny decided to chip in the extra $5. The rainy season was starting to abate so she had plenty of days on the street with her little act.
This made it easier on Ben and me, both of whom were struggling to survive on our scholarships. And of course, the food costs at the apartment were way down, with Sunny doing the shopping (sometimes with her own money) and making us great home-cooked meals at a fraction of what we had been paying for pizza and Chinese delivery food in the past.
We were getting into the month when Ben insisted on a road trip that weekend. Or more accurately a bus trip up to the North Beach area. Sunny was game from the minute she learned the destination. She always liked going back to where she had first lived in San Francisco. I was the hard sell, but Ben wouldn’t tell us where exactly we were going. He just said I had to see it, whatever it was, and that it wouldn’t be a cheap trip, which made me less excited about it. We would go on Thursday afternoon, when both Ben and I had no classes. Sunny was hoping it would be rainy but decided to skip work even if it was nice.
I grudgingly agreed to go, and on Thursday just after lunch we gathered at the bus stop and headed on the Haight bus to our transfer spot to go up to North Beach. Our goal was the corner of Broadway and Columbus. Sunny knew the streets but couldn’t remember what was there.
We got off the bus and looked at the old building Ben was pointing at. A sign said Condor Club and advertised Topless Go-go dancing. I had heard of go-go dancing, where scantily clad girls wearing little more than underwear would dance on pedestals or such. I had never heard of topless though. It couldn’t mean naked breasts, could it? There was a short lineup outside the club, and Ben got us into the line. Apparently the lineup went around the corner in the evenings, but just after noon on a weekday it wasn’t bad. This is where the expensive bit came in. They wanted an outrageous five dollars just to get in.
We got a table near the back of the hall, at Ben’s suggestion. There were three or four girls dancing in little cages in the new bikinis that were all the rage at the beaches. A waitress came around and part two of the gouging hit. Draft beers cost $2 each, instead of the 25 to 40 cents in most places. Once they were served the music died and an announcer introduced Miss Carol Doda, The North Beach Wonder Girl. Then the music started up again and a piano began descending from a hole in the roof. There was a girl on top of it dancing the new dance called the Swim, wearing not very much.
As she danced, the not very much became even less, until near the end of the first song she was wearing nothing above her waist. And her ‘above the waist’ was pretty spectacular. I had little experience looking at naked women, other than in men’s magazines. But she was huge. Her breasts looked at least twice as large as the average woman.
Sunny stared, transfixed. By the end of three songs, perhaps 10 minutes of dancing, she took off her bikini bottom, revealing something Ben later told us was a g-string that covered her sex, but only barely. She hopped off the piano, now standing on the stage, and scurried off through the crowd towards the dressing rooms, with a man on either side of her ensuring that no patrons decided to get overly friendly with the near-naked blonde girl.
“Wow,” Sunny said as we sipped our beers and watched them hoist the piano back up into the heights above the stage. “I am so jealous now.”
“It is just a matter of genetics,” I told her. “Your breasts are growing, but they will never get to that size. I don’t know how she got so big.”
“I do,” Ben said with a grin. “Apparently she goes to a doctor every week or so and gets injections of something called silicone into her boobs. Now, they are more than three times as big as they were when she started dancing.”
“I. Want. That.” Sunny said. “Can I Mitch? Please.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” I replied. I couldn’t refuse anything those blue eyes asked me. “I’ll have to do some research. But I’m pretty sure you will have to wait and see how big your breasts get on the hormones alone.”
“Also,” Ben added, “did you notice how her breasts stuck out? No sag, no bounce. I doubt they even feel natural. It could be like little rocks in there.”
“Don’t care,” Sunny said. “I want them.”
That led me back to the post-grad library the next day, where I scoured the journals. I found out that Dow Corning had developed something called a breast implant, and I wrote to them for information. I got more than I expected. A salesman wrote back and to my surprise he sent a set of three different sized implant pairs. Sunny was relaxing on the sofa that night as her dinner cooked when I tossed one of the larger ones onto her lap.
“What’s this,” she said as she held up the floppy gel-filled sac.
“Your left boob,” I quipped and tossed its partner over. “These are what I think you should get instead of injections. A plastic surgeon will make a small incision under your breast, once it is grown out enough, and then stick these in under your natural breasts. There will be a little scar, but not much if the surgeon is good. And the scar will hide in the crease under your natural breasts, so no one will know it is there, unless they are looking for it.”
“These are awesome,” Sunny crowed as she held the implants up over her boobs. “I want to wear them now, instead of the towels.”
It turned out that the largest implants were much smaller than the towels, and Sunny had to get some new bras, 32C that held the implants fairly securely to her chest.
She wore the implants to her next appointment with Dr. MacBrien. He was amazed.
“I have heard of injections, but not these,” he said hefting one after they had been removed so he could inspect Sunny’s hormonal growth. “My specialty is Pharmacology. You really need to see a plastic surgeon about this. But I’m not going to recommend anyone yet. You have to let the hormones work for at least a half year, and maybe a year, until they stop growing. I do have someone in mind, but if Mitch wants to talk to him first, that might be a good idea.”
The doctor gave me contact information for the plastic surgeon, who also taught at the medical school one day a week and had a private practice the rest of the time, like Dr. MacBrien. I called his office the next day and got an appointment for Thursday afternoon. I could not pry the large size implants out of Sunny’s hands (or bra, more exactly) but I took the two smaller sized ones to Dr. Killensworth.
He seemed interested by the implants I showed him. “I’ve seen women wanting injections, but I think introducing silicone into the body that way could be potentially dangerous. I worry about the silicone moving around in the breast, and possibly migrating to other locations. These implants seem to be potentially more effective.”
The doctor took the medium implants, and copies of all the research I had done for further study. He didn’t see much of a market for transsexuals like Sunny, but saw that there might be a healthy market for entertainers and other women wishing for a larger breast line, as well as reconstructive work for women who had lost a breast to cancer. He also wanted to meet Sunny in a future visit, which he booked for a month away.
A surprise came at the end of the visit, when I explained that Sunny was a little worried about the implants sliding around in the bra.
“Take off your shirt,” the doctor ordered, and I complied, wondering what he was up to. He spun around in his chair and took two small tin containers from the credenza behind him. I was made to lay on his examining table as he spilled a liquid from one of the tins on the back of the smallest breast form and then laid it on my right nipple. He then duplicated it with the matching form and set that one on my left nipple. He made me hold them in place for about five minutes as he explained what he had done.
“This container holds an adhesive for human skin. We use it occasionally in plastic surgery. It is completely safe for skin, but I don’t know what effect it will have on the implant plastic. The other is a releasing agent. You just need to use a Q-tip to apply the releasing agent to the glue and it should come free. Bathe the area with soap after.”
I let go of the implants and sat up. To my surprise they adhered to my chest, jiggling a bit as I moved. “I didn’t want breasts,” I complained. “Sunny does. Take them off.”
“I will,” the doctor said. “But it would be better if you just wore them home and took them off in six hours, to give a good test of the glue. If it hasn’t affected the implants by that time then it never will, and it will be safe for your friend.”
“But I can’t go home with breasts. Everyone on the bus will see them and stare.”
“Don’t be silly,” he chastised. “They are only 3/4-of an inch thick. With the sweatshirt you wore in they won’t be noticeable. And it will give you an idea of what your friend is going through.”
I finally relented and pulled my shirt back on. Looking down I didn’t see any untoward bulges or anything. Perhaps no one would notice. I know that I did. They pulled down on my chest and jiggled a bit as I walked. I pocketed the two tins, and left, wondering if the doctor was crazy for putting them on me, or if I was crazy for letting him do it.
All the way home I was aware of them, jiggling when the bus hit a pothole or anything. I was only getting used to them a bit when I got off the bus at Mario’s stand, where I picked up my papers. Bending over to pick up the Chronicle was odd, as the forms hung straight down.
Sunny had already finished up. Mario was soon closing the kiosk. I headed to the apartment, wondering how I should let Sunny know I was wearing the small forms. In the end, after dropping my newspapers I just reached up and took off the sweatshirt and stood there topless.
Sunny was in the kitchen and didn’t notice at first as she was prepping dinner. Suddenly she froze, and her eyes went wide.
“You have Boobies, Mitch,” she said, coming closer and looking at them. They were definitely not a part of me, my skin was a bit darker than the implants, but they were securely in place, even when Sunny gave them a little squeeze.
“I have to keep them in until 8 tonight,” I said. “Then we can take them off.”
“I want mine glued on,” Sunny insisted,
“Not yet,” I said. I hadn’t gone through all this for her not to wait and find out if it was safe. “After we take mine off if there is no damage, we can do yours.”
“Okay,” she giggled. “Ben said he would be home from the library for supper. Let’s fool him.” With that she darted into the bedroom and came back with a t-shirt. It was loose and baggy on her, but when she pulled it over my head it was tight. It would have been tight on my chest without the implants. With them they certainly stood out.
It took Ben several minutes to notice the change in my torso. Admittedly they weren’t very big. But when he did notice he reached over and fondled them. “Very natural feeling,” he pronounced. He would know, having regularly spent the night with girlfriends. The only ones I had ever touched were Sunny’s and hers were still barely there.
We ate dinner in an odd silence. Ben said that with my long hair (I hadn’t cut it since coming to the City five months ago) and clean-shaven chin, I looked a little like a girl. Not something a guy wants to hear. At eight sharp all three of us got the Q-tips and solvent out and started to loosen the glue. Within 10 minutes I was freed, and now felt the odd sensation of not having breasts. After that we glued Sunny’s bigger ones on her and once the glue set, she was thrilled to be able to do a little dance topless around the living room. The doctor had told me she would have to remove them one day a week for several hours so the skin could get air. I studied the small implants closely and could see no indication that the glue had damaged them in the least.
The next few days flew by. This term seemed tougher than the first, but I was able to maintain my straight A standing.
Early in February we started to feel a different vibe on the streets. There were more and more hippies on Haight and some of the old families moved out as rents increased. Some of the bands took houses, and other free spirits were in apartments like ours.
There was a peace march near the end of February in Golden Gate Park, just down the road, and Sunny wanted to attend, because there were some good bands playing. We left a couple hours early to get a good spot to watch from. I was in my camouflage outfit, but Sunny had tie-dyed it earlier in the week, saying it would be in bad taste to attend a peace rally looking like a soldier.
She was in one of her long, flowing sundresses as the three of us headed down the street. Most of the foot traffic were hippies heading to the park. We caught up to a vaguely familiar girl and walked alongside her. Sunny was first to recognize her.
“I know you. You’re Janis Joplin,” she blurted out.
“And you are the girl who sings and dances at the news stand,” Janis replied. “Are you going to the march? The band is playing there. We rented a house just a street down from here so I thought I would walk in. The boys are taking the gear in our van.”
The girls gossiped about music all the way to the park until Janis had to split off and find her bandmates.
There were thousands at the park. The war in Vietnam had been going for a few years and more and more young people were being drafted. Ben and I didn’t have to worry: we had educational exemptions and surely the war would be over in three years. How could a huge country like America not conquer a tiny place like Vietnam? But we were here to support the ones who were at risk.
There was a small group of blacks in the park. They had won civil rights in their actions of recent years, but somehow things were still heavily unfair with mostly blacks being drafted. The event went on peacefully for a couple hours, until we noticed that vans with SFPD logos on the side drew up around us. For over an hour they just remained parked there, but in the late evening doors opened, and dozens of policemen in riot gear climbed out of the trucks. The music stopped and soon there were two masses of people lined up, police on one side and hippies on the other, neither side looking very happy.
It was fairly early in the tense moments when Sunny stepped up to the line. I screamed at her to come back to safety, but she didn’t. She had something in her hand. It was a daisy that she had woven into her hair this morning. She walked up to a policeman who was probably younger than herself. He thrust his weapon out at her, yelling for her to get back. Instead, she just reached out and stuck the daisy stem into the rifle barrel. As she did, a Chronicle photographer snapped a photo.
Then the man to the young cop’s left thrust his rifle forward, forcing Sunny back, and she came back to where I could wrap my arms around her. I really didn’t like what seemed to be happening, so I pulled her to the back of the crowd just before the police started forward with tear gas canisters going off. We were well out of it when the cops started using billy clubs on the hippies, and some of the hippies started fighting back.
Three hundred were arrested in that event, the first anti-war rally in San Francisco. Several others had been held in Berkeley, and many more would happen later. Sunny’s photo was printed in the Chronicle inside pages the next day: the front-page photo had been of a more violent incident where three cops were using their sticks on a dazed young longhaired girl who had blood all down the side of her face.
But Sunny’s photo made the cover of Newsweek Magazine that week. You might have seen it, or you might have seen one of the several copy-cat flower placings that occurred over the following years.
Chapter 9 - They put in a nickel and I sing a little song
On Monday I got out of classes early and was sitting reading the papers when Sunny finally came in, also a bit early. “This is horrible,” I said when she sprawled out on the sofa next to me to catch her breath before heading to the kitchen. “These stories in the papers don’t even resemble what happened at the park yesterday. They only quote the mayor and the police chief and make it sound like the police were trying to create order among the event. Listen to this
“Thirty-four officers were injured in the incident, most when tear gas was hurled from the mob into the ranks of the officers. Over 400 rioters were arrested and have been charged with disorderly conduct, drug offenses, resisting arrest, and failing to obey police instructions.”
I was steamed. “They don’t mention that the tear gas was initially thrown by the police, and only a few canisters were thrown back. And ‘resisting arrest?’ The girl pictured being beaten by four officers on the front of the Chronicle doesn’t seem to be resisting, unless you consider getting in the way of police batons to be resisting.”
“Yeah,” Sunny replied. “It sucks for me too. A lot of people who used to donate change into my case just walk by now. Some of them even say ‘dirty hippie’ or the like. I only made nearly $5 all day long and a dollar of that was from you. The hippies will listen, but they never put in any money. In fact, there are so many hippies panhandling along the Haight that no one has any spare change when they get to me. I can hardly make a living this way.”
I had noticed there were more young kids in hippie garments on the street. It wasn’t even Easter Break in most of the country, but kids all across the nation were starting to run away and come to California. Those who dreamed about acting seemed to go to LA but many more who were into music were coming to San Francisco. I blamed songs like California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and Papas. All I knew is that the streets were starting to get busier, and nobody knew what would happen when summer hit and everyone was off school for two months or more, three or four for college kids.
Sunny hauled herself up and went into the kitchen and I joined her, not wanting to upset myself any more than I was by reading the one-sided newspaper stories. Together we got a pasta ready for when Ben came in from his late class. With me making meatballs (I shaped the burger paste that Sunny prepared) we had a nice meal ready when our third roommate appeared.
Ben got a glance at the papers while we finished everything up. He was not as rabid a reader as I was, but he was interested in the coverage of what everyone at school was calling the riot.
He got to listen to me carp about the unfair coverage through the meal. I really thought of myself as a student, not a hippie, but I could see where I was starting to fit into the latter lifestyle. I had fairly short hair in September when I moved down from Eureka, but now it was getting fairly shaggy, as I heard numerous times when I was back home at Christmas. Now it was over my ears, and several inches long in the back. My once short bangs now hung into my eyes, but when I told Sunny I needed a trim she complained, and instead made me a bandana thing that I wrapped around my head at school, keeping the hair out of my eyes. And I had changed my clothing as well, mainly thanks to Sunny. I still liked army surplus pants, with all their pockets, but she had tie-dyed those, as well as most of my plain t-shirts. I guess I looked more hippie than student most of the time.
The next day Sunny was home before me, ranting about the continued lack of contributions for her music. I opened the paper and was surprised to see the Herb Caen had a column in the Chronicle, and it was headed “Police Riot.” I read it aloud for Ben and Sunny to hear.
Yesterday I was dismayed at the complete lack of objectivity in this newspaper’s coverage of the peace demonstration at Golden Gate Park on Sunday. Clearly none of the reporters who wrote the stories were at the event, and they merely regurgitated the pap spread by the mayor and the police chief. I was at the demonstration. I saw what really happened.
It was reported that 34 officers were injured in the melee, and I learned that of those suffering grievous injuries at the hands of the young people, all were back at work the next day, if they were scheduled. There was no account of the numbers of protesters who were injured. To my eye most of the 400 arrested were bloody when piled into the paddy wagons. I understand five are still in the hospital; one girl (the one being beaten by police in the cover photo) is still in a coma.
The police chief did not report it, but the police action was poorly planned. One officer, who participated but did not wish his name to be used, said he and other officers were called to work at noon and put into the heavy riot gear. They arrived at the park at 1 p.m., long before the event started. There were 400 of them, crowded into 32 police vans. The black vans were windowless, except at the front, with poor air flow into the back where most officers were crammed in. They were left there for nearly two hours.
Finally, the geniuses at headquarters realized that the men were getting dehydrated and increasingly annoyed at being left there. The vans moved into position where they could be seen by the crowd, who didn’t take well to their presence. Even then the officers spent another half hour in their airtight saunas before being let out.
When the police were released, they were all dehydrated and very, very angry. They lined up in a long blue row, with small shields and long batons that most had never trained with. They stood ground for 10 minutes or so, while the young people screamed at them. One young girl popped a daisy stem into one of the few rifles being used, and this seemed to be the point where the police started moving forward, although there didn’t seem to be any reason to push the young people back towards the stages. Soon after that, officers to the rear started to lob tear gas canisters into the crowd.
