Day Seventeen (Tuesday, July 13, 1971)

Whispering voices near dawn roused me from sleep. A furry animal with a striped tail ran for cover. Jill and Erica were stepping lightly in camp. They loaded all their gear into their car and evacuated quietly.

“You know, we coulda ruined their game.” Otto spoke much later in the morning, under another sparkling sky. He was biting through a cold blueberry Pop-tart that he bought at the campground store. His hair was jumbled and his face was red and greasy. “All we had to do was jump outta our bags when we heard ’em leavin’ and demand to know what was goin’ on.”

“You knew what was happening, pal. The lineup was posted on the clubhouse wall and you weren’t on the traveling squad, that’s what.”

Otto and I took hot showers. He and I had the campsite to ourselves for a few hours. The main agenda item before checkout was to visit the Gorge. Everybody—from the soldier, to Steven and Don, to Laura Gwynne, to people at the camp store—mentioned it as “the place not to be missed.” We propped our gear against a tree and set out.

One shady campsite was readied for a party, yet oddly deserted. Pretzels, cold cuts, plastic utensils, bread, mayonnaise, beverage cups, cheese slices—the spread was decked out across a checkered tablecloth, with no one around.

“Hey Otto, hold on. I need to cop me a little snack.”

I entered the campsite and dug my hand into the middle of the pretzels, grabbing about a dozen. Otto slowly walked backwards, watching timidly.

“Leaving all this stuff around is too much of a . . .”

“Hey! You motherfuckin’ thief! What the hell you doing?”

My fingers released, dropping the pretzels back into the bowl.

“Where you goin’ with them pretzels?” A guy with a black bandanna tied around his head and iron biceps charged through the slit of the tent. He was about a foot taller than me, with a pointed nose and pencil mustache. I cleared out with a skip of my heart.

“You son of a goddamned bitch. You can’t leave nothin’ out these days.”

“Hey man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Really.”

The guy was almost in tears. “Jesus man, if you wanted a couple I woulda given ’em to you. You didn’t haveta fuckin’ steal ’em.”

“Hey man, I’m sorry. I just learned something. It won’t happen again. Please forgive me. I’m sorry.”

“You are? Then scram!”

Yards down the pathway, I trotted up to Otto’s side.

“Holy God. That’s a mistake I’ll never repeat.”

“You got a strange learnin’ curve, sons.”

“Now I know what it means, ‘repent of thy sins.’”

“How many of those deeds before you land your ass in big trouble?”

“Hypocrite!” I slapped my hands together in midair. “How about your free phone call to Laurie, your stolen donuts in San Francisco, your free cheesesteak, your lying to every girl east and west of Salt Lake City?”

That’s what I wanted to say—but held my tongue. I retracted, wondering: How can I, a common pretzel thief—a sinner—afford to level criticism? How can a skewered charlatan (me) defend my actions on any level? How dare I throw stones at Otto when I was just as worse? Not going there.

It was confusing—shattering. Why did I steal? In the middle of an idyllic preserve, I stole. Surrounded by more beauty than I’d ever seen in my lifetime, I chose the devil. Jesus even saved my life in Wendover. Still, I stole. Otto was going off the wheels, true, but that was immaterial. This was about me. Well, I was out of the business, for keeps. Nix on it, as my father would say. Strike it. The gain wasn’t worth the consequences. Even when there was no chance of getting caught, Roger—don’t do it. If anything ever has to be kept a secret, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. It wasn’t logical to walk in darkness when you’ve already seen the light. That was it. Period.

The Gorge eased my distress. It was a cure-all to end-all, and then some.

Following others ahead of us, our expedition led to spheres of granite, cropped against the flanks of the rushing Big Sur River. Tall redwoods towered along deep-cut ridges. Steeples of rock bore scars of weather-battered years. Cool, cool water swirled around coves in a mild whirlpool. Otto and I carefully made our way into a circular, sun- drenched enclave.

It was brimming with people, a playground paradise.

I pulled Otto over to a perch high on a pointed rock which stuck out like a ship’s stern, and laid out my towel. “Mamma mia! Come on, Otto, here’s our seat.”

