It had been a long trip to the left coast. Mohamed, Justin and some guy that wanted to find a girlfriend and commit suicide, hopefully without her. This was not to be the first or the last trip Justin made cross country but it seemed relatively moderate considering the previous ventures. Hitchhiking alone at 15 was a real trip sleeping outside eating cans of beans and cheese was preferable to spending the night with the strangers that had a thing for boys. Mostly male. This was 1970 so most of them were tripping and ready for a bit of don't ask don't tell. Like any of that shit mattered anyway. Justin grew up in Upstate Michigan and always had a thing for hitchhiking so he learned how to pack a knife and sleep with it under a pillow.
Such are the ways a persons learns not to go unconscious or asleep. But for sure, he liked the drugs. All kinds. Never made him paranoid. He learned long before that people were weird, so it didn't matter. He also tripped out to California with a girl named Kim (quiet and alluring) and his sister Sue (total crazy knockout) at 17 on the premise of peyote, which they did mange to do plenty in the Boulder Creek Mountains.
No, this trip was going to UCSC. Psychobiology studies. Why? How many course could you enroll with Tim Leary as a professor. Sure to be a lot of acid. Besides, as he had learned from his relationship and travels with Kim it was all an experiment. The drugs, sex, travel and intrigue. Anything goes. 1970 Right?
Anything goes with me. I'm Justin case. I would not have remember any of this in 2009 but for the fact that my life flashed before me in slow motion. I saw every detail one more time. And I remember why I fragmented it out of my mind with a little from my “friends”.
So we traveled the 1-80 in 1977. This time was it. I was going to go to school in Santa Cruz and live like a slicked bohemian bisexual. That's what you would call it at 22 when everything was out and nobody cared. Nobody died from sex anyway. They died from loneliness. I figured it could pull it off since my emotional stickiness was about six weeks. Longer than most people I knew.
Including Babs but we had known each other forever and did not have any secrets as I remember. Good sex too. Good drugs. A child. Not much else in common, including lovers. Although Babs had a thing for younger guys so there were a few times when even that line was crossed.
Santa Cruz for real. Was I ready. Was Santa Cruz? Never know until you get there has always been a motto. To be sure these were chilling times in the Cruz known as the murder capital of the world. In 1977. But I had been through all that before. I was older now. I didn't need to carry a knife. I was carrying a pound of mushrooms and that seemed to keep everyone mellow.
I never knew me and Babs would become part of the story. She was already in Santa Cruz. Waiting to be kidnapped in less than a year and murdered in a dozen. But that's the way it was with her and me. Not stable but always interesting. I got lucky. I lived. Some luck.
Shortly before Three Mile Island, Jonestown, Moscone, Milk and AIDS. Armistead Maupin
was serializing Tales of the City in the San Francisco Chronicle. Who could forget Sylvester. It all seemed easy and disconnected from anything I had done. So gay was ok by me. And Babs too, who I was scheduled to meet up with when I got there.
Santa Cruz was to be s stepping stone to the City. But, instead, it turned into a very surreal millstone.