A little tip for next time: look at the wind direction before tossing gas. The gentle wind was towards the police, and guess what? The gas started drifting back towards the them. A few canisters might have been tossed back, but most of the gas came from the ones thrown by police.
Within minutes it was a riot. A police riot. The angry officers started into the crowd, breaking their formation line and swinging at the students indiscriminately. And it was not only hippies being attacked. I was struck three times and bloodied on my left ear. And I was wearing a city-issued press pass. That kept me out of the paddy wagons, but not out of the violence.
I checked and found out of the 400 arrests made only 24 were charged with a crime. And talking to an assistant district attorney last night I learned that those were merely face-saving charges, and only two or three are expected to stick. Mainly those were people arrested with a large amount of marijuana on their person.
Smoking marijuana was the only illegal activity I saw at the rally. Mostly it was kids protesting the Vietnam War and the draft. I heard that some young men had burned draft cards, but I didn’t see that. I doubt any of the officers did either.
“Well thank goodness someone is telling the truth,” I said after ending the column. “Maybe this will make people more willing to chip into your pot, Sunny.”
“I dunno. Just over $4 today,” she said. “Part of that is that I left before you came by. The story said there is a girl still in a coma. Can we go to the hospital tomorrow? Maybe I can sing some songs to help her get well.”
“My first class tomorrow is at 11,” I said. “So I can stay with you ‘til 10:30. You could stay longer if you want.”
“Let’s do that. Singing on the street is no fun anymore.”
The next morning we were at the hospital at 9, the start of visiting hours. We were directed to the ward where all the five from the demonstration were being held. As we walked, Sunny noticed a sign with an arrow that said: ‘Pediatric Oncology’.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Oh, that would be for children with cancer,” I said, glad that my knowledge of medicine enabled me to translate.
“Children get cancer?” Sunny looked stricken as we walked past the sign towards the ward.
The nurses on the ward agreed that we could visit, and Sunny could play and sing. The unconscious girl was bedridden of course, but the others were able to get out and join in a little sing-along, with Sunny playing songs she had first heard at the rally on the weekend, taking advantage of her eidetic musical memory.
After about an hour a rotund little man in a three-piece suit appeared and instantly started yelling.
“Out, out. Get those damn hippies out of this ward. This is a hospital, not a damned peace rally. Get them out!”
The nurse who had given us permission to be there came over and apologized and asked us to leave. The injured protesters were also upset at the interruption to their concert, and they walked out with us, to the consternation of the man in the suit, who insisted that they had to be released properly.
As we headed to the exit Sunny stopped at the pillar pointing to Pediatric Oncology. “You go on to school, Mitch,” she told me. “I want to see if they will let me read or play for the children.” She headed that way, while I headed towards the exit, where we were met by some security people. I managed to slip through quickly and was on my way to class without knowing if the patients got out or were forced back to their wards by security.
After my last class I got home to find Sunny making more bread. She was in a strange mood, both happy and sad at the same times.
“Oh Mitch,” she wailed. “Those poor children. So tiny, and in so much pain. I read stories to them for about an hour and then we sang songs. Most of the time I was out in the open ward, and the kids just gathered around me, but then I went into the rooms and sang or read to the ones who couldn’t leave their beds. One little girl named Sarah was nearly bald from the treatments and she was amazed at my hair and couldn’t keep her hands out of it. It was so sad, but at the same time so rewarding. I’m going back. I have to.”
“Next week?” I asked.
“No, tomorrow. The head nurse for that department said my visit was having a good effect on the kids. For the three hours I was there they were able to think of something other than the pain they are constantly in. Oh Mitch, little kids like that should not have to go through that.”
“Anyway, our friend from earlier, the guy in the suit, came in and started to rant again. But the head nurse just came up to him. She’s a half foot taller, and outweighs him too, in spite of his pot belly. She just leaned over him and told him to shut up and get out of her ward, since he was disturbing her patients. He blustered a bit, and then retreated. She came over to me and told me not to worry. That is when she told me my visit was helping and begged me to come tomorrow. That led to the kids begging me too, and there was no way I could say no to those poor, thin faces.”
“So, no more street performances?” I asked.
“No. This was so much more rewarding. I can’t make money on the street anyway. At least I will gain karma by singing to the kids.”
“You know half of those kids will die, don’t you?” I warned. “How will that affect you?”
“Oh no, Mitch,” she nearly cried. “Don’t say that. I don’t know what it will do to me when I don’t see those cute little faces again. I guess I can be glad that I was able to bring some joy into their lives near the end. Oh God, please don’t let them die. And stop making them suffer so.”
The next day Sunny went back, and spent four hours in the ward, and again the next day. The kids kept trying to keep her longer, but the nurses said the children needed to take naps or go to treatments. Apparently, Sarah, the bald little girl became a favorite and Sunny even got to meet her parents. When Sunny explained her prior life singing on the streets, Sarah’s dad, an executive in one of the insurance companies in the City, handed her a wad of cash, saying it was to make up for what she missed singing on the street. Later Sunny found out it was $200, and that made her visits to the hospital her new job.
It was almost a full week later that Sunny first discovered an empty bed in one of the rooms. A nurse tearfully told her that the little boy who she had sung to and read to had passed that night. Sunny wanted to cry, but she didn’t. Her other kids were out in the ward, eagerly waiting to see her. She steeled herself for them and went out and performed. But she cried all that evening in my arms.
Later that month I took Sunny to Dr. Killensworth, the doctor who was going to do her plastic surgery. She visited her kids in the hospital in the morning, and then in the afternoon I skipped a lecture to accompany her to the doctor’s office. He examined her breasts, pronouncing them well on the way to developing under the hormones, but warned that they needed another half year before he would attempt the implants. Apparently, he had already done five implant surgeries over the past month and was starting to gain attention from dancers and actresses in LA and the City who were hoping to add to their natural endowments.
“Now I have been reading about vaginoplasty,” the doctor said. “That is the removal of your vestigial penis and creating a vagina down there. It is something I would like to attempt. I don’t think there will be a huge demand for that service, but I like to consider myself a leader in plastic surgery and it is something I should know. Is that something you would be considering?”
Sunny brightened to near the point of glowing. “Yes please. More than anything.”
The doctor then examined Sunny below the waist.
“Hmm,” the doctor mused as he looked at her. She had no testicles at all, and a penis that was now just over two inches long. “This might be challenging. Normally the penis and scrotum sac are used to create the vagina. Taking the outie and making an innie, so to speak. But you don’t have that much tissue down there. Would you be hoping to have sexual intercourse?”
“Yes I would,” she said.
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of tissue there to work with,” the doctor said. “A small pseudo vagina could be constructed, but nothing large enough to accommodate a man’s penis.”
“It doesn’t have to be a huge man,” Sunny said. “Maybe big enough for Mitch.”
So that is how I found myself being forced to strip my pants and be fondled by the doctor. I did not react well to his touching, but he asked Sunny to make me erect, which she was able to do in seconds.
“You are only slightly smaller than normal,” the doctor told me, even as I was erupting into a paper towel Sunny held. “That is a good thing, since it means Sunny will not need to accommodate a big man. But she still needs more tissue than will be available. There are ways to create more skin. I will need to look into them.”
I pulled my pants up and slowly let the red ebb away from my face. The appointment ended and we were not scheduled back for another two months.
With that we took the bus home, and then crawled into bed. Seeing the doctor fondle Sunny had made me eager to duplicate the action with my own hands. Her nipples were now fully female, and there was detectable breast tissue behind them. She still wore the glued-on implants during the day, but at night we made love without them, and Sunny was now able to have an orgasm just through my massaging her small breasts. I also noticed how the hormones had begun to change the rest of her body. Sunny always had a tiny waist, but now her hips were widening, and there was more padding on her rear. She delighted when I made soft love slaps to make the new tissues there jiggle. Her body was looking more and more female all the time. She just had to wear a tight pair of panties to hide the last vestige of maleness.
Chapter 10 – God damn, god damn the pusher man
Sunny handed me $5 for her share of the rent money at the end of the month. “You don’t have to pay,” I told her. “I know you aren’t busking anymore. I can cover your share. It’s what I paid before you moved in.”
“Yeah, but I still want to pull my own weight. I’ve saved up over $500 from when the busking was easy.”
“Really? Rich as well as beautiful?” I said. “I guess you can afford to sing for the kids every day.”
“Yeah, and I feel like I am doing good,” she said. “It gives the kids a break every day from all the shit they have to go through. And one of the nurses said that some of the kids seem to do better after I come visit. I don’t know if it the music, the distraction I provide, or my prayers. God has no business putting little kids through all that.”
“In the spirit of irreverence, maybe we can do your film for the doctor.” Sunny’s doctor (the one prescribing her hormones) had asked her to do a film of her progress, now over four months along. He was only expecting her to do front and profile static images without her face showing, but Sunny being Sunny she went a step beyond and did a little dance routine wearing only her briefs to tuck back her boy bits. With her long hair flying it made quite a little act, taking nearly two minutes. The 16 mm films held about five minutes of action and we usually filmed two minutes or so. We could easily get two sessions per film, but the doctor wanted to process them as quickly as possible, so I took them to his office the day following filming and got another reel.
At supper that night I mentioned Sunny’s cash stash, and the fact it would be safer in a bank account.
“I can’t get an account,” she noted. “I got rid of all my boy ID stuff when I came to the City. I have absolutely no identity materials.”
“I know a guy,” Ben said between mouthfuls of food. “Do you want girl ID or boy ID?”
“Girl,” Sunny said immediately.
“Let’s talk this through,” I interjected. “It might be better to have boy ID for now, until you get through your operations.” Sunny frowned. “Then you can get girl ID later after everything is changed.”
“Will that be possible?” Ben noted. “They aren’t all that willing to make changes to official records. And even if they do, they might want to put something on the ID, like “originally male” in the gender section.” I admitted defeat on this point. “The next question is name.”
“Why Sunshine Aquarius, of course,” Sunny said.
“That won’t be easy,” Ben said. “My guy has access to the state files in the government somehow, and he will find names of babies that died in the year you were born. You will get that child’s ID after he makes a few little changes so that the baby didn’t die but grew up into you.”
“And it will make more sense to have a square name,” I was even starting to use hippie lingo. “I mean, what are the chances that parents in 1943 would have named their daughter Sunshine, let along Aquarius? You could get the ID in some other name, and then just say you changed it. You could even change it to Sunshine with a legal name change.”
“You would need a lawyer for that,” Ben said. He did not have a favorable opinion of lawyers. “So, I will have my guy search and find out the best name he can come up with. Once he is done, he will have a birth certificate printed out that I can pass on to you.
“And once we know the name, you can type out a blank envelope addressed to yourself with that name and mail it to yourself. Most banks will take that as a second form of ID for opening an account. The bank information that is mailed to you will give you a third form of ID.”
“I could get a library card,” Sunny noted with glee.
“Or take a class at college,” I suggested. Sunny was not so much in favor of that.
“I don’t have grades from High School. And I really don’t like the idea of going back to school. I mean it is cool for you, Mitch, but I could pass on that.”
Again I conceded defeat. Sunny’s ID was going to cost her $100, making a bit of a hit on her savings account but in the end all three of us agreed that it was a good idea.
Over the next few weeks Sunny did the hospital thing every morning. One day when I came home, I found her in what can only be described as a funk. Apparently one of her kids had died the night before. The little one, only five, had been fighting all her short life, and finally just gave up. Her parents came up to Sunny after her somewhat muted session for the other kids and expressed their appreciation for what she had done for their daughter.
“She loved you,” Jennifer’s mother said. “She talked about you all the time, and how much she wanted to be with you always. Anyway, we would like you to come to her funeral on Friday afternoon. Maybe sing a final little song for her?”
“I would love to,” Sunny said. “I loved her. Maybe not as much as you two, but as much as anyone else. She was in pain so much. I am just glad that I could make her smile sometimes.”
“For a year before you started coming, I don’t think she ever smiled,” her father said. “We will never forget what you meant to her.”
“And I will never forget what those wonderful smiles meant to me,” Sunny replied.
After hearing that story, I agreed to accompany Sunny to the funeral. Both of the professors who I would be skipping out on were decent people and would accept a card from the funeral home as bereavement leave.
Sunny then went into the bedroom and started strumming sad notes on her guitar.
I made dinner that night. Sunny had started to teach me a bit about cooking, and I made bacon burgers while she worked away in the bedroom. When I finally came to get her, she gave a sad smile and said: “Listen to this Mitch.”
Jesus Needs Her
Fly away, our sweet little white dove
We hadn’t enough time to give you love
Your smile brightened us like the sun
And your life was so short of fun
But Jesus needs you, we don’t know why
But we will always remember you and cry
We don’t know why he took you so early
But now you are within the gates so pearly
Your pain is gone, and that makes us happy
And makes the pain of mommy and pappy
Easier to bear. Jesus needs you just so
That makes it time for you to go
Fly away, our sweet little white dove
We hadn’t enough time to give you love
Your smile brightened us like the sun
And your life was so short of fun
“That is beautiful, Sunny,” I said. There were tears in my eyes, and Sunny was full out crying. “Come along now. I made dinner and I want you to eat some, even if you don’t feel like it.”
“You made dinner?” She looked at the clock beside the bed and seemed surprised at the time. “It has been that long? And you made me dinner?” She swept me into a hug, and we went to the other room, when Ben was setting the table.
We ate, and then Sunny went and got her guitar and played her song for Ben, who also loved it.
On Friday Sunny dressed in her most somber looking dress, and made me put on a suit and tie, which I hadn’t worn since late last year. We went to the funeral home where there was a small line of mourners in the small room. We proceeded through the line to offer condolences to the parents, and Sunny and the mother both broke down into tears. There was a tiny white casket along the wall, and we proceeded over to it, with Sunny still holding Jennifer’s mother tightly. They wailed loudly looking down at the little angel. The morticians had managed to add some color to her face, and make it look like she was sleeping peacefully, but you could still tell that she was a frail little thing.
After Sunny took the mother back to the receiving line, we took seats near the rear of the small collection of chairs. Fifteen minutes later, Jennifer’s father came and gathered us up, moving us to seats in the front row. Both sets of grandparents were there and some aunts and uncles, but Jennifer’s mom insisted that Sunny sit next to her. They held hands and held back tears through most of the service until the minister announced that ‘a friend of the family’ would sing a little song. Sunny got up and sang the song from memory, and she had tears running down her face as she sang. All the women in the small crowd were also crying when she finished, none more than Jennifer’s mother. Many of the men in the group were also holding back tears. Jennifer’s father was not even pretending to be strong. He was sobbing as much as anyone.
After the service we were invited to the graveside service, where a small hole had been dug. The tiny casket was moved by four uncles as pallbearers, although it was small enough that two could have sufficed. It was lowered into the ground as Sunny sang her song again.
Halfway through the song, a small leaf was caught in an eddy in the wind, and slowly rose, wafting to and fro, gently rising until it reached the top of a nearby tree and was lost to sight just as Sunny ended her song. Sunny had not noticed the leaf, although all the rest of us had. She came back to the girl’s mother and embraced her, both with tears streaming down their faces. “I feel better now, a little,” the mother said. “I know she has gone to heaven, and no longer feels the pain. I will love her always, but she is in a better place. Thank you so much for that song. I will sing it over and over when I am missing her.”
Her husband came up to Sunny and handed her a small white envelope that had ‘Suny’ printed on it in a child’s scrawl. Sunny opened the envelope and took out a small scrap of paper. ‘I luv you’ was all it said, in that same five-year-old scrawl in crayon.
Sunny broke down again, handing me the envelope and pressing the note to her chest. It was not until we were halfway to the gates of the cemetery that Sunny was able to walk without my assistance. I was about to hand the envelope back to her when I felt something else was inside.
I looked in and found a $100 bill. I showed it to my girl, and she burst out in tears again. “I didn’t do the song for money,” she wailed. “It was for love.”
“Well, I guess it is normal for singers at funerals to be paid,” I consoled her. “Accept it as a gift. We can hitch hike down here to visit. You can buy some flowers for Jennifer and we can leave them on her grave.”
Sunny was low for the next week, although she went to the ward every day. She had other kids there and would not stint them in her grief. That helped her too, with each day getting a little easier and a little better. Three of the nurses had gone to Jennifer’s funeral and had heard her play. They insisted that she play the song for the other nurses, and it became a tradition that she sing it at each performance as the last song, usually leaving the nurses with tears in their eyes, both for Jennifer and for other lost little ones that they had known before Sunny had started coming in.
I think the next time Sunny really smiled was the day that Ben handed her the birth certificate he had acquired. “Caroline Mary Lamotte,” she read. “And my birthday is May 24. I am five months younger. I hope that Caroline had a better youth than Lyle did.”
The next day Sunny got a library card and opened a bank account, getting a little book that said she had $522.53 in it, written in the neat hand of the teller who opened the account and accepted her savings and the money from Jennifer’s parents in it. She had kept $20 cash in her purse. The teller gave her a packet of blank checks.
