The Free
Spirit
California dreamin' on such a winter's
day
The Mammas and Pappas, "California Dreamin'
"
Beach bums!
No other words described them. Southern California's beaches from Santa Monica to San Diego were awash with them as they swarmed in from every state and half the free world. Like seagulls and sandpipers they stalked the golden shores and drifted with the tide. They were the environment, the two-legged part of nature. But only by a generous use of imagination could they be called a functioning part of the human race. Michael MacIntosh not only joined them, he became the paragon of beach bums. Having lost all real desire, he was the free spirit of the area.
The girl who had driven him from Mazatlan dropped Michael at Newport Beach and headed for Van Nuys and home. Since Michael had no home, he looked up a friend and found his house empty. But on the back porch, he remembered, was an outside shower; so for a long time he stood under the spray, washing off the dust of Mexico.
Michael spent that night as a guest of a former girlfriend in the women's dormitory of the new University of
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California at Irvine. He set into operation a new and unique "MacIntosh housing plan"; by rotating among friends old and new, he was never without a place to sleep. As for food, when the school cafeterias closed he had other recourses — tricks he had learned at Fort Ord when he would hitchhike to Santa Cruz on weekends with other soldiers and sponge off picnickers on the beach.
"Hi, folks," he would say as he approached a couple with a bulging basket of food. "We were out swimming and someone stole our picnic basket."
"Oh, that's too bad," was the typical response. "Why don't you have some chicken and watermelon with us?"
In the daytime Michael's body became bronzed on the beaches, and his cheerful facade became more firmly fixed in place. In the evening an apartment doorbell would ring, and there he would be — friendly, blue-eyed, handsome Mike. "Hey, come on in!"
But underneath it all, the loneliness, the ache, the sense of loss hurt worse than ever.
A source of steady income materialized: Michael found he could collect pop bottles on the beach and redeem them at a local supermarket. By really working at it he could pick up three or four dollars a day, but Michael didn't work too hard. After all, rent was free, and a new chain, McDonald's, was selling hamburgers at fifteen cents each. Or he could go to a friend's house with a blue box of Kraft's macaroni and cheese and a $1.49 gallon of Red Mountain wine. He spent most of his time surfing, playing football, loafing, drinking beer and wine, telling jokes, and listening to rock music by the Rolling Stones and the Beau Brummels.
One afternoon in Newport Beach he was watching some eastern college students playing touch football on the sand next to Thirty-eighth Street and Seashore Drive. One of them said to him, "We've seen you somewhere. You're a
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rock-and-roll singer, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah, I used to sing with a few groups," he lied with a smile.
It was a party of eight, all college seniors or school teachers on an Easter break holiday. Michael seemed to them a humorous novelty, a real beach bum. They let him sleep in their various apartments. It seemed that all of southern California had flocked for the week either to Palm Springs or to Balboa Island, an unique beach resort on a small island in Newport Harbor. Michael's new friends invited him to go to Balboa with them. He was in an effervescent mood, laughing, partying, joking, and meeting new girls. He and his friends found an apartment near Balboa and negotiated a deal with the manager. By pulling weeds around the place, they could have it rent-free for a month. When a tiger-striped cat showed up, they adopted it and named it Fang. At the nightly parties they would introduce their "pet puma," which became something of an attraction.
The project for the month was to meet girls and more girls. In order to do so, Michael and one of his friends devised a routine. He would stand on a street corner improvising on a harmonica (which he couldn't play) and shuffling his feet in a pseudo tap dance (neither could he dance). When the girls came by, as they did by the score, Michael would engage them in silly conversation. The friend would then approach and set a football down behind one of them.
"Excuse me, I'm singing and dancing for these girls. What are you doing?" Michael would say.
"Well, pardon me, ma'am but you dropped your football."
"It's not my football," the girl would giggle, taking the ball and being caught off-guard. The ball was passed
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around, the routine worked, and they ended up knowing each other.
"Hey, what's happening?" Michael would say. "Would you autograph our football? Put down your name and telephone number. Would you like to go sailing?"
"Yeah."
"Do you have a boat? No? Well, would you like to go to a party? Do you have an apartment we could use?"
If the party was to be at Michael's, sometimes six different girls they had met during the day would show up. One would bring a gallon of wine, another the spaghetti, another the meat sauce. Extra guys would be brought in, and everybody was happy to meet everybody else.
