Outings

A few minutes ago, my calico raised her rear to meet my hand as I scratched it. I can never scratch a cat that way without remembering Barbara on the bed scratching her cat's butt--the cat pressing its rear-end high up into her hand--while Barbara purred: 

"Cats like to have their asses scratched."

Cats were our teachers.


Ed would point to Brownie resting meditatively and ask: "Can you imagine being that relaxed?" 

Florida State University had Four Quarters. Tallahassee, Fla. had four seasons. Growing up in snow-less South Florida, I'd never seen seasonal changes. Tallahassee, being in the northern panhandle of Florida, gifted us with colored leaves and a fountain that looked like a big ice sculpture in the winter.

The above photo of the frosty FSU water fountain is not one of mine. It is from Google Images.


Fall saw the exit of Barbara after she graduated and returned to Miami. Ed took over her subterranean studio, and enrolled to finish his senior year. 


During his Dropout Year, Ed obtained a military psychiatric deferment from the draft (in full swing thanks to the Vietnam War which was sending boys home in body bags). That summer I drove him to his weekly psychiatrist appointments. 


One day I asked how the session was and he answered, "Today we discussed psychiatric theories. What he thinks of R.D. Laing." Ed had me reading Laing's Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Laing argued that perhaps our experiences simply are. Nothing more. 

Lang's theories were called "Existential" and "Leftist." He just said it's okay to be crazy.

It did not occur to me to ask whether Ed was also discussing his sexual predilections. Around that time, I saw a video of a theater sketch about a young man acting gay to get out of the draft--doing everything but actually having sexual intercourse with the stone-faced male psychiatrist--and still getting stamped fit for the active duty. So I was aware of the power of the "H" word, but Ed claimed to be faking madness. Sort of.

That Fall I moved out of the House of Neurotic Sexy Coeds into a large garage apartment with my name on the lease. I shared a room with a studious, funny Jewish girl named Joanne who didn't care for pretty roommates. The other bedroom was smaller and saw pretty roommates come and go.

Here's Joanne during an all-night-cram-session when she finally lost sanity, wrapped herself in one of our tie-dyed sheets and began dancing and chanting: "Hare Krishna...Hare Krishna...Hare Krishna..." 

The final pretty roommate was Carolyn who downplayed her prettiness and who also had terrible arthritis that was heavily medicated so Joanne was able to tolerate her with sympathy, at least for a while.

Carolyn (photo above).


Carolyn had played Michael in Peter Pan the year before so I knew she was a terrific actress. I was taking a directing class and cast her and a tall droopy guy named Harvey in Tennessee Williams' one-act, Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen. Rehearsals turned grueling. Carolyn was perfect for the part, but so insecure that she'd often burst into tears, blaming my poor direction or her inability as an actress.

Carolyn's final performance was mesmerizing, and Harvey turned out to be pitch perfect as her alienated flop-house lover. The two are connected by pain but not intimacy. 


My professor gave me a "B+" grade because he "never saw the ball bounce between them."

Meanwhile Ed was working into the wee hours with huge slabs of stone and chemicals and paints in the lithography studio of the Art Department, and sleeping in the daytime. I would often open his unlocked door and crawl into bed with him. The gentle afternoon light streaming from the sides of the blinds across the bed…Ed’s soft skin and silky chest hair…we’d hold each other and drift through sleep like two morphine addicts in a Tennessee Williams play. 

One day on a visit to see my mom in Miami, I told her about Ed.

Mom:  (very worried) I hope you’re not sleeping with him.

Me:  Well, actually we do sleep together. But nothing happens. I’m not going to get pregnant. We’re not having sex. I’m still a virgin.

Mom: You sleep in the same bed. Doesn’t he get an erection? Don’t you feel it when he’s got an erection?

Me:  No.

Mom: Oh my God, Marlan. That’s not NORMAL.

Poor Mom. So close to the truth. But I told her that it was normal. As far as I was concerned.

Ed acquired a big grey tomcat that just showed up one day. He would eat cheese out of Ed's hand and then proceed to hump the furniture, purring obscenely. In deep admiration for this supreme show of horny masculinity, Ed named him "Jocko."