It was that week when I got my first job. Well, volunteer work. A medical clinic was being opened on Haight, two blocks towards Ashbury from the apartment, and one of the professors at the university was working there. I was the only undergrad student asked to volunteer, along with a couple dozen grad students. Thus, I was initially little more than an orderly, fetching and sterilizing instruments for the doctors, one of which was on duty at all times. I took three two-hour shifts in the weekday evenings, and a four-hour shift on Saturday, which meant my study time was crammed into Sundays.
This went on for three weeks, and during that time I learned a lot, especially on Saturdays when the female doctor on duty discovered she preferred working with me instead of any of the grad students, who were already prejudiced against female doctors and treated her badly as ‘only a woman doctor’. It was to my benefit, because she used me as her assistant rather than just an orderly.
We dealt with many cut feet, as the kids who came in insisted in being barefoot in areas where others had been less than careful with beer and soda bottles. It was a shame too, since there were dozens of kids running around looking for empties to cash in to get food or weed. But some people, especially when drunk, enjoyed smashing the bottles against walls, leaving more glass for us to dig out at the clinic.
I also assisted in delivering a baby about a month in. Dr. Mary actually made the delivery, but I assisted and wrapped the tiny bundle in a clean blanket and finally laid him on his mother’s chest, where he quickly learned how to breastfeed.
Thus, on one Sunday two weeks later I was working hard on a term paper for Chemistry. Ben and Sunny had gone out to the flea market and I heard them coming home on the stairs. I had the TV on, not watching it but using it as a way to focus on my paper, which I hoped Sunny could type out later in the week.
I had finished the paper, but knew it needed a revise and work on the references, when Sunny and Ben entered. Not two minutes later there was a banging on the door followed by the words ‘Police. Open up. Now” being shouted. Ben turned to go to the door, but suddenly it was opened, and two large, overweight white policemen entered and jumped on Ben.
“Stop resisting,” one cop yelled, and hauled off with a punch to Ben’s stomach, even though he was not resisting at all.
As they were cuffing him, I got an idea, and reached over to turn on the movie camera. If they beat him, I could get up to five minutes of it on film. I worried about the whir of the camera being heard, but I guess the sound of the television covered it up.
There was one more unnecessary punch before they got Ben into handcuffs. Sunny just stood there amazed as our friend was roughly hauled to his feet. “Don’t worry Missy,” one cop said. “You are safe now.”
“I was safer before you busted in to attack my roommate,” she said.
“Roommate? Is that what they call pimps these days,” the other cop grunted.
“Pimp!” Sunny nearly screamed at them. “He is not. I am not … that is my boyfriend,” she waved in my general direction.” Thanks for directing their attention at me, Sunny, I thought.
“Oh,” one cop said. The other looked confused for a second, and then smiled. “We will just take a quick look through the apartment and then let him go if there is nothing wrong.” As he spoke, I saw him take something out of his front pocket. He then strode off, first into my bedroom and then into the bathroom.
“Lookie here,” the officer said holding up a foil-wrapped package that I was pretty sure was what he had pulled out of his pocket seconds earlier. “Looks to be a good ounce of weed. Which one of you three is responsible for that?”
For a moment we were all stunned into silence. Then Ben said. “Neither of them have anything to do with that. They didn’t know it was there.”
Sunny gasped. She had not seen the cop pull the drugs out. “Where was it?” she asked.
“Taped to the back of the toilet,” the cop said. “Dealers often hide their stash back there.”
“But I clean back there twice a week,” she said. “I would have noticed.”
But the cops were not listening. They started hauling Ben away.
“Where are you taking him?” I asked in alarm.
“He’ll spend the night in the cells at our station. Then a hearing will be held tomorrow at the bail court. No visitors at the station, but you can come to the hearing. Phone after nine to find out when he is scheduled.” With that they yanked him out the door and headed down the stairs. I followed until they got to their cruiser, wanting to make sure no one ‘tripped’ and Ben got hurt further. I then headed back up the stairs.
“I can’t believe Ben was dealing drugs. He must have put it there after I cleaned on Tuesday,” Sunny said.
“He’s not dealing drugs,” I said. “The cops planted it there. I saw the bigger guy take it out of his pants.”
“But he admitted it was his.”
“No, what he said was that the two of us didn’t know anything about it. He was protecting us.”
“Why would he do that?”
“For you Sunny,” I explained. “If they had arrested all of us, we all would have been spending the night in jail. And after a strip search, there is a good chance you would have been labelled as male and wound up in a cell with god knows what kind of men.”
“Oh my,” Sunny said visualizing what might have happened.
Chapter 11 – She loves you, ya, ya, ya
Sunny and I walked into the courthouse at about 9:30 the next morning and stopped just inside the main entrance. Neither of us knew where to go, or what to do to find out where Ben was, or where and when his bail hearing would be held. Just then we saw an attractive young black woman coming straight towards us.
“Are you Mitch and Sunny?” she asked as she neared.
“Yes, how do we know you?” I asked.
“Ben told me to look for a thin blonde girl with hip-length blonde hair,” she said, “I am Mary Lincoln and I will be representing Ben this morning.”
“His lawyer,” I said. She looked awfully young to be a lawyer.
“Not quite,” she said. “I finished law school last year, but I haven’t been able to find a position yet. There were four women in the class that graduated, and none of us have broken through the sex barrier yet. And I am black, to boot, so that just makes it harder for me to find a position. I’ve been working with the ACLU clinic doing pro bono work while waiting for a spot to open up. I heard of Ben’s case last night after they brought him in, and I was eager to work on his case. Luckily, he had no lawyer, or even legal aid yet. He seems to be a nice guy.”
“He is. Will they bail him out today?” Sunny asked anxiously.
“Probably,” she said. “If he was white with a rich father he would probably get off on his own recognizance. But the color of his skin, and his apparent poverty, means they will probably set a bail of $300 to $1000.”
Sunny deflated. “We only were able to scrape together $600.” She had emptied her bank account, and I was able to add $100 to it.”
“Don’t worry honey,” Mary patted her arm. “I’ll arrange a bail bondsman for him if it is more. Your money will help, even though they are only able to charge 10% for the bail money. Are you his girlfriend?”
“No,” Sunny said quickly. Mitch here is my guy. But Ben lives in our apartment. I don’t think Ben has a girlfriend.”
“Interesting,” Mary replied. “Ben thinks that he was set up by the cops.”
“He was,” I said, relating how I saw the cop pull the drugs from his pocket before searching the apartment.
“I thought so,” Mary said. “I have been studying these two guys for a few months now, and they had sent six different guys to jail on similar flimsy cases. There has been something fishy going on with them.”
“You might be interested in this then,” I told Mary, handing over the undeveloped film. “I don’t know what is on this, but I turned on a camera while they were there pummeling Ben, who didn’t resist.”
The young lawyer’s eyes widened as she took the film. “I want to get this developed as soon as possible. We won’t be able to use it in the bail hearing, but it might make all the difference at trial. Speaking of the hearing, Ben will be called at about 10:45 in courtroom seven. Get in as soon after 10 as you can to get good seats.”
There were 9 other bail hearings before Ben’s, and most of them went through in a shotgun fashion, with a bored looking assistant district attorney reading from a court record, then making a recommendation on bail or recognizance. As Mary had said, the color of the skin of the accused was definitely a factor, with three white boys released and the other six, five of whom were blacks and one Latino, getting bails from $500 to $800 set.
Finally, Ben came up, wearing the same clothes he had on when he had come back to the apartment yesterday, which fortunately were in good condition. The black eye he had received at some point didn’t make him look less dangerous, and the judge set his bail at $500. Then it was over, and he was taken back to the holding cells after giving a thankful smile to Mary. There was another lawyer at the table, who apparently Mary had brought from the ACLU since she couldn't represent Ben without having passed the bar.
She headed off somewhere and came back an hour later with Ben trailing behind. “It is nearly lunch,” Mary noted. “Do you three want to go to a restaurant? Or there is a cafeteria here in the facility? It is cheaper, but you get what you pay for.”
“I brought sandwiches,” Sunny said. “Big ones. Do you want to share with us?”
So we headed to the cafeteria and only bought coffee or drinks and helped themselves to Sunny’s roast beef sandwiches. Ben was famished, not getting a breakfast. Mary took one bite into the sourdough bread and her eyes widened. “This is wonderful,” she said. “Ben said you were a good cook. I foresee a lot of our meetings to discuss the case will be at your apartment. Around the dinner hour.”
“What comes next?” I asked.
“Well, there is appearance set in three weeks for plea, and then a jury selection process is normal just prior to the trial. But I am leaning towards a bench trial, with only a judge. Right now the public is pretty negative towards drug use. There is no way Ben will get a fair trial of his peers. It will be a panel of twelve old white rich guys. The actual trial will take place in about four months, longer if either I or the DA ask for more time to prepare. I don’t have anything else going on, so I won’t be the cause of any delay. The actual court date won’t be set until the plea is registered.”
We parted ways, with Ben and Mary going off to discuss the case, and Sunny and I heading off to the Haight. I had to catch my afternoon classes, and Sunny felt a need to go to the hospital and see her kids.
“I think Ben and Mary would make a cute couple,” Sunny said as we walked down the steps of the courthouse.
“A couple?” I nearly choked. “She is his lawyer. I suspect that is a conflict of interest. But I guess they will be spending a lot of time together. Who knows what might happen?”
“Well, I think there is a lot of interest on both sides, and not the conflicting kind.”
I had missed a morning class and had to go to the professor to find out what I missed. He merely told me to read a part of a chapter and I had already read that. There was to be a quiz the following week, so I had to study for that. I made it to both my afternoon classes, and kept up with both of them, getting home after seven.
Sunny was ready for us. Ben came in shortly after me, having spent the whole day with Mary.
“You should have brought her along,” Sunny said. “There is enough for four, when one of them is a tiny little thing like Mary.”
“I should have,” Ben said. “Apparently she is as broke as we are. They don’t pay her for the work she does. She says that the two cops that busted in are pretty notorious and most of the people they had put away have claimed that they planted the dope on them. But the courts always assume police would not lie, so the accused winds up in jail. It’s always just over an ounce of weed they ‘confiscate’. Mary is planning to do some research into those cases.”
Later the next week Ben found out just how bad his position was. When he had reported his absence was due to a court hearing he was expelled from his college, which apparently did not believe in the principle of innocent until proven guilty. And when he went to the grocery store where he bagged groceries to see if he could get more hours, he was told that he was fired. His job at the wharf was not in peril. Half the men there were ex-cons. But they couldn’t offer him any more hours. He was a Sunday fill in, which was supported by the union, but working on other days was not allowed.
As a result, he sold his textbooks and on Tuesday slept until 10, then got up and ate the cold breakfast that Sunny had left him when she went to the hospital. He cursed himself -- if he had crawled out of bed an hour earlier, he would have been able to eat with her. He turned on the television and discovered the level of pap that ran during the day.
After making a sandwich at noon, not because he was hungry, but because it felt like ‘eating time’, he wandered out of the apartment. He wandered aimlessly, looking at the growing number of hippies on the street.
The apartment was a Georgian house. Many people called the style Victorian, but all the true Victorians had been destroyed by the fire/earthquake of 1906 along with the rest of the city. Seven nearly identical replacement houses were built along Haight Street before 1910, and all but one still stood. The other had a kitchen fire in 1958 and was condemned later that year and torn down three years later. It was now an empty lot, enclosed by a chain link fence. It was directly next to our apartment.
All six of the other houses, although built as single-family homes now had been converted to apartments. Most were owned by management companies, the sole exception being Mrs. Horley, who I paid rent to. She lived on the ground floor of the house with three small apartments upstairs. Sunny, Ben and I lived in the tiny one-bedroom. The other two were a bachelor suites, one rented by a Miss Sullivan and the other by an unknown group of hippies that tended to have people going up and down the stairs all night long.
There was a shed behind the house and a small backyard. Ben went to the downstairs apartment and asked Mrs. Horley for the key to the shed. The elderly woman had been a bit afraid of having a black man living in her house at first, but Ben had always been polite to her, nodding and speaking in the rare times he saw her so her anxiety about him was now much lower. When he explained that he was out of work and would like to clean up the wilderness that the back yard had become, free, she gave him the key to the shed.
Inside Ben found a surprisingly well-equipped tool collection. The lawnmower was one of those old rotary push mowers, and even Ben could not push it through the weeds that had grown up. There was not much new growth this early in the spring, but the lawn had not been cut in the last two years. But there was a scythe and Ben started with that, slowly clearing the yard. After he finished raking it up, he pulled out the old mower, and found it took an hour to oil, sharpen and clean it up so it could be used, after bagging the materials cut by the scythe. Soon he had mowed the lawn, and had it looking pretty for spring.
Mrs. Horley had come out and was sitting on the back porch, watching the big black man work. She went in and returned a minute later with two glasses of ice lemonade. Ben didn’t hesitate when she offered him a glass and drained it quickly.
“That is a wonderful job,” the old lady told him. “I wish I could hire you as a gardener, but I barely have enough money to keep the house. The hippie apartment upstairs hasn’t paid rent for the past four months, and I need that $20 a month.”
“They haven’t?” Ben said in surprise. “Would you like for me to look into it?”
“Would you dear?” the woman said. “I don’t think the boy I rented it to even lives there anymore. I should get them all out and someone who pays in, but I am afraid to go up there myself now. You and Mitch are nice boys, and I would like to meet the girl living there too. But those other people are … scary.”
“That girl is Sunny, and you would love her,” Ben said. “After I finish up here, I would like to dig up a vegetable garden in the sunny part of the lot. I’ll bet Sunny would love to plant a garden there. She seems the type that would like doing that.”
“A garden! Oh, that would be so nice. It has been years since I have had a garden. Not since Hugh died. I can still taste the tomatoes we used to get out of it.”
“Well, if Sunny does plant some things, I’m sure she will share with you,” Ben said. “Now I better get back to work.”
He dug up a garden, as well as a garden area near the back porch for flowers. Working with his muscles was an aching reward after months as a lazy student five days a week. After he finished, earning a second lemonade, he tried to give the shed key back to Mrs. Horley but the old lady refused, saying that Ben could keep it. That settled his next two days of the week. Tomorrow he would clean up the messy shed, and the following day he would work on the tools, sharpening and cleaning the rust off of them. As a mechanic, Ben could not abide by tools that had been misused and allowed to rust.
Sunny came home from the hospital at 3:30, and Ben introduced her to Mrs. Horley, and as he expected the two women paired off as he finished up in the yard. They sketched out rough plans for the gardens, both vegetable and flower.
That night, after dinner, Ben and I went over to the hippie apartment. The door was not even locked, and they found the place a mess, littered with garbage both physical and human. Ben asked for the person who had signed the lease and was told he moved out more than a year ago, passing the place onto a friend, who did the same months later.
Ben shouted. “Everyone out. This place is officially vacant. There are four months back rent owing, and I want everyone to pay $5 when they go.” This threat got people moving, and quickly people left. A free crash pad was okay, but they were not interested in spending money here. Only two paid any money, with others skipping around Ben or claiming that they had to go get the money. Of course, none came back.
Two fairly big guys came out, and stood face to face with Ben, hoping to intimidate him.
“Are you gonna make us leave, nigger?” the bigger of the two said, cracking his knuckles.
“I am,” Ben said, taking a step forward. The big guys thought they might be able to take down Ben. Mitch would be no problem. But the black guy: he looked like he could inflict some pain on the two, even if they could eventually prevail. They backed down and said they would come back with their money ‘later’. The suite was empty. Of people. The place was still a mess. Ben decided to delay his work on the shed until next week and spend the rest of this week cleaning the place up. There was graffiti on the walls, and filth everywhere. The bathroom was disgusting, and Sunny nearly vomited when she saw it. She told Ben she would do a finishing cleanup on it if he took off the first few layers of filth.
My task was to find new tenants for the place. Mrs. Horley wanted female students, either one or two. The rent of $20 a month would appeal to students, along with the nearness to the Medical Center.
Ben went down and told Mrs. Horley the offending students were evicted and asked if there was a key to keep the riffraff out. There was. The original key was long gone, and the door was now never locked. She told Ben to look after getting a new lock installed for the new tenant. He also told her that he would need a few dollars for cleaning supplies and paint, although he planned to use hot water and elbow grease for most of the cleaning. He gave her the $10 he had received from the fleeing hippies, which should buy a few gallons of paint. She handed the money back for cleaning supplies and perhaps paint.
Sunny went to the other studio and went with a plate of cookies to visit Miss Sullivan and tell her that the apartments would be quieter this night and from then on.
Ben didn’t sleep much that night. People were coming up to the ‘crash pad’ and often were angry to find that they couldn’t sleep there. He finally got a blanket and started napping on the floor outside the apartments, getting up when he could hear steps coming up the stairs. It took five nights before the nocturnal visits stopped, and he could come back into the sofa-bed.
My luck was good too. I found a pair of girls studying to be nurses. They came by and I showed them the apartment, which was still dirty, but now showed signs of becoming habitable. I told them that they could even choose the paint color for their walls, which Ben now had covered with a base coat of white over the grafitti. I promised that the suite would be spotless in a week, and Sunny met them and made friends with them instantly in that way she has.