Oh boy. Here we go. Nearly opposite us, on a long, rectangular rock, lay four people sunbathing—guy, guy, girl, guy. Nude. I flexed my fingers. “Yahoo!” The girl was lounging, leaning back with her face in the sun . . . . eyes closed, dark hair thrown back, legs straight out and lazy. Bush visible. Delectable breasts. Everything right where it was supposed to be, greeting the open air, free and accessible for all to enjoy.

Two guys emerged from the water below us, nude as well. I grinned at the splattering water and swinging penises.

I got up from my towel and stood near the ledge. I unzipped my shorts and let ’em drop. Uninterrupted warm sun linked my back, hips, and legs. I twirled the shorts on my fingers like a pizza. “There you go, George. Are you with me or against me?”

He laughed nervously.

As I lowered myself on the towel, my attention was drawn to a sight over Otto’s left shoulder, not four feet away. Two skinny, pale-skinned girls were observing the scene. They resembled weird medieval Bastille enchantresses with long braids and glasses. They “forgot” to bring their clothes with them.

That’s how they appeared! Topless and bottomless. Bare-nekkid, totally. Out in their bods.
In the water below played two more girls, staging a topless water fight.

How could sights as this be against the law? It was precious, almost like a fairy tale. Not one person was having a bad time, nor objecting, nor harming anyone. Everyone looked content, gentle, and peaceful. The setting called for it. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Subtly. No pressure.
Swimming nude was invigorating. The river felt good circulating around your midsection.

Hot and roasting as it was in this liberating leisure, Otto decided not to go swimming. “God, you are perplexing.”

“It’s that time of month.”

“You’re wacky!”

“Ah, I got an allergy.”

“Bullshit.” That ticked me off.

I had a satisfying experience with two girls who were somewhere between fifteen and twenty. I remembered when they came in. They were dressed in bikinis, flipflops, and wide-brimmed hats. An assortment of towels, bags, and accessories clung under their arms. They got a load of this place, however, and changed their ploy. They crossed paths with me on our respective soul-searching walks. Their bikini tops were now shed. God, did that look nice. Beauty plus. My “hi” was spoken as sincerely as possible, but I can’t guarantee I kept my gaze on their eyes.

Visualizing Laura Gwynne at this place nude, or even topless, was staggering. She would have been one of the innocent arrivals in a swimsuit, I think. I kicked hard across the pool of water, hearing her call, “Roger, what have you been waiting for? Kiss me, lover.” With Laura around I didn’t know if I could keep myself down.

Only one person needed to be banished. It was a kid too immature to act sensibly—an impish, overweight, nude teenage girl. She originally arrived with her mother, father, and grandmother, wearing a one-piece royal blue bathing suit with a gold stripe running across the front. After her parents cleared out, I thought she would follow. No, she stayed to continue her antics, only now with her bathing suit off. She was a seventh-grade jitterbug, constantly moving and jerking into view, doting into others’ business, loudmouthing, laughing at nothing, doing everything she could to call attention to her bareassed self. Her grandmother stayed behind to mind her. More than once she grabbed her granddaughter by the arm and lectured her about her behavior.

“What do you say to a granddaughter who runs around naked?” Otto laughed.

He snapped a picture of me while I sat on a rock, hair slicked back, naked as a jaybird. (It was only the sixth or seventh picture we took all trip.)

My favorite girl was not one of the nudes, but someone nevertheless who had presence. It might have been her sweet bashful air. Maybe it was because her cute face wrapped in loose blond curls looked unforgettably kind. She wore a red paisley shirt, tied underneath the bust, white shorts, and high-topped hiking boots. All afternoon she sat on a ledge, reading from a thick book with a black cover.

“Is that the Bible?”

Otto leaned over from his guru position. “She has to check ‘The Book’ to see if this kind of activity is allowed.”

“Sure, it is.” I gazed. “God created it like this. Adam and Eve messed it up.”

A lot of people, I noticed, nudes included, temporarily adjourned through a narrow fissure of glacial rock on the far side of the swimming hole. Who knows what would be waiting for explorers on the other side of that opening? Lovemaking in the open? Some kind of orgy? I stumped along the sharp rocks in my nakedness to see what it was.