The cat came and went. The same could be true of Ed's art nowadays. For his thesis, he was making lithographs of maps. Was it a "big fuck you" to the Academic Powers that were--anger at being forced to create in order to get a degree? Or was he running out of artistic gas? The lithos were technically proficient. But as far as I could see, that's all. 

Like so many crucial topics that arose between us, I didn't ask for explanation.

If Ed's seemingly superficial art was connected to sadness for Barbara's absence, he hid it well. When not sleeping or working towards his degree, he was at my place hanging out and enjoying the Grand Central Social Station of my living room. 

People from the past began to show up to mingle with people in the present. Bob from the summer house began a flirtatious friendship with Joanne. For all his bragging, there was something rather innocent about Bob, and the two of them tapped into a pleasant relationship that included studying together and dinners. If there were conjugal visits, I dared not ask details.

Bob and Joanne (above). I must have surprised them with my camera. There's a smiling one. Just need to find it and post later...  


Once again Ed and I embarked on fresh excursions, this time with new friends. Our first was Studying in the Woods. Joann brought a sweet coed aptly named Joy. She was sweetly attractive, hippieish, and rich. Joy always looked as if she was going to break into Judy Collins' We Always Cook with Honey. 


The autumn air was crisp but not cold. We wore our homemade-tie-dyed thermal underwear. Blankets provided support for books and bodies on the long grasses as we made nature our study hall.

Ed (foreground), Joy (middle), and Joanne (background).  

Sandspurs, Books and Blankets

There was one enchanted outing that involved a lot of people and a couple of cars. I only remember Ed and Joanne, but Joy was probably there and her friends. Maybe Bob. It was a coed camping trip, designed with little hardware and no tents. We built a fire and slept on the ground near Dog Lake. I doubt you could get away with that now. 


Yes, it was all very Hansel and Gretel. No heavy breathing or sex. Except the one thing that made it more Woodstock than Grimm: mescaline. The plan was to go out to Dog Lake, take the mescaline, trip away and stay at the lake to avoid the trauma of driving home. 


Before the mescaline, we hung out and explored. Off from the path, we found a stage. Without a second thought, I jumped onto the stage and did an improv:  I was a piece of happy bacon with my fellow strips inside the package--cozy and optimistic. But the trip home inside the shopping bag led predictably to foul play as my companions one by one were lifted out and thrown onto the grill. Until I met with the same scary fate, crinkling and wailing as I popped and sizzled.


Everyone applauded and commented. But the main thing:  Ed was impressed. He couldn't stop talking about how wonderful I was. I walked some distance ahead of him while he called out: "Hey, little piece of bacon...wait for me!" But I didn't. I shrugged and laughed and hurried on. Very pleased and a bit scared that he might soon be disappointed. It might be downhill from here.


I remember taking the mescaline and hanging out with Joanne. And I took a photo of a dog swimming in dog lake.
  




We weren't doing lots of drugs. Well, what do you consider a lot? Drugs came and went as frequently as the people. Grass and occasional hallucinogens.


I hadn't tripped since that fateful night when I walked all the way to Ed's home to bang on his door. But this trip was by far gentler in tone and fun because gentle fun people were with me.


Tripping, standing at the lake's edge with Joanne, I looked into the clear water and saw imprints of paw prints, reptile bodies, footprints so dark and big they appeared to be painted on the sand-colored mud below. A middle-aged lady with a bad perm and tight black curls approached and said in a man's baritone voice:


"Are there snakes in this lake?"


Joanne and I turned to look and both noticed that a tiny middle button on her tight white blouse was about to pop as her bosom pushed against it, and we laughed so hard we couldn't answer.


To be continued...






  

Trust

The Rambler rolling along through the night...Me in the passenger seat...Ed at the wheel chanting what sounds like a Navajo pow-wow song.


"What are you doing?" I ask. "What's that?"
"Chanting. To stay awake."


On the way to his parents' home where he still lived. So it must have been night. But my memory offers up no info on where his parents put me if we stayed overnight.