The girls paid $40 for the first month’s rent and a damage deposit. I handed the money to Ben to buy paint. He had done much of the work in cleaning the bathroom, with Sunny doing the rest, and had rehabilitated the kitchen, fixing both the broken stove and fridge (after removing the green things growing within it). All told, it was in sufficiently clean shape for the two girls, who started planning to furnish it, since everything originally in it had been trashed. Sunny told them about the local flea market, and even volunteered to accompany them to it.
That weekend was a party. Mary was invited for Saturday dinner, along with Judy and Sue, the nursing students. Sunny spent the day cooking. I wanted to help but had a four-hour shift at the health clinic, which limited my input. The nurses came early and Sunny took them to the flea market to buy some furniture. Thus, Ben alone carried the bulk of the weight of an old double bed to the house, with Sunny and the nurses holding corners for balance. The girls were thrilled at how much cleaner the place now looked and were able to pick the actual colors for the rooms using paper chips of color Ben had gotten from the hardware store.
Mary got to the house just a few minutes after me and wanted to meet with Ben in private. He refused, saying everyone there could hear about the progress on the case. Mary pulled a little unit out of a bag and set it on the table. It had two movie reels on it, and apparently was used for editing movies. But as she cranked it along, she showed the movie I had taken of the arrest, and at one point you could clearly see the bigger cop pull something out of his pocket. Soon after that he moved out of the frame, not returning until near the end when you could see him holding up the drugs as if he had just found them. Mary said it was unlikely the cops would be able to make the charges against Ben stick, and they might well be cited themselves, depending on which judge was trying the case.
“I have to send a copy of the film to the DA office as evidence,” Mary said. “But the assistant DA working on the case is lazy as sin, and probably won’t pay much attention to it. He’s happy just coasting along on his job, worried more about big profile cases that could move his career forward and not small drug cases. I just have one other area to work through and I’ll be ready for trial. I want a bench trial, with no jury, and the ADA has already agreed to that.”
As Sunny’s wonderful roast beef dinner was served Ben and Mary chatted about the case, while the nurses giggled about their new apartment. I admit that I took over a bit of the conversation talking about my shift at the clinic. Nothing big happened, only a few bad acid trips, cut feet and other routine things. I was learning so much though. You can read books forever about the anatomy of a foot, but when you have to open one up to clean out glass fragments and then sew it back together you really learn.
Sunny’s big excitement was the garden in the backyard. Both the nurses wanted to help, and score some of the fresh vegetables it produced later in the year. The result was that the sketches Sunny had drawn up had to be revised, and Ben would have to dig up another ten feet of depth to make more room.
Chapter 12 – Ah look at all the lonely people
Once Ben finished cleaning the tools in the shed, he began working on a new project. He found a scrap metal post about 12 feet high and put it into a small hole filled with concrete. At the top end was a sheet of plywood, and a round metal hoop. He erected his basketball net in the vacant lot, against the fence. Next he got an old basketball. It leaked, but he had an air pump in the toolshed and if he filled it with air it would be good for an hour or two. He was able to crawl under the fence in one spot and shoot baskets when he was bored.
Sunny spent all her spare time in the garden. She had bought a flat of tomato seedlings at the market and planted all 12 in the garden. She also planted lettuce, peas and onions from seeds purchased in the hardware store. She tended her garden almost every day, treating the small shoots as if they were her own children. Of course, when she wasn’t in the garden, she was at the cancer ward.
Sunny later recounted the following to me. One day Ben came out of the shed after filling his ball with air, and Sunny said: “You have company, I think?” She gestured at three young boys with a ball of their own, shooting at the basket. There was no gate in the fence, and Sunny said the boys had crawled under in the same spot Ben used. Ben walked over to that crawl spot and started under. The boys, two black and one Hispanic, froze and then ran away, only to find no exit through the fence.
Ben stood up, and looked at the terrified Hispanic lad and said: “Wanna play?” The boy relaxed when he saw that he wasn’t in trouble. “Can we?” he asked. “We didn’t know it was your basket.”
“Sure, as long as you don’t damage it. You can play here anytime, as long as I get to join in when I want to.” With that the other two lads came back and they took turns shooting, with Ben giving them tips on technique.
When Sunny finally stood up from her garden she saw that there were now nine boys in the yard and Ben was refereeing a game. More boys passing by saw the game and came around to join in. That was the start of Ben’s free summer camp for kids. Eventually there were about 100 kids, with different times for different age groups. The youngest played from 10 to 12, then from 12 to 2 the next larger group played, with two more groups playing until 6 p.m. Ben was both coach and referee for the games which largely replaced ball on the back streets as recreation for kids who didn’t have a lot of money for organized sport.
About a month later Ben was in the yard when a Volkswagen bus pulled up in front of the apartment and died a noisy death in a vacant parking spot. The driver, and a few hippies got out and started looking at the uncooperative engine. Ben went over and joined them and quickly decided that it was one of about four common problems with VWs, especially if this one had been driven hard from the East “I can probably fix that, for $100,” he suggested.
“Naw,” said a long haired, bearded hippie. “It got us here. That’s all we wanted out of it. Only paid $200 for it. Plus, where are we going to park it? All the places we’ve seen want too much money. We should just leave it here and let them tow it. I mean they can’t use the Michigan plates to send fines after us.”
“Do you want to sell it?” Ben suggested. “I’ll give you $20 for it.”
“$30,” the hippie countered.
“Sorry,” Ben replied. “I’ve only got $24 till next payday.” He opened his wallet to show the man.
“$24 then,” the man said. “That’ll buy us some more weed.”
Ben got the ownership signed over and gave the man his cash and watched the hippies from Detroit dance off down the street. The bus spent the night on the curb and in the morning Ben borrowed a buck from me to feed the meter. Ben started working on the chain link fence, unthreading the connector wire. By afternoon he had opened the fence and when his teen ball players appeared, they all pushed the derelict vehicle into the vacant lot and back to near where the garage was on Mrs. Horley’s land. Sunny steered the bus while all the boys provided the push to move it.
After the fence was restored into its old position, Ben went back and checked out his new vehicle. He soon had a good idea what was wrong (there was more than one thing). Getting parts looked to be a problem, until one of the 10-year-olds said he knew where there was another bus almost identical, abandoned five blocks over.
On Monday, with another $10 from his day at the Market, Ben and the young boy went to the other bus and Ben nosed around. It also looked derelict, but when he started poking in the engine, a man came out of the house shouting that the wreck was his personal property. Ben backed off immediately and mentioned that he was fixing up a similar vehicle, and would the man be willing to sell some parts?
Ben managed to use the $10 he had to buy the right to strip the old van for a month. After that, if there was anything more he needed, he would pay another $10. The man looked at it as free money, since he had no plans for his van and agreed.
Ben and the boy left with full hands carrying bits they could liberate from the rusty heap, and the next day they were back with proper tools to get the parts Ben really wanted for his van. Over the next week they pretty much stripped the man’s van, getting parts they needed, and other spares of parts that were in good condition should Ben get another conversion going.
A day or two later Sunny came in from the garden, all sweaty and alive, and headed for the shower. I went to the bedroom to be ready to comb out her beautiful long hair. I had just started when she spoke: “Mitch, would you still love me if I cut my hair?”
“Sunny, it is you I love, not your hair. I would still love you if you were bald.”
Good answer,” she said. “Because that it is going to happen.”
“What? You are going to cut your hair?”
“No. I’m going to shave my head.”
“What?” I said at a slightly higher frequency. “Why are you going to do that?”
“For the kids. Most of them are on chemo and lose all their hair. I want to be able to empathize better with them. But mostly it is one girl. Karen is nine and will be going back to school this fall after a year fighting leukemia. She lost a year at school, so will be with younger kids she doesn’t know. But what is bothering her is that she is bald now and will still have nearly no hair in September. One of the nurses said there are a group of women who make wigs for kids when they can get human hair. I’ve got lots of hair, so I said I will donate. There is going to be a hairdresser at the clinic tomorrow and she’s going to cut it all off.”
“Oh,” I said slowly. I had already said I wouldn’t mind. “Will you keep it shaved?”
“For a week, maybe,” she replied. “Then I will start growing it out. In a few months it will look like a short pixie cut, and in a year it will be eight inches long, based on how fast it grew before.”
“Okay, but I want to see them cut it.”
“I can probably get you a seat. All the kids will be watching, and a pile of the nurses.”
I finished brushing out her damp hair, for the last time, apparently. Ben came in from working on his van and went straight to the washroom to clean up. He tried to leave the room clean, but Sunny always went in after him to get it ‘girl-clean’.
The next morning hightailed it over to the cancer ward an hour after Sunny left. I got there just as they were about to start. Some of the little girls were crying: Sunny later told me that they loved her long locks and seeing her shave it off created flashbacks to their losing their own hair.
I heard a lady, apparently from the charity, tell Sunny and the nurses that the women in her group were planning to go all out on Karen’s wig. Normally it takes a woman over a month to finish a wig, but in this case two women were going to work on the opposite sides at once, with a third volunteer preparing the hair strands. And they were going to work two shifts, one morning and one afternoon to finish up in a week, when Karen was expected to be released.
Then the hairdresser took over, pulling Sunny’s hair into a tight ponytail, and then slicing it all off with a massive pair of scissors. The knot holding the ponytail came off with the long plait, and Sunny suddenly had short hair. Cute hair, I decided. But she wouldn’t stop there, and the stylist took an electric shear and started cutting those last few inches off. Shearing sheep came to my mind, and the woman finished up with a straight razor, cutting all the stubble off. As a blonde the stubble hadn’t shown much, but Sunny wanted it to feel smooth to the touch. Once she was done she went to all the children and let them rub her hair “for luck” and some even kissed the top of her head.
The woman from the charity took the long plait and measured it. “Forty-four inches,” she announced. “We need ten inches for a wig, so we will be able to do three more after we finish Karen’s.”
That comment stunned me a bit. Apparently Sunny could have just had 10 inches or so cut from the end of her hair, which would have made it just short of waist height. But she had taken it all off. But as I watched her playing with the children, I had to admit she still looked feminine, and pretty. It was not her hair, but her manner and her Sunniness that made her what she was. And I loved her as much as ever.
I had to rush to get to my next class, and Sunny had stories to read and songs to sing for the little kids looking at her with pure hero worship in their gaunt little faces. I could see how much she lived for that feedback, and I felt lucky to know her and love her.
That night I got my chance to kiss the bald dome. Sunny had a thin neck and a fairly small head, and still looked pretty, especially with a bit of makeup. I rubbed her head for luck, and then Sunny slid down between my legs and I got lucky.
When she came up for air, and to wipe her mouth on a towel I noticed that her breasts were noticeably bigger than I had realized. Small A cups, but real female breasts with prominent nipples. When she got back into bed, I started playing with them, and before long Sunny got lucky. Then we cuddled through the night.
A week later we were at the cancer ward again. My hair brushing chores had been replaced by shaving Sunny every morning. She said this would stop tomorrow, as she then planned to start growing her hair out again. But the kids had loved kissing that bald head, and rubbing it for luck, often just before going in for a painful treatment session.
Today Karen’s parents were there, and the little girl with them was now dressed conventionally. She looked much better, having gained some weight during the past week, although her hair was largely gone, with only wispy remnants remaining. The lady from the charity appeared late, announcing that they had just finished the wig, and took it out of a wig box. She then knelt and placed it on Karen’s head, adjusting it a bit.
Normally there are not mirrors in the oncology ward, because patients have no interest in seeing what they look like when they are ill, but a full length mirror had been wheeled in from somewhere, and Karen rushed up to it, looking from one side to another, with the biggest smile on her face. She turned and looked to her mother and said: “I’m beautiful,” giving her a big hug. Then she tore across the room to where Sunny was standing and leapt into her arms, repeating “I’m beautiful. Thank you for giving me your hair.”
“You always were beautiful to me,” Sunny said. “And I hope that my hair makes you happy and popular at school.”
After Karen had said goodbye to all her friends from the clinic, with all of them admiring her wig, her parents took her home. Sunny stayed and sang songs and told stories for several more hours, but I had to hurry off to college, thanking God as I walked there that I was so lucky to have such a kind and giving girlfriend.
The next morning Sunny said I wasn’t to shave her head. She wanted to grow it back to show the kids in the ward that their hair would return. That morning she had a short stubble, like what Ben gets four hours after shaving, and less than what I need to shave off each morning. By the end of the week it was long enough that you could see the blonde color, and at the end of a month it was a half inch long, looking like an extremely short pixie cut.
She admitted that the shorter hair was handy in the garden, where she still weeded for an hour every day, and mentioned that some of her crops were nearing the point of being harvested. Ben also spent most of his morning out there, working on his van until the neighborhood kids came by to shoot baskets and have a pickup game or two in the vacant lot.
One day when I went out, I noticed that he had moved the chain link fence about 10 feet in, leaving a laneway along the side of the house. At supper that night he said that was to give access to the street for his van, which was nearly ready to test drive. There was metered parking on the street and parking out there would be expensive in tickets or parking coins. The only problem was that he needed to remove one meter along the street.
Sunny saved the day here. She had made friends with the meter maid on that street: she made friends with everyone. She spoke to the woman who suggested that if one of the meters disappeared, she probably wouldn’t notice. So Ben took out a meter at the end of his new lane and painted some markings that showed no parking in that slot. He stored the meter and its post in his shed, so he could replace it in the future.
There was never anything said by the owner of the vacant lot either. The owner was just holding the property until he could acquire a few more adjacent lots, which would allow him to build a bigger commercial building. The narrower space didn’t bother him since it would be less space to maintain. Not that it mattered, since Ben cut the grass in the lot with the old push mower.
Sunny had an appointment with both her doctors the next week. Dr. McBrien pronounced her hormone usage successful, although she would have to keep taking the drugs. She was up to a C cup now, clearly spilling over her B cup bras. The next day it was a trip across the city to Dr. Killensworth, who announced that she could schedule an operation for September. Sunny was adamant she wanted big boobs, and still wanted the largest size of implants. I felt sort of possessive over her natural breasts, as they game me hours of pleasure in bed, but I finally agreed with Sunny for the large implants.
Dr. Killensworth said he was doing about 30 operations a week on women: both younger women wanting to appear larger, and older women getting a breast reconstruction. He noted that the operation took less time than counseling the women prior to the surgery. That was when he floored me when he suggested that I would be a good person to take over most of the counseling. After all, it was all my research that had led him into his burgeoning sideline. He figured I would need 16 hours a week, all day on Saturday and two evenings of four hours each. I guess I hesitated, my week was pretty full with Sunny, studying and working at the free clinic. But then he said he would pay me $10 an hour. Even with deductions that would mean $120 a week, more than most people earned full time.
It was near the end of term, so I agreed to take the job on when exams were over. Our money problems were over. I would even be able to pay Mary for some of the legal work she was doing for Ben. The two of them were together at least three times a week.
Chapter 13 -- Sittin' downtown in a railway station One toke over the line
The last half of August was a downer at the apartment. Ben’s court case was on Monday, September 8, and Mary was at the apartment a lot, both to talk to Ben but also just to socialize.
The last week of August she made him go through his clothes, trying to find something suitable for court, but quickly discovered he didn’t have anything. She suggested a cheap suit, which would cost nearly $100. But Ben had only been working one day a week for months and had nothing saved.
I was making good money advising for the doctor doing implants, so I offered to loan him the money. He refused. I had been paying most of his rent for the past few months, and didn’t mind, but his male pride kept him from taking my money.
Sunny saved the day. (Doesn’t she always?) She made the suggestion that Ben sell his bus to me for $200, giving him money he had worked to earn. Ben loved that old rust bucket, but when I said he would still be able to use it whenever he wanted, he broke. That was followed by the oddest negotiations ever known. I wanted to buy at a higher price, and he wanted to sell at a lower one. We finally agreed on $150 and a tank of gas.
The next day Mary took Ben over to the Fillmore district to buy a cheap suit. He drove ‘my van’. She got him a nice brown suit for $89 that she thought would look nice in court, as well as getting him a haircut, mowing his afro down to about 3/4 of an inch. He came back and modelled for us, with me laughing and Sunny telling him he looked very handsome.
On Monday I drove us all to the court in the van, the first time I drove it. Halfway there, Ben noticed a little ping in the engine and wanted me to pull over so he could check it out and Mary nearly bit off his head at the idea of doing engine repairs in his new suit. He agreed it was not a terminal problem, so we continued to the courthouse, where Mary had arranged parking for us.
Ben was carted off when we signed in, and Mary went to a lawyer’s area. She had passed her bar exam over the summer so no longer needed anyone else to stand with her at the trial. Sunny and I wandered off, finally finding the courtroom his trial would be at and going in to get a seat. As she went in the door ahead of me, I noticed again just how beautiful Sunny was. Her hair was an inch and a half long and getting really cute, but her figure was dramatically different. The hormones had given her B cup breasts, but now she had hips. Her waist had always been tiny but it seemed that the regular meals over the last year had only added weight on her hips. She had really nice curves.
About 15 minutes before the trial time Mary came out and set herself up at the defense table, giving us a big smile before arranging her papers and books. She went up to the evidence table, and I could see her frowning at something.