On one particular afternoon a girl named Laurie, a graduate of Stephens College in Missouri, was coming along the sidewalk. She had flown out from New York to visit friends in Los Angeles, but when those friends threw a marijuana party that was raided by police, Laurie (who was not involved) chose to depart. She drove to Balboa Island, where a former Stephens classmate, Sandra Riddet, and two girlfriends were renting a place.
From his spot on the corner, Michael noticed Laurie coming, and saw she was cute. He tuned up his harmonica and held out his hand. "I've got a pet puma at home," he explained, "and it's starving. I need a little extra cash to feed it."
"A pet puma?" Laurie was indignant. "Nobody has pet pumas. Get away and don't bother me."
But Michael was intrigued, for she sounded like an intellectual type. He followed her down the street, playing his harmonica and talking. He learned that she was from the east, had graduated from Stephens, and was visiting friends. How long was she staying? She would be returning to New York in a few days. She paused in front of a house overlooking Newport Bay, while he talked about
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himself. The other girls she was visiting came out and chatted; it was all quite casual. But Michael's mind was whirring. Eureka, he thought, these people have class. I've hit a gold mine! His eye roamed over the yachts berthed in the canal that separated Balboa from the mainland, the Cape Cod houses quaintly bordering the waterfront. It seemed the high school dropout, the ex-foundry roustabout, the beach bum had moved into another sphere. The fairy godmother's wand had finally touched Cinderella.
"I have no money or anything," he told Laurie, "but before you go back to New York, if you want to go out on a date, give me a call. My friend can lend me his car. And if you want to pay the way, here's my number."
Two days later the telephone rang at the House of Fang. It was Laurie. "I'm only in town one more day, but tonight I'd like to go out." Michael was again introduced to the other three girls. He noticed particularly the attractive, blue-eyed, short-haired, tall blonde they called "Sandy." Michael gleaned one important fact from Laurie on the date: the following Sunday, April 16, 1966, was Sandra Riddet's birthday, which Laurie would miss.
Michael planned his moves carefully. He looked up his collegiate friends and told them, "Let's go, you guys. There's a party Sunday at Balboa Island." And so he came, uninvited, with his friends, and Sandra didn't even remember him. Nor did anyone else. Most of the people came from Disneyland, where Sandra had been singing in the Golden Horseshoe before she enrolled at Cal State Long Beach.
But Michael made his mark. Using white shoe polish, he had daubed the fences and sidewalks leading to her apartment with the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANDY! He also ordered a dozen roses sent to her and charged them to her address.
During the evening Michael sat on the floor of the apartment,
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grinning from ear to ear, thinking, How neat it is. How happy all these people are. They're all educated. They all have money. They're all successful. His head swam. Around him others were laughing, smoking, drinking, and occasionally dancing. They would say to him, "What are you smiling about?" and Michael would reply, "I'm just a happy person." But to himself he admitted, I'm miserable.
Sandra, however, fascinated him. She was artistic, poetic, musical, and extremely intelligent. An impressive shelf of her books overlooked the room. Michael realized he was outclassed but couldn't resist the challenge. For some months he had tried to acquire a smattering of culture so he wouldn't appear so ignorant around his friends. He borrowed their class notes and their books, looked into Shakespeare and actually read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. As the evening waxed late, he sought to present to Sandra the image of an eager mind.
"I like that part in Dostoevsky where he talks to the police chief and almost admits his crime."
"Oh?" said Sandra. "You like to read?"
"Oh, yeah." Michael waved his hand toward her books. "I've read most of what you have here."
At last the party ended and the guests left, but no Michael. On and on they talked. Michael and Sandra and her roommates, until everyone's story was told. It seemed that Sandra's father was president of a corporation with headquarters in Philadelphia and dealings in Europe; he had worked his way up from the laboratory to the top. Her brother was a lawyer; her mother's father had been somebody important; and Sandra herself was majoring in English, had conservative tastes, and would be touring Europe the coming summer.
Michael went home toward morning, his head in a whirl. The very leaves on the trees seemed to be growing as he looked at them. The flowers under the streetlight
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were changing colors. The sunrise was by far the most spectacular he had ever seen. But it was not love that gave nature its eerie aspect this Monday morning. Just before going to the party, Michael had walked across the street and bought and swallowed his first capsule of LSD. He was riding high.
Four weeks later Michael and Sandra were married, barefoot, in Las Vegas.