I don't recall his mother feeding us, although she must have. Only that one moment stands out--which I included in my letter to her last month. Ed's sudden impulse to cut my hair ("You know how your hair should look?), setting the chair in the backyard and going to town with the scissors while his parents watched from the open sliding glass doors saying, "We hope you know what you're doing."


Thrilled. I didn't care if I ended up bald. This attention...this strange physical intimacy. Not quite the same as having a man shave your armpits, but not that different either.

Nothing else remains of that visit. Perhaps that's more than enough. Looking back, I wonder what I was doing there. Why he brought me. Was it just because he was driving my car? Or was he somehow showing off that he was "dating" a girl (even living with her)?


His mother recently answered my letter (I asked if she ever heard from Barbara and she said yes), and said that Ed and Barbara had wanted to get married but "I told them to wait until after graduation. But by then she married somebody else."


The regret.


I hope she doesn't believe marrying Barbara would have saved Ed from taking men as lovers. Although he and Barbara would have made a dynamic, complimentary couple.


One evening, late in our cohabitation that summer, Ed called to say:  "I'm at Barbara's and I'm going to spend the night." Feelings of anger and humiliation welled up in me. I retorted, "That's fine. I'm going to go out and pick someone up off the street corner to spend the night with."


"I wish you would," he said. "But you won't." My roommate Becky was there during that call and after I hung up, and she heard what he said, she yelled, "I don't know why you put up with him, Marlan!"


Becky and I met when she was a sweet virgin in her Freshman year. She was now sleeping with a much older guy who didn't interact with the rest of the house (as Ed did), but basically had sex with her and left, or she would go to his place. In my eyes, Becky's de-virginization  had made her high-strung, fidgety and dramatic. If that's what sex did to you, then I felt safe "putting up" with Ed where at least our feelings were real, if unspoken.


No drama the next day when Ed returned. I don't remember discussing it (although he was probably dying to). Barbara had a steady boyfriend. And even after making love with Ed again, she picked up the occasional guy in a bar.


"Barbara's sore," Ed told me one day, laughing. "She picked up this guy who turned out to be a hot lay and today she's complaining she can hardly walk." I laughed. He added: "I am not a 'hot lay.' I take my time."


Whatever. This attitude and talk did not make me regret not having sex with him. I was content not to be compared in bed. Comparing us out of bed would have been an exercise in futility. It would have been like comparing Elizabeth Taylor to a fly on her wall.


Then came the cats.


My roommate Barbara showed up with the four kittens she had promised, and Ed and I spent hours in bed petting them and playing with them. I got one for myself--a black one with brown tinge to the fur that she had named "Brownie." Ed changed it to "Pussilanimous Miscreant (the Cowardly Villain)." Ed drew a pastel of Brownie lying down --the view from behind. The only attempt he made at drawing while living there. It was lovely.


What happened to that drawing? My aunt might have thrown it out during her purge of my bedroom in Ft. Myers after I'd dropped out of college and left home for Boston. She threw out my dolls; the trippy lampshade Becky had painted for me; and possibly Ed's drawing. I'd left Brownie with my father and brother. A few years later, we were walking in Chicago where I now lived, and Dad said: "Oh I have to tell you something sad: Brownie ran away."


Cats do not run away. I knew Dad had disposed of her. But worse, I felt startled. I'd forgotten all about her. I had somehow misplaced her in my selfish need to get away and find myself. Bad when it happens to cats. Worse when it happens to people.


One day I was visiting Barbara and described how the kittens seemed to melt under his velvety touch (something I picked up and retain to this day), and she stretched out her hand and said: "Ed can touch."


The way she said it, I could see the two of them in that small bed, Ed taking his time with his light, soothing touch--Barbara purring under it. "Ed can touch..." as if to say, This is his true talent. His calling. Like the way a man might talk about a woman who is good in bed. Categorically. Did Barbara love the rest of Ed? How could she not? He was lovable. She said nothing to me of her feelings. Perhaps to spare me. Or was she, in fact, as confused as I was about what the future might hold with someone who is neither animal, vegetable or mineral?


The summer was drawing to a close, my classes were in finals, and I was rehearsing for the show when my roommates announced that it was unfair that Ed lived in my room when the others did not have men living with them, and that meant he was using the utilities and not sharing the expenses. Plus he was taking up space in the 4-bedroom house and therefore should pay rent.