Mary had told us earlier that we would have a woman judge, the only one in the system, and considered that to be a good sign. The woman had a reputation for being fair and unbiased. Finally, Ben was brought in and my jaw dropped. He was shackled hand and foot and had to shuffle in to stand beside Mary. Eventually the judge came in, and we all stood while she was seated.
“I object,” the young black lawyer said. “My client is not in custody, and should not be wearing that outfit, and certainly not restraints. He has been under bail bond for the past several months.”
The judge looked alarmed. “Mr. Cornwall, what is the meaning of this?”
The obese man at the Assistant District Attorney desk rose. “He was so garbed on the recommendation of the police. He is deemed dangerous.”
“After a judge deemed him fit for bond? I am pretty sure that the judicial decision will trump any police concerns. Remove the restraints immediately.” Several court officers rushed up to remove the irons.
Mary spoke. “I would like a recess so that my client can return to his proper clothes.”
“Can’t,” said the ADA. “We need to get this case underway. He’ll need those after the judge passes sentence anyway.”
Mary just gaped, but the judge took over. “Mr. Cornwall, you are perilously close to contempt of court in this matter. I know your department likes to intimidate the accused and sway juries by this ploy. But if you had read your notes you would know that the DA has agreed to the defense request for a bench trial. There is no jury to sway. We will take a 10-minute adjournment to allow the accused to be dressed properly. If that detracts from your time schedule, Mr. Cornwall, you should not have attempted this ploy.”
“I consent to continue,” Mary said. “However, I had one other concern. I examined the evidence table and could not see any evidence relating to the drugs my client allegedly had. Perhaps a mistrial should be called.”
The ADA shot to his feet. For a fat man he was nimble. “There is no need. The evidence went to the crime lab where it was booked and tested. Sometime after that it disappeared from the system. At least five prior judges have accepted a lab report as sufficient proof that the evidence existed. I will be calling the technician from the lab this morning.”
The judge frowned. “I will accept that ruling for the time being,” she said. “But there seems to be something fishy about all this. I reserve the right to call a mistrial based on the lack of evidence at a later time.”
When Ben returned in his suit, the charges against him were read, and he pled not guilty. The ADA then called his witnesses, starting with the two cops who had made the arrest. Both gave similar testimony, varying only slightly on details. There was no mention of the accusation that Sunny was a prostitute and Ben her pimp, or that Ben had been taken down to the floor even though he was not resisting arrest.
Mary cross-examined and got the men to admit to those omissions. Then she asked the taller cop, Rodder, where he had found the drugs. He said they were taped to the back of the toilet. She asked what kind of tape had been used, and he paused for a moment, and then said duct tape.
Then she asked him what color the toilet was. This time there was a lengthy pause, and the man finally said ‘white’.
“I would like to submit to the court this photo,” Mary said, handing the judge a photo of a pale green toilet from the apartment.
“Enter that into the evidence,” the judge said. “It clearly shows a conventional toilet in a lime green color that could never be confused with white.”
“They may have painted that since the arrest,” the ADA protested.
“If necessary, we will bring in the tank lid to the court. You can see it is the same color as the base that the officer claimed was white,” Mary said.
That is not necessary,” the ADA said, deflated. “This trial needs to end today.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Cornwall,” the judge said testily. “You forget your place. It is I who determines the pacing of the trial, not you.”
The ADA then called the crime lab technician who testified that he had examined a roll of marijuana that he had weighed as 34 grams, just over an ounce. He noted that this would allow for 10 to 12 marijuana cigarettes, justifying the charge of trafficking. He said one marijuana cigarette could sell for $5 on the street, although we thought that figure inflated.
In cross-examination Mary produced a typed list to the technician, asking if he recognized it. “Yes, this is the information you asked of me a few weeks back. It represents five other cases where I have done testing on evidence brought to me by Officer Rodder over the past two years. But they were dealing with other cases.”
“I object,” the ADA said shuffling through his files. “This is not relevant to this case. There is no connection to earlier convictions.”
“I hope to prove it is,” Mary said. “I contend that the drugs in each case are the same ones. Mr. Lashore, can you tell me what happened the last time you saw these drug samples?”
“In each case Officer Rodder volunteered to return them to the evidence room.”
“I object,” shouted the ADA, finally having found his copy of the page. “They can’t be the same drugs. The amounts are not even the same.”
“As you will note, the amounts go down by about a gram each testing, with the weight the same once,” Mary said. “Sir, is some of the evidence destroyed in the testing?”
“Yes, nearly a gram. The time both samples were the same could have been a rounding error,” the lab technician said.
I note that all the samples indicate that they were wrapped in red foil paper. Is that common with items you test?” Mary asked.
“No, in fact it is rare. Mostly they are wrapped in sandwich bags.”
“Officer Rodder, you are not to leave the court,” the judge interrupted. The officer had started to dart for the door. She turned to her bailiff while scribbling something on a sheet of paper. “Bailiff, I want you to send an officer of the court to that officer’s station and search his locker. Here is a search warrant. She handed it to the bailiff who passed it on to another court officer, who darted out the door.
When Mary had finished her cross-examination of the technician from the lab, the ADA announced that he had concluded with his witnesses, telling the judge that it was clear that he had proven his case against Ben. The judge looked at her watch and announced that the court would break for a long lunch and reconvene at 2 p.m. for the defense witnesses.
Mary and Ben joined us for the lunch Sunny had prepared. When she took a bite, Mary’s eyes widened. Not only were the sandwiches made from sourdough bread fresh this morning, but the tomatoes and lettuce were fresh from the garden. Sunny’s signature BLT’s also had a slice of process cheese melted over the bacon, making them especially tasty.
The talk turned to the case and Mary suggested that it had gone well even before she had presented her side. The thing with the bathroom fixtures had been a plus, and she had gotten what she wanted out of the missing evidence situation. “The only thing that could be better is if they find the missing weed in that cop’s locker.”
She then noted that she wanted Sunny and me to testify to the events of the arrest independently, with Sunny going first. She wanted me to not be in the court while Sunny testified, so that it would be clear that we were not mimicking each other’s testimony the way the police clearly had.
“The ADA will claim that we might have been coached,” she said. “But the judge is a smart cookie and no doubt will see the truth in your statements. We were lucky to get her on the bench, and just as lucky to get the worst ADA in the building. He clearly hasn’t even read through his brief, which must have been made by a law clerk in his department. He’s one of the ones who only puts an effort in on a high-profile case. He didn’t even know it was a bench trial.”
A few minutes later the judge was seated, and she started with an announcement. The two arresting cops were no longer to be seen, although the one from the lab was there.
“I have an announcement to make,” the judge started, holding up a small cylinder of red foil. “This was found in Officer Rodder’s locker in the police station.” She turned to the lab technician. “Does this look like the missing evidence?”
“Yes it does,” the man said.
“Have this entered as an exhibit in this trial,” she handed the drugs to the court clerk. “You have witnesses to call, Miss Lincoln?”
“I do,” Mary said. “Please call Sunshine Aquarius to the stand. And I would ask that Mitchell Carter be excluded from the court during her testimony.” I got up and left, and the next part of the story was related to me later by Sunny. As I was leaving, I heard the court clerk ask Sunny if that was her real name.
“I was Caroline Mary Lamotte as a little girl,” Sunny lied, using the false identity Ben had gotten her. “I go by Sunshine Aquarius now. You may call me Sunny.”
“Thank you Sunny.” Apparently, my girlfriend was befriending the judge the way she did with everyone else.
Mary asked her to describe the events of the arrest in her own words. She did, noting that Ben and she had been walking back to the apartment when the police had seen them, a big black man and a very blonde girl. “My hair was much longer then,” she said, running her hand through the currently short locks.
She said the two had just entered the apartment when there was a loud knock on the door, followed by the two officers entering and then jumping on Ben, forcing him to the ground.
When Mary asked about the alleged drugs, Sunny said she had cleaned the bathroom less than an hour before, and part of her routine was to wash behind the toilet to eliminate any splatter. No drugs were taped there at that time, and she had been with Ben all the time since.
In the cross-examination the ADA asked her to explain why Ben had admitted to having the drugs.
“He didn’t,” Sunny said. “He said that Mitch and I knew nothing about the marijuana. He did not say that he did.” The ADA also practically accused her of being a hooker, and Sunny denied it, saying that I was the only person she had ever slept with.
But the judge was having none of that, ordering the ADA out of line with that questioning since Sunny’s morality was not in question in this case.
Soon after that I was let back into the courtroom and was brought up to the stand to testify. I was sworn in and gave my name. There was some background information and then Mary asked me about the camera.
“Camera?” the ADA shouted. “I was not told about any camera.”
“I provided the prosecution with a copy of the film,” Mary said. Perhaps it is in your brief. The big man immediately searched his brief folder and found a roll of film at the bottom that he clearly had not seen before.
A projector and small screen had been set up and Mary played the three minutes of film. “I can’t pause the film or it might melt,” Mary said. “But I have taken four stills from the film. The first shows Officer Rodder reaching into his pants, and then one a second later shows him pulling out the red foil package. The third one shows him concealing it in his hand, and the fourth one, over a minute later shows him waving the same package in the air after apparently ‘finding’ it in the washroom.”
The shocked judge flipped through the photos. “Mr. Cornwall. Is it your intention to continue with this case?”
The fat man slumped in his chair, not even bothering to rise to address the judge. “The State withdraws all charges.”
The judge slammed her gavel down. “Case dismissed. And I want a copy of this film sent to the police department investigating the actions of the officers. Further, the other five convictions by these officers should be opened for new evidence as a result of this evidence. It is quite possible that there are others who have been illegally convicted.”
I turned to see Mary held high in the air by Ben in an unconventional victory celebration.
We drove home, with Ben and Mary in the second seats, kissing quite passionately. Apparently the attorney-solicitor phase of their relationship had morphed into a young lovers stage. I drove up our little lane and dropped them off at the house. Mary accompanied him upstairs. Sunny and I headed to the hospital for a belated visit with her kids. I was again amazed at how much the kids loved seeing Sunny.
When we got back a couple hours later, we entered the apartment to find the sofa bed pulled out and a tangle of black legs and arms twisted across it; Ben’s dark black and Mary’s chocolate brown.
We made a beeline for our bedroom and soon were inside, leaving the young lovers to finish up. Five minutes later there was a tap on the door and the embarrassed couple entered the room. Sunny immediately put them to ease, noting that she was not at all embarrassed and was happy for them.
“Would it be possible for Mary to move in with us?” Ben asked me. “She is paying $20 for a single room across town and could pay into the pot for meals.”
“No additional charge for rent,” I said. “Assuming she is sleeping in your bed. I didn’t pay any more when Sunny joined us. And if she wants to chip in a bit for food that is okay.
“And I will help with the cooking and cleaning,” the young lawyer promised. “I want to learn some of Sunny’s cooking skills.”
Chapter 14 – I look at the world, and I notice it's turning While my guitar gently weeps
Sorry for the long delay on this. I’ve had a bad back. It’s better now, and hopefully the next chapter should be within a week: Dawn.
Once the weight of the case that had been bringing Ben down was gone, he tried to get his life back in order. But it was not easy. First, he went to the grocery store, hoping to get his job back collecting shopping carts and bringing them back into the store. But there was a new manager there, and he had no interest in hiring a black man. Union rules kept him from getting on full time at the wharf, but he was able to pick up some days when the union men had called in sick or were on holiday, which meant he averaged two days a week there. But the $20 a week he was netting was far short of what he needed to live on.
Mary had gone after the university for expelling him without a conviction, and her tenacious work got him re-admitted to his undergrad school. But he had lost a term, and most of the courses he needed to finish his year would not run again until January. Besides, his United Negro College Fund scholarship had been cancelled when he was expelled, and as a result he could no longer afford tuition and books, let alone living expenses.
Ben did get a few mechanic’s jobs but when he went to the local hardware store, he took along a few of the old tools he had refurbished to show the store owner. To his surprise the man had no interest in offering refurbishing as an option, preferring to sell people new tools. But he did look closely at some of the tools that Ben had sharpened. Both knives and tools like scissors and shears often went dull and the man thought that having a sharpening service would bring new business into the store.
“So now I just need to drum up some business,” Ben told us at supper that night. “we are going to charge a dollar a tool, or six for $5. I get half of that.”
“I’ve got some dull knives in the kitchen, at least five, and a pair of scissors,” Sunny said.
“And we can make up a sign or poster for you,” Mary added, wanting to aid her new boyfriend.
“Are there any scissors or shears left in the shed?” I asked. “If you were to clean up and sharpen one side of a pair and leave the original in the rusty state it will really show what you can do.”
The girls made a poster and Ben went down to the shed before it got too dark, finding an ancient pair of sewing scissors. The poster was not too large … the store wouldn’t give up too much counter space, but Mary wrote the words and Sunny pretty much depleted a black marker writing it out in her neatest writing.
Ben came up with the scissors, now separated in two pieces. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “I won’t do the work up here normally. But it was getting too dark in the shed to see, and I wanted to get these samples cleaned up for tomorrow morning. That is a great looking poster.”
He worked through the evening cleaning up and sharpening one side of the scissors and reassembled the tool. As I had thought it really was attention grabbing.
The next day he went to the store and was showing it to the store owner, who was having cold feet on the idea until Sunny entered the store, read the sign she had made herself and dropped off her five knives and a scissors. That clinched it, and the shopkeeper agreed to offer the service. Ben left with Sunny’s tools, promising to have them done the next afternoon.
When Sunny went in the next day, there were another four knives to be done from people seeing the sign, and three pair of scissors.
Several weeks later there was a steady number of about 20 tools to be sharpened, giving Ben another $10 a week income, allowing him to pay rent again after several months of being carried by me.
Mary was living in our tiny apartment by that time. She had done well in defending Ben, in spite of it being pro bono work. The other people entrapped by the bent police officers were offered legal services through the ACLU, which hired Mary as a junior lawyer to head the re-trials. She was given a salary large enough to get an apartment of her own, but she was in love, and stayed with Ben, sharing his fold-out bed.
In October Sunny told us at supper that there was a free concert being planned in the nearby panhandle park. The Love Pageant Rally would have Big Brother and the Grateful Dead performing to commemorate the Oct 6 banning of LSD in California. Until then the drug had not been a controlled substance and thus was essentially legal, to the dismay of the police and politicians. The rally on the day the drug became illegal would be a way for the hippies to thumb their noses at the state. Copious amounts of LSD would be available and given away at the event.
I knew that I would look like a narc or policeman at the rally. I had gotten my hair cut in May, and twice since then so I could look professional when I went to Dr. Killensworth’s plastic surgery clinic to advise women considering the treatment. I earned $10 per woman who signed up for the surgery with the doctor and discovered that long hair and hippie clothing would turn off the patients. Sunny was thrilled to iron my white shirts and knot my business-like ties when I went to the clinic three days a week in the summer and twice a week once school started again.
Ben also looked a bit square. Mary had made him cut his hair in September for the trial, and it really hadn’t grown out much. Mary; well, Mary looked like a lawyer, even when Sunny had her kitted out in a tie-dye dress. Sunny was the one of us that looked the part of the hippie in her tie-dyed maxi sun dress. Her hair was now only three inches long, but she was able to weave some daisies from the garden into it. She wound up being the only one of the four of us who was offered a tab of acid. A man working through the crowd placed a little tab of paper inside her cheek. After he turned to another person, Sunny reached into her mouth and pulled the paper out. She was still afraid of another bad trip, but still seemed to get a half dose. It was enough to send her on a trip after the concert. She stayed up all night playing her guitar and singing but had no negative dreams this time.
Two weeks later Mary and Ben were off somewhere and after we finished the dinner dishes, I sat Sunny down on the sofa. “I can’t take you to the clinic for a consultation, since we aren’t paying for your implants,” I explained. “But there are some things you need to know about the procedures. I thought we could do it here. First, are you still certain you need the implants? You seem to be being doing well with the glue-ons. And I absolutely love your natural breasts. They seem to be a B-cup now.”
“Yes. I want them,” she said. “I just feel more female when I look down and see them poking out. To have them inside of me, instead of just glued on would be perfect.”
“Okay. But this is a major surgery. Dr. Killensworth is doing about 15 of these a week now, so you don’t need to worry about him. But it is a full surgery. You will be under an full anesthetic during the surgery. He will make incisions at the base of each breast, where the skin fold will be. He will insert a new pair of implants under your natural breast tissues and position them there. When everything is set, an operating room nurse will sew up the incisions. That is actually a good thing, since she takes her time and makes much smaller stitches than the doctor would. This will make the implants much harder to detect, except when you are naked. When you wake up it will hurt, but they will give you some pain killers. I’m going to get you scheduled for an appointment early in the day so you will have time to recover. Some women spend the night in the hospital, but that is expensive. Do you have someone who can drive you home?”
“My boyfriend, I hope.”
“Of course. Sorry. That is one of the questions I have to ask. They don’t want you driving for a week after the operation. Not a problem for you. You will be in pain for a few days and will definitely feel some tightness. But a week to 10 days later you will be able to have the stitches out. That is something I can do here. Normally patients go back to the clinic so a nurse can do it. You are going to be bedridden during that time. So, no visits to your cancer kids.”