Who should greet me around the first bend? Drat . . . the guy who caught me stealing pretzels! He was sitting against a rock, solitary, wearing black cutoffs, looking teed-off. He saw me and growled. All the preceding events of my pretzel-theft stupidity came rushing back. I grunted a weak acknowledgment and withdrew. Forget that maze and wherever it led. My reserved seat was properly next to my partner, Otto George.

“We need a climax,” I said.

A woman dressed in a tank top, culottes, and a loose-fitting blouse came marching in the Gorge, boldly. She was no novice. She looked Polynesian, with dark, waistline hair, slanted eyes, and honey skin.

Some distance behind her, trying to keep up without stumbling, was a female friend—American, tall, big-boned but not fat, pretty (though a little self-conscious), and two gigantic breasts rumbling under her shirt. The Polynesian couldn’t wait to strip. She sanned her outer shirt by the time she set her daypack down on a vacant rock near the water. Without fuss or pomp, she yanked off her tank top—freeing her breasts— then unzipped her shorts. Of course she believed in no underwear. She was uniformly brown—no tan lines. Her firm breasts were freestanding cones; her triangle black and wiry; her buttocks tight and meaty. She didn’t care if you looked or not. She paced up and down the rocks with her hands on her hips, eyeing the water, scanning the landscape, waiting on her friend. She took deep breaths of air and shook out her hair. It was no exaggeration that every guys’ eyes were peeled.

When she couldn’t wait any longer, she sprang into the river, surfacing with zest, her face aglow. Her yummy corkers bobbed on the waterline.

Her friend may have been more timid, but no byproduct. She reached water’s edge and dropped her towel. You could tell those two giant mounds wanted to erupt, if given the chance.

She slowly unbuttoned her shirt, to the gapes of a full audience, both genders. She hesitated at the last button and decided, instead, to step out of her sandals. She did, slowly. The clincher came while pulling out her shirttails. Two huge breasts heaved forward. They were Everests, complete knockouts. Pink pillows. Nippled melons. 44-22-36 howlers. She let them hang in her shirt for a moment while she timidly unzipped her jeans. As the denim curved around her tush, I couldn’t help it. My dingdong stiffened.

Watching her daintily step out of her pant legs was something you don’t forget for a lifetime. Letting her shirt glide gently down her arms to the ground was the single most erotic gesture I’d ever witnessed. A hundred times better than any Playboy pictorial.

I draped my arm across my thigh, but who was paying me any heed? All eyes were glued on this well-endowed creature as she sauntered to the edge of the pool, mindful not to slip and bruise herself. The Polynesian hollered for her to dive in. Swish! People applauded. The Polynesian laughed. She dunked her friend back in the water when she came up for air.

“It happens every day right here at the Gorge,” I said to George.

Otto stood awhile in his clothes with his legs extended while grabbing his ankles and remained in that position, as a stretching exercise. The sun dipped behind the mountain. Clothes were going back on. The day’s utopia was nearly ended.

“Take it easy,” I said. “We don’t leave until she leaves.”

I was referring to the girl with the Bible. She was still on the same ledge, reading away, like she had done for hours. She hardly moved nor looked up. I gazed at her with total brain power, admiring her body and soul, respecting her decision not to strip.

The girl clasped the book shut and held it to her nose. She opened a carrying pouch and pulled out a stretchy, long-sleeved jersey. The girl took hold of the knot under her paisley shirt and tugged. The shirt loosened. Two perky, curving jugs flopped out. The shirt went up and over her head. Those were two of the best-shaped breasts I’d ever seen. They were frisky and vibrating and spry. My eyes feasted on the only Christmas toy I ever needed.

The girl sat topless one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—as if acknowledging she really did it—then stretched the material of the jersey over her head and down over her chest.

“You’re right about something, Roger,” Otto said after we departed. “That’s what this world needs more of.”

“Lord, you’re telling me. These sights were dandies.”

Encore! Encore! In the darkly remote, secluded section of campsites, near the trailhead, was the campsite of the Polynesian, the American, and two guys. The Polynesian stood at the grill, stirring goulash or something in a pot with a stick. She didn’t care much for rules or regulations. No sir! She was topless. How glorious, and unnerving, to see her rich, honey-brown skin and those taunt cones as she stood with her hair pulled back and shoulders even, working dinner.

Otto and I passed the grill. The girl and I nodded to each other. Our eye contact was ultra serious. I got serious fast.