Many many roommates later, I can look on this as standard female roommate ganging-up petty behavior. But this was my first taste. I had been spending a lot of time away from home and Ed. He interacted with them of course when I wasn't there--and what was said or inferred was unknown to me except for the Frozen Banana Incident.


Over-ripe bananas in the freezer that had caused my roomies consternation and they laughed when I came home and revealed that I was the one who had put them there. To eat later as frozen bananas in cereal.


Someone laughed and said: "Ed said, 'Well, I know it wasn't Marlan. She's far too rational.'"


Rational? Moi? But I can see that my diary entries reflect a rational girl with flashes of emotionalism and radical wild outbursts.


It occurs to me now that Becky might have campaigned to get rid of Ed--to save me from myself. Ah, if only this were fiction.


Ed felt insulted when I told him. He smoked his cigarette and mused: "I fixed the screen door...I made them dinner..." Nothing could be done to stop it. He had not found a job and now he had to go. In his absence, I fell into a depression with surges of anger. Exacerbated by my first experience of "speed." The doctor had given me diet pills a couple years earlier, but this high-wire drug was sold to me by someone in the house -- I don't recall if it was male or female. To help me stay up and cram for exams.


Speed made me feel utterly brilliant and energetic and as if it would always be thus until the horrible awful dark near-suicidal crash that was the inevitable flip side.


Nick picked up the Ed slack and started taking me to the sinks again. Still remaining an adorable perfect (naked) gentleman. But I was furious when he didn't come to my play. I don't recall how we ended up in my room--maybe he stopped by to visit one night. It was dark, I was miserable from crashing on the speed--it was doing terrible things to my face and body--and despite that, Nick began to make love to me very gently.


What did I do? I stopped him.


Okay, okay, one more damn thing I'd love to do differently, but there it is. I ended up sitting on the steps of the porch with Nick saying goodbye and essentially letting him know that I never wanted to see him again.


"I think I need to see a therapist," I said. Nick said in his calm, nice way that he thought that was a good idea.


I wasn't a prude. But just after my freshman year (before Ed), I had thrown myself into several passionate sexual situations with men I desired and sometimes even loved, but in each case I'd been badly burned, even occasionally humiliated. So I was left cautious and confused. And technically a "virgin."


Whatever the glue was that held Ed and me together in an oddly physical, affectionate friendship...it would stay strong. And whatever Barbara and Ed felt or didn't feel about each other; what words they spoke and struggles they may have engaged in...only they know. If this were fiction, I could make up the options and dialogue, the twists and turns.


What they said or didn't say, felt or didn't feel mattered little at summer's end because Ed's "nemesis" graduated and returned to her home to Miami.


That Fall when Ed returned to Tallahassee to finish his degree, he moved into Barbara's vacated studio apartment. I moved into an apartment a stone's throw away from him. And the dance continued.




Next Chapter: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Memory Interrupted

Ed Clark was a vital force in my life for 15 years. We met when I was a student at Florida State University. I only just learned that he passed away of AIDS in '92. If you're just arriving, please scroll down to the first post/chapter and read upward. 


I just found my writings from diaries and letters covering the same time period as the last two posts (Sink Holes and AC/DC) which I wrote from memory. The excerpts below fill in blanks and correct the record. As for Truth, it is somewhere in between.


My diary begins with my summer move out of the conservative dorm and into an un-conservative house in Tallahassee with three other girls. Now a junior, I took classes and some part-time work. Ed Clark brought Light into my life, and then suddenly left Tallahassee to live at home in Jacksonville. I missed him terribly, but the diary reflects that I was handling his absence with more realism and maturity than I recall possessing.


Posted here are diary excerpts from that diary:


Tallahassee, Fla. June 12-13, 1971


I lie here exhausted, freshly bathed, and feeling very proud. Saturday morning I drove all the way up here from Fort Myers (7 hrs.) and made it alive with the car still in good shape. 

[Photo from Google Images. Not mine. Used here for reference purposes only. I don't have any photos of the house I lived in during this time, but this looks exactly like it.]