“Oh no,” Sunny sobbed. “I will miss them.”
It turned out that Sunny only missed four days with her kids. She made me go in in her place, starting on the afternoon of her operation. The next two days I gathered up ‘get well’ cards the kids made and brought them home for her, causing her to burst into tears. On the fourth day I had to take a big card from Sunny that she had made for the kids. Sunny was not an ideal patient. After the second day, even as the pain was continuing from the huge incisions, she became bored laying in bed, even though I had moved the TV into her room. On the fifth day, even though she still had the stitches in, I had to practically carry her to the clinic. That night I risked taking the stitches out and used a medicated solution on the scars to keep infections down. It was a month later when the scars fell off and she was able to wear a bra again instead of a camisole.
It was early December when I came back from the Anatomy exam for the midterm and got off the bus to get my papers from Mario.
“Something happening near your house?” Mario asked. I looked up and saw an ambulance double parked in front of the apartment. I dropped the papers and the change Mario was trying to give me and started to run. My first thought was that something had happened to Sunny. It was more than a month since her surgery, and she had seemed to be healing well. I racked my brain trying to think of what might have happened to her.
It was then that I realized how badly out of shape I had become. The last few yards to the house saw me staggering more than running. Ben was just going in as I reached the steps and staggered up to them.
“Sunny?” I said, hardly able to speak as I gasped for breath.
“She’s inside with Mrs. Horley,” Ben said, confused at my concern.
“Who?” I gestured at the ambulance speeding away.
“That was Mrs. Sullivan, the downstairs tenant,” Ben said, supporting me as I panted like a dog. “Sunny was bringing her some tomatoes from the garden and found her door locked. They knocked, but there was no answer, so Mrs. Horley got her key. They found her collapsed on her bed and called for the ambulance. The ambulance workers couldn’t say what was wrong but guessed that she had a stroke. Mary and I helped get her into the ambulance, while Sunny comforted Mrs. Horley, who was pretty shaken by it, as you might imagine. The two were close friends.”
By that time, I had gotten my breath back and went into the room where Sunny was wrapped around the weeping older woman, gently hugging her. Mary, ever the lawyer, was rooting through a box next to Mrs. Sullivan’s bed, looking for legal papers.
“It looks like she had a husband who died in the war,” Mary said looking at some forms. “She was getting checks from the VA. They probably will provide medical coverage for her.”
I guess I was the prototypical med student too, as I asked which hospital she was taken to. Ben told me the ambulance workers told him but said we shouldn’t go visit until the next day, when she would have had a chance to be examined.
It was a somber supper. Mary made sandwiches for Ben and me upstairs and Sunny didn’t leave Mrs. Horley, who she fed soup and toast. She never even came up to bed, spending the night curled up next to our upset landlady.
The next morning, she got Mary to sit with Mrs. Horley so she could do an early session with her kids and came back at about 10. Mary had called the hospital and got an update on Mrs. Sullivan’s condition. It was a stroke, and she was going to be in the hospital for at least a week, when they hoped she would be well enough to go to a VA treatment center. What was not mentioned was what would happen if she didn’t improve. At any rate, she was not coming back to her room in the house.
Shortly after that three of us went in the van to the hospital. Sunny insisted on coming. Mary said she wanted to come in case she needed to pull her lawyer credentials out on troublesome doctors or staff. And I wanted to go for the medical experience.
Surprisingly Mrs. Horley was happy to stay with Ben. She considered him to be like a son to her, with all the work he had done on her house. She was in a better state anyway and said she would make Ben a lunch. He spent most of the morning chatting with her, although he did clean up Mrs. Sullivan’s room. The lady had soiled her bed clothes while incapacitated so Ben made up a bundle and moved them out with the trash.
At the hospital we were first held up at the admissions desk, where Mary and I worked through the admissions paperwork. When we finally finished and they gave us the room number for Mrs. Sullivan we discovered Sunny was missing. It turned out that she had peeked over the nurse’s arm to find the room number and had headed there immediately.
Sunny was hugging Mrs. Sullivan, and apparently a nurse had started to tell her to not touch the patient, until she noticed that the old woman’s eyes had lost the look of fear that was in them and started to show signs of contentment in spite of her condition. After a half hour or so, she fell asleep and Sunny joined Mary and I, who were talking to a doctor. Mary assured him that the woman was on a VA plan, which should get her better treatment than indigent patients would. Once I had told the doctor I was a pre-med student, he changed his vocabulary with me, and started using terms I had yet to learn. I mentally memorized these terms and planned to look them up in the library tomorrow. I was able to get the gist of the message though. He was saying that Mrs. Sullivan would not recover from the stroke, and the next week would be telling.
When we got back to the house, Ben and Mrs. Horley were chatting. We explained that Mrs. Sullivan would never return to the house.
“Oh my,” Mrs. Horley said. “That means you will have to find me another tenant, Mitch. Another young nurse would be nice. It must be a woman. Mrs. Sullivan was paying $20 a month, but I think we should try for $25.”
“That’s rather a lot,” I replied. “It is just a room with a shared bathroom and no cooking facilities other than the toaster and hotplate in the room. But I will try.”
“I may be able to help,” Mary said. “I would be interested in taking the room, but only if I can have Ben stay in the room with me.”
“Ben, yes,” the landlady said. “He is a sweet boy. But if you break up with him, no other men.”
“Well, I’m not planning on breaking up with him ever,” Mary said, and Ben beamed. “And I’ve learned a lot about cooking from Sunny over the past few months. If you want, I’ll take over your kitchen and make meals for the three of us.”
“The three of us,” Mrs. Horley repeated. “That would be so nice. Like having a family with me again. Forget about looking, Mitch. I have found a tenant. You can put your first month’s rent towards some paint to clean the room up a bit.”
It took Ben more than a week to clean up the room, but soon the young couple were living there and Sunny and I had to get used to having only two of us around the table. Once a week though, Sunny made Sunday dinner and invited the three from downstairs up. Mrs. Horley wasn’t able to do the stairs on her own, but Ben sat her in a chair and carried it, and her up to the second floor for the meal.
“We need to decide about Christmas,” I told the group after Mary and Sunny cleared the table. “Last year we, the three of us went to Eureka with my parents. They say that Mary is welcome to come this year. Would you like to come with us, Mrs. Horley?”
“Oh, thank you dear, but no. Every year my three sons take turns taking me to their homes for the family Christmas. I will be gone for nearly a week, coming back just before New Year’s. They never seem to visit other times, but at Christmas they step up. It is so nice to see their little ones. There will be a new baby this year.” At the mention of a baby, Sunny sighed.
“I have to opt out as well,” Mary said. “All hell will break loose if I don’t go to my mother’s for Christmas. Ben can come with us, and I can introduce him to the family. But he might prefer to go with you guys.”
“No, love, I’d love to go with you. Where is your family?”
“Mom and Dad are in Santa Rosa, just north of the city.”
“There will be no hitchhiking this year,” I said. “I’ll take the van and drop you two off at your Mom’s and pick you up on the way back. We were planning on heading out on the 22nd and coming back on the 28th. Does that work for you?”
“That’s perfect for us,” Mary said. “My trips home in the past were shorter when I was in school and Mom always complained. With almost a week she’ll have nothing to complain about.”
When the dishes were done Ben and Mary took Mrs. Horley downstairs to their apartment. Sunny and I snuggled in bed that night.
“I’m going to have to go shopping soon to buy gifts for all those little ones that will be there,” she said. “I hope I have enough money.”
“Why don’t you buy gifts from both of us,” I suggested. “I made good money over the summer from the clinic and saved a lot of it. Can you buy everything for … say $200? That way you can buy new stuff instead of just recycled books and stuff. You know those kids will treasure anything coming from Auntie Sunny, no matter what it is.”
“$200?” she replied in a stunned voice. “Are you sure? That is a lot of money. You worked hard for it.”
“It is our money,” I insisted. “And it is going to my family. Our family, I hope. If you need more, let me know.”
Chapter 15 -- Because tramps like us, baby we were born to run
The trip north this Christmas was a lot easier than last year, thanks to the van. There were four of us: Mary and Ben heading to Santa Rosa, Sunny and I going all the way to Eureka to meet with the family. Due to my job at the clinic during the summer I hadn’t gotten home then, and mother was pretty adamant that I was to get home for the holidays “and bring that pretty girl with you.”
Apparently, there were no new babies this year among my sisters and aunts, which Sunny was sad about, but she was thrilled to see all her other young fans again. And because I was making good money, she was given a big budget to buy gifts. It was worth it to me. I really didn’t like shopping, while Sunny loved it. It was worth the money to have her look after that, as well as the wrapping and such. The back of the van was packed with gifts, not only Sunny’s but the ones Ben and Mary were taking to their Christmas.
It was still fairly early in the morning when we were directed to Mary’s parents’ house in Santa Rosa. Eureka doesn’t have many blacks, so there is no black neighborhood. But in Santa Rosa Mary’s folks live in a smallish area that was exclusively black. Sunny and I attracted some attention at first, but folks out on the street relaxed when they saw Mary and Ben with us. A massive black woman ran out from the house when Mary got out of the van to completely engulf her. It was clear this was Mary’s mom. A tall, thin black man with a collar of white hair above his ears waited his turn for a hug while Momma got her time in. Sunny and I grabbed the boxes of presents to stay here and carried them into the house, which was older, but in fairly good condition and spotlessly clean inside.
Mary introduced us, and three minutes later Sunny had made friends with everyone, as she was prone to do. I was a bit more reserved, but the family had a way of welcoming us in. Any friends of Mary were friends to them. Ben got special attention, as the prospective boyfriend.
We spent an hour visiting and an attempt was made to have us stay for lunch. It was only by promising to stay for dinner on the return trip that enabled us to get back on the road.
We picked up hitchhikers on the way up, three of them at separate times. But none were with us for long. I felt it was important to pay back for the times when we had been on the road on our thumbs. We made good time on the trip and were in Eureka in late afternoon after about five hours on the road.
I got a Mom hug like Mary had endured once we got to the house. My sister Norma was already at the house, planning Christmas with Mom and we hugged as well. Suddenly there was a shriek: “Aunt Sunny!” as my niece Melanie burst into the room. That attracted the attention of the younger kids, who streamed out to see Sunny (and me, I hoped).
“You cut your hair, Sunny,” Melanie complained. Sunny’s hair had grown back to about four inches long. Melanie hadn’t cut hers all year and it was down to her shoulders now.
“Yes, I did,” Sunny answered. “I met someone who needed it more than me.” She then explained about donating her hair to the kids with cancer.
“Wow, that is so sweet,” Norma said.
“I should let mine get that long, and then donate it too,” Melanie said.
“If your marks aren’t better than last term, you’ll be donating more than your hair. Like that guitar,” Norma said.
Melanie did the teenaged eye-roll thing.
“Aren’t you keeping your grades up?” a concerned Sunny said.
“She just sits in her room playing that guitar or listening to records,” Norma complained. “She barely passed Science this year.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Melanie pouted. “I’m going to San Francisco and join a rock band. Won’t need school for that.”
“It does matter,” I said. “Sunny was making good money with her music last year, but it dried up completely this past year. She has been doing volunteer work lately.”
Sunny had apparently picked up something in Melanie’s manner. “Mel? Are you planning to quit school and head to the city?”
“Of course not,” the younger girl claimed, but a red face made it clear that she was lying.
“When were you planning to go?” Sunny said. Melanie broke. She admitted that she and three girlfriends were planning to pool their Christmas money and head south early in January, hitchhiking.
“Four hitching is pretty hard,” I pointed out. “A lot of rides will only pick up one or two. It will be easier with girls, especially if they are all as pretty as you, but a guy cramming four teen girls into his car may not be completely trustworthy.”
“But school is such a bore,” Melanie complained.
“It is if you don’t care and don’t work at it,” Sunny said. She looked at Norma, still open-mouthed at the news that her eldest child was planning on running away. “But I have an idea. It means you will have to work through the entire spring term and get your marks up. If you get up to mostly A’s, then Mitch and I will come up at the end of June and take you to our apartment. Only one friend though: you two will be sleeping on the pull-out bed Ben had. He stays with his girlfriend now.”
“Maybe your mom will make you an allowance of $5 or $10 a week, that Mitch will give you if you behave and don’t get into underaged drinking.”
“No drugs,” Norma insisted.
“Well, it is hard to avoid grass and acid down there,” Sunny noted. “But if your experimenting gets out of hand Mitch sends your allowance back to Norma and you will find San Francisco is pretty boring if you are broke. Don’t think you can panhandle or busk to make money. There are dozens of kids in the city right now, and in summer it will be crazy. You might be able to earn a quarter a day like that. If you are lucky.
“If you are good, you can stay with us through to September coming back in time for school again. But you have to get good marks this spring and be polite and helpful to your mother and nice to your sisters and brother.”
“Geez, that’s a lot,” Melanie mused. “But going to Haight for the summer would be so cool. And not to have to worry about food and a place to sleep. I’ll go for it if Mom and Dad agree.”
“I’ll have to talk to your Dad about it,” Norma said. “You know he’s going to go ballistic when he finds out about you planning on running away. But Sunny’s idea is a good one. I’d sleep better knowing you are with family down there. And you have to tell us the names of the other three girls. I bet Lisa is one of them.”
“I can’t Mom. We promised not to rat out the others. Yeah Lisa is one, but you don’t know the others. Lisa will be the one I share the bed with at Sunny’s.”
“Okay. Let’s head home now and get ready to talk to your Dad,” Norma said. They walked out the front door, when Melanie shrieked again. “Uncle Mitch has a hippie van. Can I ride in it?”
Norma had the other three kids, so I suggested that I drive Melanie home, which was only eight blocks away. The enthused young girl climbed into the passenger seat, her head a-twirl looking at the interior of the vehicle, which Ben had finished up quite nicely. There was a second row of seats and then a small bed behind, currently covered with boxes of presents.
All too soon we were at the house, and Melanie hopped out and started for the front door. “I think now would be a good time for you to start helping your Mom out with the little ones,” I said. “And also, I know you will want time with Sunny to practice your guitar. I want you to spend as much time with me and I’ll tutor you in science. I was pretty good at that.”
“Okay Uncle Mitch,” she said and gave me a big hug. “Thanks.” She trotted over to the station wagon and started helping with the smallest children. Norma glanced at me and mouthed a thank you.
Back at the family home I started carrying in Sunny’s loot, and Dad came out to help. He sounded disappointed that Ben hadn’t come. He had been planning to get his car worked on. I told him he would have to pay to have a garage do it this year.
In the house Sunny and Mom were bonding in the kitchen, but when the boxes came in, they both came out and took over distributing the presents under the tree.
We had a small dinner with just the four of us in the kitchen. We were several days before Christmas Eve, when the house would get crazy. About three hours later, when we were thinking about going to bed (Mom still had “Mitch’s Room” reserved and didn’t seem to object to us sharing a bed) there was a phone call. It was Norma.
Apparently, they had agreed to Sunny’s plan. Melanie would get a $10 allowance and Norma insisted that we get an additional $5 a week for room and board. They had spoken to Lisa’s parents, who also went ballistic on learning about the planned escape. They were also willing to pay their daughter an allowance if she was allowed to go south. The major difference was that Lisa only needed to get a C average to earn the trip. Lisa was not as advanced a student as Melanie. Finally, Norma begged Sunny’s help to get a present for Melanie for Christmas. Their earlier plan of giving her $50 was stopped with the knowledge that the girls were planning to use the money to run away.
The next day Norma appeared early.I got Melanie for a two-hour science lesson where she learned about mitosis and cell division. At the end of the session she claimed that she finally understood, better than after her teacher had taught it. Sunny and my sister went to the pawn shop where Sunny found a Korean War surplus knapsack for $10. Most of Melanie’s present was the trip in the summer, with the old bag as a symbol of the trip.
Norma held out the old bag by a strap, as if it were diseased. “Are you sure about this?” she asked Sunny. “I mean we can probably buy a brand new one in the hardware store camping section for not much more money. This is so old and decrepit.”
“No, it’s perfect,” Sunny explained. “It is still in really good shape. Army stuff was made to last, and all the kids on Haight will think it is super cool.”
Norma accepted Sunny’s advice and bought the bag. Sunny also bought two sets of surplus meal kits: tin plates, cups and flatware that packed into a small space. Then it was back to Mom’s where Sunny spent a half hour reading and singing to the little ones while Melanie finished up her tutoring. Then we swapped, with Melanie getting a guitar lesson while I read to the kids. No, I don’t sing.
The next day saw more of the extended family come, so more kids for Sunny to play with. She also did two hours on the guitar with Melanie and the teen spent another two hours with me in tutorials. The girl was quite bright, but unmotivated. The trip to the Haight should provide the motivation. At the end of the session I told her she was to phone me for help if she was ever stuck on things at school.
The following day was Christmas Eve and everyone showed up. Sunny was in heaven, singing, reading and playing with the little ones while still finding time to help in the kitchen. Melanie was also mirroring her, helping out the way she had last Christmas. When Norma commented on getting helped, Mel hugged her mother and promised that this year it would last. She really wanted the summer in the Haight.