Otto laughed to himself after we passed. “Boy, that gives you a shot of the sublime.”

“You’re seeing society as it should be, friend. Freedom heightens the jocular. That’s our basic formulation for the 1970’s and beyond.”

We jumped the fence together out to Highway One.

As evening brought temperatures down, my discomfort level shot up. Funny how mood can switch so fast. Nighttime spread through the woods faster than on Davy Crockett at the Alamo. One minute you could see the gleaming treeline. The next you were plunged into turmoil. The misty gray sky turned itself off so quickly.

Two frantic hours passed before a ride materialized. It was in the form of a roomy van, provided by two rugged middle-aged men who looked like mail order catalogue models. It was “only” for twenty miles.

“For the first time since June 27, I’m longing for the compact size of New Jersey.”

“No you ain’t, sons.”

“Maybe it’s a latent tendency to be afraid of the unknown.”

They let us off near a campground in the Los Padres National Forest. From the road you could see campsites loosely strung across a long, treeless slope leading to the ocean. There was no fence, no gate, not even a registration booth. Almost every camper in the place was tucked in for the night.

I felt chilled and unsettled. Queasy. Dithery. Traffic was nonexistent. It was one of those end-of-mind moments. I looked at Otto with urgency. He returned the feeling.

“It ain’t healthy to be out here, Roger. Come on, let’s head into the campground, down by that bonfire, and see if there ain’t somebody friendly standin’ around it.”

The lone source of light was a giant blaze—a campfire—burning down the far side of one of the slopes, close to the ocean. It was a flickering symbol of hope in the unrelenting harshness. We tracked across the dew and thick fog. In the flames’ reflection you could see a tall, tepee-style tent. Next to that stood a large, modified truck. Three surfboards were stacked on top. The purveyors of the fire were five young men. They encircled the flames, talking, laughing, making the best of a cold situation.

Saved—by the Beach Boys. Almost immediately, the opening guitar and harmony to “Surfer Girl” played in my head.

“Hey friend,” a fraternal voice called over. “Where you coming in from?”

“Yeah, c’mon in by the fire.”

“Get warm.”

“Can we?”

“Hell yes. You’re not going anywhere on a night like this.”

“Thanks, we’re freezing.”

It wasn’t the actual musicians, I’m sorry to report. But nevertheless, five older boys out by the beach sharing a campsite, surfer friends perhaps, hardy souls, post-adolescent adventurers, presently trying to keep themselves toasty.

Heck, it might’ve been the Beach Boys. Four of the five boys wore beards. The clean-shaved guy looked like drummer Dennis Wilson. Guitarist Alan Jardine had reddish hair and wore a Panama hat. Singer Mike Love had a baritone voice and was balding. Guitarist Carl Wilson was young and pudgy. The resemblance of the guy you’d pick for leader Brian Wilson was uncanny: Tall, bear-like features, deep-seeing eyes, taciturn complexity. All the classic songs played in my head: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Good Vibrations,” “Wendy,” “Little Deuce Coup,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” etc. Plus, get this. Despite the cold, three of the five boys stood around in bare feet.

They were decent, too. They listened to our story with sympathy, and extended their offer to stay overnight.

“The forestry service runs a fine campground,” Alan Jardine was saying. “Did you notice? They’re on the trust system. They send someone around at dinnertime to collect your money.”

“What’s the story with this fog?” I asked. “I thought for sure it was going to rain.”

“Never,” Mike Love replied. “It’s just cold air hitting the warm ground. It’s been that way since I was a tike and it’s gonna be that way until this place falls into the ocean.”

Dennis Wilson stoked the fire from a big pile of driftwood. A bag of potato chips was passed around, then a pouch of bitter wine. The crashing surf necessitated shouting.

Carl Wilson came back from the truck with a pup tent slung across his shoulder. “Here’s an extra. You’ll want a tent tonight.”

“Heh-heh, yeah. Your nuts are in danger of freezing otherwise.” “Wait ’til that fire blows out.”

The tent made a dry, plastic abode. Otto and I set it up as close to the fire rocks as possible.

“We keep living miracles,” I said.

“That I’m still alive after goin’ through all this is the biggest miracle of my life,” Otto said. “Major motion picture stuff.”