The house is like a dream. I even like my room. It's sparsely furnished--in fact the worst of the lot--which is what I get for being the last to move in. There is an over-abundance of bureaus that make me long for a desk. 


The old tenants--as a gesture of kindness or bitterness (or both) left us a rather long list of all the faults and disasters that come with the house. The worst seems to be the roaches, but I hope that will clear up slightly when the garbage they've so generously left behind is taken away.


Spent the rest of my day cleaning the kitchen. It was quite a job and I only scratched the surface! I had better luck with my room: comfortable orange curtains, rug, stereo, and shelves of books. The bed was a real scream. It was only a mattress.  A large wobbly bed waited in the front room so I traded. My window is next to the porch. It's a lovely old porch with rocking chairs to rest in, but I can't help feeling that I'm always being observed. Ed would frown or laugh (or both) at that! 


I sat on the porch tonight thinking over Ed's advice: 


Dream your world as you'd like it...


Hard to decide what kind of world I need and desire. Hope to read and expand more this summer.

[Bob in above photo.]



Bob is one of the three guys who live upstairs. He wants me in any way, shape or form. I'm not sure why. Ed would say that doesn't matter; it's enough that Bob likes me. Bob jumps to the conclusion that I am unsure of myself and afraid of sex. This is a truth only in part. I'm not afraid of sex (in fact, I expect to find my need for it quite prevalent this summer), but I have always been afraid of people.


Bob scares me with his insistence that one shouldn't discriminate sexual partners--that it doesn't matter who you are--if you're willing you're eligible. There's a loss of identity involved that makes me feel like just one more functioning animal on the planet. 


I don't mean to be snobbish; I like to get the maximum enjoyment out of life: cooking, walking, cleaning--these activities play with my senses and give me pleasure. And I want to make love or have sex, or just touch and taste and enjoy someone whom I trust and who won't jump to conclusions over everything. 


I don't want anyone to ever lie to me in bed, and I will return the favor. All I ask is understanding and patience.


June 15, 1971


Mini-muffins and squash for supper. Squash: fry in butter, steam with water, add sugar, salt, onions. Dee-licious! (Bob's recipe) The more I get to know Bob, the more I like him. 

Becky (my roommate) is starting to wear my patience. The fault is my own as well as hers. Must learn to relax.

Sitting on the porch this evening, Bob informed me that last night he and Dean saw a peeping-tom peeking through the kitchen window. He said this so casually it took us a while to comprehend the caliber of the situation. "We decided to go see what the guy was looking at," Bob said. "He walked away when he saw us coming." This was good for a laugh and freaked out my roommate Barbara who played the "frightened chick":  "I sleep naked!" But I have a feeling it will pass after her visitor Jim leaves. 

Jim is a tall good-looking guy who hitchhiked in from Jacksonville tonight for a visit. His first words to me were: "Well, how's school?" Make me want to vomit!

Bob invited me upstairs and I played cards with him and Jerry. Dean was finishing Dune for the fourth time! I wish I knew him better, but Bob and Jerry assure me that I don't. Bob gave me some bread and the recipe. They assure me that I won't be able to bake bread. I'll show them!


Took an ungodly long walk today. Tomorrow I'm driving friends to go job hunting.


Desire to write Ed or even call him overwhelms. Letters run through my mind during the day. Have got to start bringing my fantasies down. I'm using a good friend as an escape from this world and must stop. But I do miss him.



June 16, 1971


MUST GET MY SHIT TOGETHER. 

No kidding. Can't even stand to write Ed. What do I want? For sure I want to cultivate my classical music taste. Must finish the rest of my books before buying more. Weave baskets...garden...learn frisbee...yoga classes...take another dance class...Wake my body up!

What else? Art? Whose? Learn to make lasagna!


I waste too much time.


Relax.
Enjoy pleasant fragrances.
Love those I can.
Keep myself open to everything.

June 17, 1971


Much more together now. Still no job, but volunteered at the co-op bookstore. Sold a lot of books!



The happy part of this day came when I bought two classical albums and On Becoming a Person (Ed suggested it in a letter). 