On Christmas Eve Sunny got a surprise. There was a stocking with her name on it, and it was hung up next to mine on the mantle. She was officially a part of the family now, Mom declared, and Sunny started to bawl. This upset the little ones, who didn’t understand about happy tears, and they all crowded around her and tried to “fix her boo boo”.
Eventually Sunny put the little ones to sleep in the bags arrayed in the rec room and everyone went to bed upstairs an hour or so later. We all got about six hours sleep before the ear shattering peals of “Santa Came!” from the early risers downstairs got everyone else up. Soon the living room was a mess of wrapping paper and opened presents. Sunny was on coffee duty and I was doing toast while Mom and Norma did bacon and eggs respectively. Soon the adults were all well fed, and a break was ordered for the little ones to get some cereal and toast into them while some of the other adults tidied up the chaos that was the living room.
It was after lunch when gifts were exchanged. Sunny watched Melanie intently when she was opening an oddly shaped package. Once she pulled it out, she looked at it quizzically for a second and then suddenly realized what it was. “It’s a hippie backpack,” she squealed. “It is so cool. Thanks Mom.”
“It has words on it,” she said, reading. “MASH1081? What’s that mean?”
“That’s from the Korean War,” her Uncle George said. He had served for two years in that conflict. “It stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and the number. They were mobile care centers that were placed near the front lines to help wounded soldiers before they were evacuated to Seoul or Tokyo for more work. That was probably a bug-out bag used to package drugs or equipment when the unit had to move.”
Sunny also watched Melanie when she opened a more easily recognized present: clearly a music album. She opened it and noticed that the shrink wrap was off the album. “Did you test it for me, Aunt Sunny?” as she held up the latest album by the Mamas and the Papas.
“No. Turn it over honey,” Sunny said with a. smile.
“There is writing on it,” Melanie stared at the scrawl and then shrieked again. “It’s a signature. Mama Cass! Wow!”
“I bought it at a concert they had at the Avalon. I could only get Cass to sign. The others were pretty busy signing other copies for people. I hope you like it.”
“Like it? I love it. After my trip this summer it is the best present I’ve ever had.”
The one other present I paid attention to was the small box that I handed Sunny near the end of the madness. It was quite small and I didn’t want it lost in the debris. She looked at the label, seeing it was from me and quickly opened it. First, she saw it was from a jewelry store in the city and when she opened it she squealed herself. It was a silver locket. I had looked at gold ones, but Sunny had told me that with her pale blonde looks silver looks better on her. The locket was heart-shaped, and when she opened the heart, she saw pictures of her and me on the opposite sides.
“So that’s why we had to go to that photo booth last month,” she accused. I had to confess that I had taken the photos and trimmed them to fit into the locket. It was worth it though, as Sunny leapt on me and kissed me deeply until the others in the room started to applaud.
“I’d have thought that an engagement ring would be more appropriate,” Mom chuckled, and I started to feel my face go red. “Maybe next year,” I said.
“This is perfect, Mitch,” Sunny said as I helped her put the locket on. She jumped up and ran to a mirror and saw that the chain was a perfect length to lay in her new cleavage.
Christmas soon ended, and on the 28th we headed south to Santa Rosa to pick up Mary and Ben. We had our promised dinner with them and got in late that night. Mrs Horley was back, and I found a stack of mail on the hall table. I dealt out half to Mary and ours to Sunny. Mary stared in shock at one letter and handed it to Ben. “Open that first,” she ordered him.
The letterhead said Selective Service System and we all caught our breaths as Ben read it, then handed it to Mary.
“They want me,” Ben said. “Because I was not in school for fall term, my educational deferment has ended. They want me to appear at the local induction centre for a medical on January 24.”
Chapter 16 – If you are going to San Francisco, wear some flowers in your hair
New Years was not a joyous time for us in the house. The Human Be-In was held early in the month, but no one from the house attended. Ben was pensive, trying to decide what to do about his draft notice. Some of our more radical friends suggested he burn his draft letter at one of the demonstrations that were popping up in the area. Another group suggested he flee to Canada. Mary actually told him that if he did that, she would go with him, getting a job as a waitress if necessary. Ben was strongly opposed to that. She was a lawyer and could only practice in California. He would not see her cheapen herself and take a lesser job. In the end he decided that he would report on the requested date.
He learned that army pay started at $78 a month, and with free room and board he could save all of it. He initially said he would send $39 a month to Mary and the same to his mother. Mary noted that she would not need a share of the money. All she wanted was letters while he was away. Ben then suggested he would send all the money to his mother, who was struggling to raise his eight brothers and sisters. Sunny suggested that he should only send her $60 a month, which would cover her rent, and keep the other $18 for incidentals, like buying birthday presents for his siblings.
On the 24th Ben headed to the induction center to take his physical. None of us doubted that he would pass: Ben was just too fit not to. Then it was off to Fort Ord, taking an Army bus from the induction center in the city. His first letters arrived a few days later. He told us that mail to Mary would be private, but letters to Sunny and/or I were more public and could be shared. He would also write his mother regularly. Sunny went to Oakland once a week to share the letters with his family, and to comfort his mother.
The first letter Sonny got described the induction process: getting a uniform too small for his chest, having his head shaved in less than a minute, and getting put into a platoon of 30 men, sharing a barracks.
It was the next letter where we started to see some of Ben’s humor come through. He referred to the 20-mile hike they went on as “a little walk.” It turned out that halfway through the “walk” most of the recruits were totally spent and stretched out for several miles along the trail. Of the 10 men in his squad, only Ben and one other were fit enough to do the march. Ben organized the squad at that point, taking regular rest breaks instead on continuing to walk steadily. By the end of the march Ben and the other man were practically carrying three men back to the base, while the other five were limping badly.
More than 20 other men in the platoon had finished the hike by the time Ben got his three injured recruits to the sick bay, but his squad was the first to get all members to the finish line, thanks to the help and support of the two fit soldiers.
A later letter talked about taking a “walk to a playground”, which turned out to be an obstacle course. Again, Ben seemed to ensure that all the men in his squad got through before he completed it. He also spoke of ‘skeet shooting’ where the smallest man in the squad proved to be a better shot than all the others, including Ben.
Mary didn’t say much about what was in her letters, which bothered me at first because we shared the letters to Sunny completely. Then Sunny explained that Mary’s letters were more likely love letters, meant to be kept private. It finally clicked in my dumb male brain and I no longer asked Mary what Ben was telling her. Mary wrote Ben daily, while Sunny wrote nearly as often and he reported that others in the platoon were jealous about all the mail he got. Apparently, his mother was also writing often.
In late January I got a phone call from Eureka. Mom spoke for a minute, first to me and then to Sunny. Then an excited Melanie got on with me. “Uncle Mitch,” she squealed. “I got an A plus in my science test. There was a big question on mitosis, and I was the only one in the class to get it perfect. And I also did well on my math test a day later. Thanks for your tutoring.”
“I’m sure you earned those marks by working hard. I guess Sunny and I will have to get the bed ready for you for June.”
“I hope so,” the teen replied. “I really want to get down there this summer. All the kids are so jealous. And tell Sunny that my knapsack is the hit of the school.”
Long distance calls are usually shared by many people and finally Norma got on the phone. She said Melanie was not only doing well in school but was also acting much more mature around the house, looking after the smaller kids, and even teaching her younger sister to play the guitar rather than just sitting alone in her room.
Sunny was thrilled with the call, even though it was mostly to me. We got a call from Eureka about once a week or so from that time on, often when Melanie was having trouble with something at school that I had to help her with. It was hard to answer some things on an expensive long-distance call, so often I followed up with a letter mailed out the next day. I learned later that those letters were often shared with her classmates, so I wound up tutoring the entire class.
In March Ben came to visit on a weekend pass from boot camp. Sunny and I didn’t see much of him in his spiffy-clean Army uniform. Most of the time he was with Mary. But we did find out that he was being shipped to Vietnam soon after his leave ended for a one-year tour of duty.
The big news of the trip was that Ben had been made sergeant. His platoon lieutenant was from Georgia, and fairly racist, and wanted another man to be troop sergeant, but the Captain of the company was from Detroit, and awarded Ben the stripes based on the way he had led the troop in the hikes and training events. The lieutenant objected, but was overruled, and was forced to have the first black sergeant in his training platoons.
We got letters in early May. Ben said that Nam was ‘hot and dirty’ and the camp was crowded as it filled with replacement soldiers to get up to a full contingent. He noted that the new soldiers were treated with scorn by the men who had been there for a few months and the mess hall was segregated in practice, if not officially, with all the black soldiers sitting at tables at the back. The only times they had left the camp was for short hikes, with several long-time troops joining his all rookie troop.
In April we learned of his first real experience in Nam. “We went out skeet-shooting yesterday,” he wrote. “This was a bit longer than anything we had done in the past, and we were to patrol 15 miles to the east. At first we were doing okay, making decent time on well-worn paths. Each troop was together, spread out from the others. As the newbies, we were to the rear.”
“Anyway, about 12 miles out I started to get a feeling of something wrong. I had my troop all drop to the ground. Well the lieutenant didn’t like that and worked his way over to where we were. He found where I was laying on the ground, and started giving me hell, accusing me of cowardice. He ordered me to get the troop up. That was when a bullet hit him in the gut, knocking him down. Seconds later all hell broke out, with the other troops all firing wildly in the direction of Charlie. Our medic crawled up and tried to stop the looey’s bleeding. Young Billy was near and I quickly realized that we flanked Charlie, who were focused on the other troops. I told Billy to start picking off the enemy at the rear of their formation, and then I started firing at others near the front.”
“It took several minutes before Charlie realized they were being covered by us on their flank. Eventually they started in on us, but seconds later they started to retreat since we were clobbering them. As they left we could see that there were about 50 escaping and we picked off a few more as they left. The sergeants of the other troops were eager to chase, but I called it off, noting that they would be headed for a stronger position. And since our lieutenant was gut shot, we needed to get him back to the base quickly.”
“I picked the looey up and slung him over my shoulder. I took Billy, the medic and two other brothers and we headed back double time. The others came back at a normal pace, covering our rear. As we ran back Billy told me he was sure he had hit 11 men. I figured that my count was three or four, and the rest of the troop got as many. I don’t think that the other troops would have hit anything, the way they were firing wildly.”
“We trotted into the camp and I went straight to the MASH, only dropping the looey on a table as the doctors and nurses came in. We were a good 20 minutes ahead of the others, who were slowed down by four wounded from the other three troops. As a result, I was called on by the major who wanted a report. I reported that we had come across about 60 VCs and had shot 20 or so, killing most, but probably only wounding a few. The major took notes and said his report to the Colonel would be that we met up with 150 enemy and had killed 45 with no fatalities and only five wounded. It was a blatant lie, but the glare the officer gave me told me in no uncertain terms that his numbers would be official.”
In May we got another call from Melanie. She was still working hard at school and getting great marks. She really was a bright girl when she was motivated. But her friend Lisa was no longer in the picture for the summer. The other two girls who had been planning to run away with Melanie and Lisa had left alone during the Christmas break and got to San Francisco a day later, although one of the guys they had hitched with turned out to be pretty scary. But they blew their money within days and had to call a parent to come and collect them.
Lisa had not worked as hard as Melanie in the term, and was actually in danger of failing the year, let alone meeting her targets to be able to come south with Melanie. Instead she also ran away and tried to hitch to San Francisco. She only made it halfway before her father found her standing on the side of the road trying to get a ride. He took her home and insisted that she would stay at home over the summer babysitting. So Melanie was resigned to come alone. Sunny told her that she would want to be here for June 16, which was the start of the Monterey Pop Festival. Apparently, that would be the last day of exams at school. I insisted that school came first, and if she had an exam that day, she would be picked up that evening and we would drive through the night to get to Monterey for the second day of the festival.
While I was on the phone talking to Melanie, Sunny sat in the background playing the new song by Scott McKenzie: “If you are going to San Francisco, wear some flowers in your hair.” That only served to escalate Melanie’s excitement.
Chapter 17 -- Just kicking down the cobblestones Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy
It was near the end of June and Sunny and I were headed north to Eureka again, to pick up a very excited teenager. Melanie was exempted from writing most of her exams, due to excellent marks through the term, but she did have to write her Geography exam on Thursday morning. She was hoping for a B in that class: all the rest had been As.
Halfway there I decided to use my Sunny time productively. “Are you still looking to get your bottom surgery?” I asked. Now I had an excited adult in the van.
“Yes! Yes, oh yes Mitch,” she nearly exploded. “When?”
“I was thinking this summer, while Melanie is with us. She can look after you during your recovery. Dr. Killensworth, who did your breasts, has hired on a new doctor who has done three of those surgeries already, and I have spoken to all three of the new women and they are pleased with his work. I think he will do a good job for you. Dr. Killensworth will assist. He wants to observe a surgery and see if he wants to add that to his breast augmentations as a sideline.”
“Wow,” Sunny replied. “What do you have to do?”
“Well, for the next hour I will explain the surgery, and then you can decide if it is for you. Then all you have to do is show up on the operation day. You will be knocked out: it is a major surgery, then three or four days in the hospital. After that two weeks in bed at home with Melanie sitting on you to make sure you don’t try to get up too soon.”
“When can we … you know, do it?”
“If you mean sex, probably after two months. That will be good timing, since Melanie will be back in school then.”
Sunny was silent for several miles. “It will be like we are really married then,” she finally said. “I am sad that I can’t have a baby for you. Maybe you should dump me and find a real woman?”
I pulled the van over to the shoulder and wrapped my arms around my beautiful girlfriend. “Sunny, you are a real woman. This is just a little operation to make life easier for you … for us. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t thank the goddess for making you love me. And if we are meant to have children we will, through adoption or something else. You have so much love to give and share. I’m sure there will be children involved somehow.” I held my sobbing girlfriend for nearly five minutes until she was calmed down and then we continued to Eureka.
According to plan we went to Mom’s on Wednesday evening, where Norma and Melanie was waiting. Norma had the knapsack that Melanie had packed and admitted that she had packed ‘a few more things’ that wound up using two full suitcases.
“We can’t take all that, sis,” I explained. “She isn’t going off to college … yet. It is just nine or 10 weeks, and most hippies live with far less than what she has in the knapsack.”
It took some arguing, but eventually Sunny and Melanie convinced her (and Mom) that I was right. So we put the knapsack in the van, and left the suitcases in Mom’s car. We spent the evening with Mom, where an excited Melanie was bouncing up in down in anticipation of her trip. To calm her down, I started quizzing her on geography questions. I had taken the exam for the same course about six years ago, and I knew how the teacher thought, and some of his favorite questions. Melanie did well, and I was confident she could pass the exam.
Sunny and I drove Melanie to the high school the next morning, with Mom and Norma following. They moved up to the van while we waited for about 60 minutes, with Melanie being one of the first students coming out the front doors after the exam. She saw the van, squealed, and started to run towards us. Sunny popped out and when the girls met in a big hug, and then walked back to the van arm in arm.
Mom and Norma got their hugs in the van. Melanie would have been ‘so embarrassed’ for her classmates to see any show of affection. (Somehow Sunny didn’t count.) Both mother and grandmother were sobbing as they hugged their not-so-little girl. I finally had to order them out of the van. We had a long drive ahead of ourselves. We weren’t even going home, but directly to the Monterey Pop Festival south of the city an eight to 10 hour drive.
I was not merely a visitor at the festival, but as a helper at the free clinic on Haight I was assisting the volunteer doctors acting as medics for the festival. Thus we were able to pull into the festival on Thursday night while the stages were still being set up. We parked the van next to the big army tents with a Red Cross painted on the roof. I immediately went back to the bed in the back and went to sleep. Melanie and Sunny were too excited to sleep and went out to explore the grounds.
I awoke at dawn, and discovered the girls sleeping next to me. Luckily Sunny was in the middle position, and it was her that my arm was curled around. It would have been just too weird to find myself next to my niece.
The first concert was not until afternoon, so Sunny and Melanie roamed the grounds again, while I scoped out the tent that was set up for medical use. There were eight hospital type beds there. I searched around and discovered where the bedding, towels and other supplies were located. As a premed student I would probably get assigned basic tasks like making beds and fetching supplies for the doctors and nurses. My favorite doctor, Dr. Jane from the Haight clinic, was working there this weekend so that other doctors could work here at the festival. Doctors and nurses and a few other volunteers like me wandered in. I introduced myself, but few stayed in the tent, instead heading out to the stage area to see what was going on.
Just before noon the girls came back, and Sunny opened the cooler she had packed our lunches in. It was roast beef on sourdough and was still quite tasty in spite of having being made two days earlier. Then we heard sounds coming from the stage, and the girls headed back to the sounds of the Association, the opening group. I could just hear the music from the tent, and recognized the hits Along Comes Mary and Windy.
The next band was a group from Canada that I didn’t recognize but Lou Rawls came on after that and I recognized his playing. A girl singer followed, then Johnny Rivers and I could hear Help Me, Rhonda and Secret Agent Man. Then Eric Burden and the Animals did a set, with Simon and Garfunkel closing the first night.
There had been a little action at the tent during the show, but not much. I spent the full time there, but most of the others spelled each other off to give them a chance to hear the bands. We had a few drug overdoses, and a few cuts and bruises to deal with, all stuff I had dealt with at the free clinic. I helped out with a young girl who found out that barefoot was good in theory, but not when people were smashing beer bottles about. A doctor who had been helping someone else came along to check my work as I was probing the cut to find a few last shards of glass. He said I was doing well and let me stitch up the wound. I think he thought I was a med student instead of premed.
Finally Sunny and Melanie arrived and with the tent empty, other than a night nurse, we went back to the camper. I worried that Melanie was on drugs, the way she raved on, but Sunny said she was just high on the excitement. She did rattle on for over an hour as we lay on the bed in the van, finally winding down and allowing us to sleep. The girls slept in during the morning. The Saturday shows would start after noon. I went into the tent where I found a bored-looking night nurse. There had only been two minor incidents through the night.
The afternoon play list had Canned Heat, followed by Big Brother and the Holding Company. I heard Ball and Chain sung by Janis Joplin. Country Joe and the Fish were followed by Al Kooper and the Butterfield Blues Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Steve Miller and Electric Flag followed to end the afternoon show.
After a short break and more of Sunny’s delicious sandwiches (which would have cost a fortune for lesser quality if we had bought food on site) the girls headed out to the final concert of the night. I joined them for the first three sets, Moby Grape, Hugh Masekela and The Byrds, but I was yawning through the Byrds and Sunny made me go back to the van and sleep.
I woke refreshed to hear the final song from Otis Redding. Then it went quiet out there. Not really quiet. There were still the sounds of all the attendees leaving, but no more music. Melanie and Sunny came back and the teen was practically bouncing again. I heard one hippie look at her and say “I want some of whatever she’s on.” I knew it was going to take at least another hour before we got her calmed down enough to sleep.
But before that hour was passed, we saw a young hippie couple come into the tent, with the girl looking extremely pregnant.
“We thought the baby wouldn’t come for another couple of days,” the man said. “But it seems to want to hear the festival. I think Goldie is very close.” With that his girl moaned with a contraction.
I sent the nurse to find a doctor and helped the girl up onto a bed. She moaned again with another contraction: the baby was close. “Look, I’m not a doctor,” I admitted, “but I have done this before. Twice. If you want to have me get started until the doctor comes, I can.”
“Please,” the woman with the long, straight red hair said, moaning again.
“Sunny, get me some towels. Clean and warm if you can. And Melanie, please hold Goldie’s hands.” I pulled back the girl’s sundress and saw that the baby’s head was cresting. I sent the father out of the room: a delivery room is no place for a man. And then pulled down her panties to show the coming baby.
From there it didn’t take long. Within five minutes the baby popped out, just as Sunny returned with some towels she had warmed over the heater. I cut the umbilical cord and tied what I hoped was a tidy knot and handed the newborn to Sunny who was wide-eyed as she wrapped the babe in a towel. I sent Melanie out to get the father, noting that she was rubbing her hands as she went. The girl must have really been squeezing. Daddy came back ashen-faced and I made Sunny hand the bundle over to him. The smile that flew across his face as he held his daughter for the first time was amazing. I could tell that Melanie wanted to hold the baby, but she would have to wait. Momma’s turn came next, and when the baby was placed on her chest it went quickly to her breast and started to feed. Watching that was magical for Melanie and Sunny, and for me, I guess.
Five minutes later the doctor finally showed up and was pleased with my work. I had the paperwork done for the certificate of live birth, and he just had to sign it. As a non-doctor I was unable to. The nurse took the baby, which screamed at her interrupted dinner, to weigh and measure her. Then it was back to Momma for the second course of the meal.
The parents said their names were Goldberry Riverman and Tom Bombadil, clearly fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, and they named the baby Summer Galadriel Bombadil. I wondered if it had been a boy if it would have been named Frodo.
There were spare beds in the tent, with no other emergencies that night, so Tom lay down on a cot that we pushed over next to his new family. The other three of us headed to the van and quickly crawled inside. It was nearing 4 a.m. and the night nurse was on duty.
We woke late, nearly 10, buy there was no music until after lunch, when Ravi Shankar had the entire four-hour block to himself. Indian music was hot at that time, but it could not compare to a newborn baby. Melanie finally got her chance to hold the baby, at least a very smelly one, and helped the nurse change the little one’s diaper for the first time. Tom watched: he planned on being a hands-on dad, not one that leaves all the baby chores to the mom. Melanie was thrilled to be able to hand the tiny tot back to her mother, who had a fresh supply of milk ready for her.
When Shankar was finished (for some reason he got a four-hour set), while everyone else was on stage for less than an hour. But the evening performance was packed rock and roll stars. We missed most of the first set, by the Blues Project, but next up was with Sunny’s friend Janis Joplin and her new band: Big Brother and the Holding Company.
The Who was next, and at the end of their set Pete Townshend smashed his guitar to bits as the audience cheered, then kicked the amps and Keith Moon kicked his drum kit over.
While most of the audience cheered the mayhem, Sunny and Melanie were not impressed. The considered their guitars to be their friends and could not believe that a performer would abuse them in such a way.
Next up was the Grateful Dead, another band that Sunny was friends with, followed by The Mamas and the Papas. When they got to the stage there was a lull in the crowd noise for a few seconds and Melanie took that time to scream out “Mama Cass, I love you”. The singer looked up and waved to the crowd and Melanie assumed that the wave was to her, even though we were near the back and she couldn’t have picked anyone out of the crowd. But Melanie insisted for the rest of her life that Mama Cass Elliot had waved to her at Monterey.
Scott McKenzie came out in the middle of the final set and sang Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair. Sunny and Melanie and more than half of the crowd joined in and sang it with him.
It was over. There were crowds working their way to the exits and I had to take an arm from each of Melanie and Sunny to keep us all together. We finally got back to the medical tent, where I had a couple hours of packing up to do. Most of the other volunteers had disappeared. In fact, half of them never had shown up to work at all. They just used their passes to get into the concert free. Then there was a crew that came in to dismantle the tent and take it back to wherever it came from. Tom stood up next to the bed Goldie and the baby were in.
“We should leave now. We have to hitch a ride back to Haight,” he said helping Goldie to her feet.
“You aren’t hitching anywhere with that little baby,” I retorted, and Sunny nodded vigorously. “We’ll all go out to my van tonight. The roads out of here will be blocked up solid for hours. We can sleep in the van and head out in the morning after all the traffic is cleared up.”
Summer got a new clean diaper before the tent came down, and Melanie proudly carried her out to the van, while Sunny assisted Goldie, who seemed to be recovering from her birth-giving ordeal. Sunny, Melanie, Goldie and baby Summer shared the bed in the back, while Tom and I sat in the front. I let Tom have the second row of seats to stretch out on. I was pretty sure I was tired enough that I could sleep curled up in the driver seat. I was.
The sun wasn’t quite up when I woke, but I could see the sky lightening to the east. The place was a mess. It looked like the organizers had hired hippies to clear away the rubbish, and they were swarming all over the place with trash bags trailing behind them. I started the van with everyone else asleep, and we drove out to the highway, with no other traffic on the road. The motion of the van woke Tom first, and then the girls a few minutes later.
“Do we have any sandwiches left?” I asked Sunny when I saw her blonde hair pop up in the mirror showing the back.
“No, and I’m hungry,” she complained. “We haven’t eaten since noon yesterday. Can you stop somewhere for breakfast?”
“We haven’t eaten for two days,” Tom noted. “And we don’t have any money, so we’ll have to wait till we get home.”
“No you won’t,” I decided. “You have a young mother who needs to eat to produce food for her baby. And you need food too. It’ll be my treat.”
We argued for the next couple of miles, with Tom finally promising to pay me back “for everything.” But when we stopped at a diner, they both got out as we headed in to eat. A half hour later we all waddled back to the van, stuffed with the huge breakfast. Then it seemed like a short tripback home, and we were at Haight before noon.
Chapter 18 --John and Mitchie were gettin' kind of itchy Just to leave the folk music behind
Tom took over navigating as we got near to Haight. He led us two blocks north and then west to about the same position as our house on Haight. It was on Oak Street and faced onto the Panhandle Park area. We pulled up in front of an Edwardian house, quite a bit bigger than our house. It had a bigger front lawn, which was covered in vehicles not grass.
“Pull up there on the right,” Tom said. “No one will pull in behind you there.”
There was a big, colorful sign over the porch to the house that read “Middle Earth” in a modern melting-look typeface. We all got out of the van and climbed the steps to the house, with Goldie holding her new treasure. “You have to come in,” Tom insisted. “There is something I want to show you.” We didn’t take much convincing. On the way home Tom and Goldie had explained that they lived in a cooperative commune, and Sunny and especially Melanie wanted to see how it all worked.
Inside Goldie headed up to their room to change the baby while Tom took us into the rest of the house. There was music playing in one of the side rooms, probably the parlor of the original house. A huge man with long hair and a longer beard came out.
“Gandalf,” Tom said. “Let me introduce you to some new friends: this is Mitch, Sunny and Melanie. Guys, this is Gandalf, the leader of the steering committee.”
“We don’t have vacancies right now, Tom,” Gandalf said. He didn’t look like the real Gandalf from the book. He was stout, not slender, and not all that tall. But he did sport a floppy peaked cap and a grey cloak.
“They aren’t looking to join,” Tom said. “They have a house on Haight, not too far away.”
Sunny had moved towards the music, and I could tell she wished she had her guitar, which was back in the van But when she got into the room she started singing. It was a cover of the Beatles’ Eight Days a Week and as she started to sing, the band members each stopped for a second, smiled and then caught up on the beat. They didn’t all pause at the same time though, so the song continued. When the song was over, a tall lanky fellow spoke.
“Hi. I’m Strider. That was amazing. Do you know any others?”
“Do you guys know Creeque Alley?” Sunny said. She had been singing the song for the past few weeks since it first came out.
“Yeah. Maybe. It’s new, so we haven’t played it much,” Strider said. Sunny looked at an acoustic guitar sitting against the wall. “Do you mind?” She asked, picking it up and starting to tune it. Strider nodded his approval. Sunny played the intro to the song, with the band joining in with her and she started singing the Mamas and Papas’ song.
When the song was finished Strider started to applaud, and soon the rest of the band was following suit. “It’s official,” Strider said. “You’re part of the band.”
“No, I’m not,” Sunny replied. “I said no to Big Brother and I’m saying no to you.”
Strider and the others in the band looked stricken. “But your voice is perfect for us, and with you we could go from being a two-bit bar band to getting a record deal.”
“Sorry guys, But I will sing a bit with you now if you want to jam,” Sunny said.
Melanie and I left at that point as Tom led us upstairs to their room. Or more correctly rooms. He went over and gave a kiss to his wife, who was nursing Summer on the bed. He then took them to the adjoining room, which was his studio. He fiddled with some equipment and a gas jet started burning a hot-looking flame. While he was doing this Melanie and I were marveling at the blown glass art that covered almost every square inch of space in the place.
“I do glass blowing sculpture,” Tom said, picking up an 18-inch long rod of translucent red glass. He held it in the flame.
“I was lucky enough to meet a guy about five years ago who taught me,” Tom said, slowly turning the rod. “I’ve been on my own for just over a year.”
He melted a large drop of the red onto a metal device that looked like a turntable. Then he drew out a bead of glass that they soon recognized as a capital M. He used a metal stick to shape the sides and serifs of the letter out. Then he took a yellow rod and once it was hot enough, he added a capital E to the slowly solidifying M and used the metal stick to push it over to one side, making it largely vertical. Next came a white rod to make an A from the middle of the M towards what they later realized was the front. A fully transparent rod made an L that came off the end of the A and was shaped into a horse’s head with a serif forming a horn. It was a unicorn.
The N from a green bar went at the other end and formed the rear of what was starting to look like a sled or wagon. Another transparent I formed the body of the animal, and Tom finished up with another E in yellow that mirrored the first E to form the second side of the wagon. He then used a knife thing to slice the cooling glass from the initial base.
“That’s going to be hot for about an hour,” Tom said. “But it is my gift to you for all you did for Goldie and me this week.”
Melanie was speechless with her eyes wide at the beautiful creation that had been made from the letters of her name. She could still see where the letters were and was pretty sure she could show someone how it had been made, but if you didn’t know it just looked like a beautiful creation. “Thank you, it’s beautiful,” she was finally able to say.
“I think Goldie and Summer are ready to go downstairs now,” Tom said. “The baby will have to meet all the other people in the house.”
When they walked into the parlor, Sunny saw the baby and stopped singing in mid-word. The band also stopped almost as soon as they noticed the tiny bundle in Goldie’s arms. They all crowded around to say hi, but then moved back to their positions on the stage. They were replaced by what must have been all the females in the house. The women’s attention span on the baby was much longer, and all demanded a chance to hold the little one. Finally, Summer had enough and started to cry. Goldie was at the far end of the crowd at this point, so Melanie took the bawling baby, intending to take her to her mother. Surprisingly Summer immediately stopped crying when she recognized the familiar-smelling girl and snuggled into her breast. It was only when the baby started rooting around for her nipple that a red-faced Melanie handed the tiny infant back to her mother, who did start to nurse her again, causing all the women to say ‘ahh.’
At this point Tom came over to Melanie and me (Sunny hovered with the others around the nursing baby.) “Goldie and I are not very religious,” he said, “so instead of godparents we would like to name you and Sunny as Earth-parents to our daughter. Would you accept?”
Sunny had apparently heard, because she turned to Tom and said: “I would love to be little Summer’s Earth-mother. Becoming any kind of mother is a dream to me. We accept.”
“Can I be Earth-auntie then?” Melanie begged, and Goldie nodded her agreement.
“A rite. A ritual,” Gandalf crowed eagerly. “We must have a ritual.”
So, after Summer was fed there was a small ritual held in the main room of the house. Gandalf started speaking in gibberish. I looked at Tom, and he leaned over and told me that the man was speaking in Elvish.
“But no one else in the house speaks it, so we don’t know how accurate it is, or if is it even close to the language in the books. We just kinda go along with the flow.”
So Gandalf droned on for another half hour, and finally finished, telling us in English that we were now the Earth-parents of the little babe, which brought a huge smile to the face of Sunny.
Goldie and Tom then took us back up to their rooms, where Sunny marveled at Tom’s glass creations. He showed Sunny the one he had made for Melanie, and she explained how he had used her name as the base of the creation.
Then Goldie came over with a larger, much more complex piece and handed it to Sunny. It contained dozens of colors, and it looked like the head of a lion with all the colors forming the mane.
Tom then handed me another larger shape. This one was all in black glass, and occasionally dark grey. It was a dragon and the only color to it was a spear of red-orange glass coming out the open mouth, representing fire. It was magnificent.
“These take a bit longer than the one I made for Melanie,” Tom explained. “As you saw, I can turn out a simple one like that in under an hour. These take nearly a month, although that it not steady. I work on these for a few hours a day, then do a few simpler things to let my imagination and creativity recover.”
“They are magnificent,” Sunny said as she stared at the colorful unicorn head.
“We want you to have them,” Goldie said. “For all you did for us.”
“It is too much,” I said, noting that there was a price of $150 on the shelf these two had been taken from.
“Nonsense,” Tom said as he wrapped the two pieces in old newspapers to protect them in a box he was putting them into. “Besides, it is not us that gets the money if they were to sell. The commune takes all the cash.”
“How does that work?” I asked. “I mean this is your creativity and artistry. You should gain by it.”
“That isn’t how the leaders think,” Tom said. “I am starting to agree with your ideas though. In theory everyone works and produces what they can, and we all benefit. But the four leaders consider sitting in their meetings each night to be their contribution. The money the band earns playing in the bar goes into the pot, and we four artisans are expected to put our earnings in too. There is a girl who makes gorgeous candles, a leatherworker who does belts, hats, boots and shoes, and a metal worker who makes stuff like this, but in metal not glass. Then there are the women, who do all the cooking, baking, cleaning and other menial chores.”
“You didn’t mention Dori and Meri,” Goldie added. “They sell weed and acid on Haight. They probably make more than the rest of us together. Plus getting drugs at cost for the commune.”
Melanie’s sculpture, now cool enough to handle, was laid on top of the box containing the other items. We apologized and said we needed to get home soon, so I took the precious box and carried it down to the van. We met Gandalf on the way, and he said: “Oh, did you buy something?”
“He’s just checking to make sure we didn’t get any cash to turn over,” Tom whispered to me. Then, in a louder voice he replied to the leader. “No, we just gave them some trinkets to pay back for all they did for us.”
Gandalf peeked in the box, seeing Melanie’s small treasure on the top of the wrapped items. “Just little bits,” he said approvingly. “Tell your friends where you got them.”
We were soon in the car, with Sunny holding the box of treasures on her lap as I drove. It was only a minute later that we pulled into the house. We went into the place, with Sunny cradling the box until she got upstairs. She looked around to find a suitable spot to display them.
I saw some letters on the table and rifled through them. “We got two, no three letters from Ben,” I said. “Mary must have brought our mail up. Could have done without all these bills though.”
“Oh, Ben,” Sunny squeaked. “I forgot all about him. I’ll have to write a letter tonight, and another tomorrow to catch up. I know he lives for mail from home over there. Luckily Mary will have been writing, and I know those are the letters he treasures most.”