“The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to ‘fix things.' I am much more content to be myself and to let another person be himself.”

Also began reading the Tao and enjoying that. My enthusiasm for these books is not merely induced by my fondness for Ed but the other way around:  My enthusiasm for these stimuli that he introduced me to has caused my fondness for Ed.


Two days later:


Too much day to write about. It's 5 a.m. and if I must stay up to write this. The Big Event was at 2:15 p.m. when my bread was finally baked and we all had a party. Afterwards Bob and I talked on the porch. I really like him now. He sees so much and in his own way is very honest. He surprised me with the fact that he was Ed's roommate for six months over a year ago. 


He said he finds Ed completely obnoxious, overly confident, a terrible artist, and most of all on the brink of insanity. The stories he told me were hilarious--there was one about Ed moving in on Melissa, Bob's old Gamma Phi Beta girlfriend. Tales of Ed screwing her by the river in a woods at a rock festival while Bob waited in the cold outside his own locked car (it was freezing and Ed had the keys), wondering where they had gone. 


And another story about Bob getting out of bed to go to the bathroom--coming back to Ed and Melissa. He claims they made it a threesome, but that didn't alleviate his pain.


While browsing in a bookstore several days earlier, I'd found a large book of photographs entitled "Please Touch" with photos that endorsed Ed's pursuit of higher consciousness. I sent it to him with a poem as my inscription inside the cover:


Lazy drifting mornings
My god, you are a sleepyhead.
Aye, there's the rub! (and it feels so good).
Look deep into yourself
 and perhaps you may find me
 hiding in a teeny tiny corner
 of your mind.
Good-bye, Farewell, Good luck.
      - Marlan Warren, March 3, 1971


June 25, 1971


Unsent letter to my last ex-roommate Merle: "Today is a bad day because I feel listless, frustrated, anguished, horrified, ludicrous and a trifle blank." 

[Photo: Leon Sink Hole. Pre-Ed. Freshman year we were still in bathing suits.]


In the letter to Merle, I mention that Nick at the bookstore has been taking me to skinny dip at Leon Sink: "Quiet guys usually scare me. I keep waiting (expecting?) to be tied to a tree in the middle of nowhere and raped. Unfortunately this never happens."


Letter stops abruptly. Starts again the next day with:


June 26, 1971


Ed came in last night at 9 p.m. I had gone to the movies with friends. He waited around with Bob and Jerry upstairs playing cards. When I got home, I was sitting on the porch brushing my hair when I recognized Ed's car. Insanity or dreaming--had to be one or the other. 


It was reality.


Ed spent the night (we got to bed at 5 a.m.) and today we hung out with Barbara for a while. Afterward, he said, "She's the type who could have 10 guys on top of her in bed and if I walked in, she'd say, 'Come on.'"

[Photo of Living Theatre performance by Allan Koss, copyright Allan Koss]


I had Living Theatre Workshop at 1 p.m. today. No go. Can't get hip. Too external for me. Not enough guts. Our workshop leader Jim says we'll all get into it later. When later? We only watched a video of the founders Julian Beck and Julia Masina talking about it ("No more theater for the Rockefellers!"). 


Back to the unsent letter:
Ed's going to live in Tallahassee this summer. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. We are friends. We love each other in a special sort of way. I'm very happy. He said he got the book and enjoyed it. 


He will be back Tuesday. 


Ed is every bit a spoiled, conceited, obnoxious, intellectual snob--but I love him and have enjoyed every minute of his visit. We are close friends. His plan--ready for this?--is to go home, pack and come back to get a job. He is going to live here for the summer! 


Ed took me firefly hunting tonight in Wakulla County. I was the only one who caught a firefly but Ed found a pretty seashell and bunches of wildflowers.


Firefly catchers...
Wildflower pickers...
Two drifters off to see the world.

[Photo: Ed in foreground with friends in the background. Fall Quarter '71]


Disclaimer
This blog is purely personal and from my point of view with the faults that come with memory and exaggeration. My intention is to honor this unique and gentle soul, and to find some peace. 

All photos in this blog, unless otherwise designated, are by Marlan Warren and copyright protected.