This story is about love, lust and heartbreak.  While this isn’t really a story of the “other side,” it is a time that fundamentally changed me in ways that are still unknown to me. This story concerns the first time that I learned that it is possible for me to lose connection with almost everything outside of the focus of my attention. 

At the time of this story I lived in a tiny house on Q Street, just west of downtown Arcata.  It wasn’t exactly a house; in fact it was barely a building.  The floors were rotten, the roof leaked, the porch was rotting off, there were rats running around at night, and a dried dead rat somewhere inside of the couch in the living room.  (The dead rat had stopped smelling long before I moved in.)  However, it was in a nice quiet neighborhood next to an abandoned saw mill and VERY affordable.  Part of the agreement that I had with the landlord was that in exchange for low rent I would tear the building down when I moved out!  I had cheap rent, but a difficult job to do at the end. 

At that time I spent quite a lot of time at my brother’s rooming house in town and knew all of the roomers.  One of the roomers, Bill, brought his girlfriend Darlene by to visit.  I liked Bill, but found his girlfriend to be mesmerizing.  However, since they were a couple I stayed out of it and didn’t do anything to interfere.  I just watched and appreciated her from afar.

The three of us got to be friends. One day they invited me to go to the beach with them.  We went to College Cove, north of Trinidad, for the day.  College Cove is a traditional college student hang out, featuring nude sunbathing, beautiful beaches, very cold ocean water, lots of beer, and occasional big parties.  At that time it was only used by younger folks because the access down to the beach was treacherous. Access was by way of a tiny slippery, steep, muddy trail down the hill from the bluff to the beach.  Darlene seemed to be having trouble navigating the trail, so I stayed with her and helped her down and back up at the end of the day.  On the other hand, Bill ran and slid down the hill and was on the beach long before we worked our way down. We hung out on the beach, just enjoying the water and beauty of the place.  Nothing special happened that day, we just talked and played as friends. 

I met Darlene the next day and she said that she had a wonderful time, really liked me, and wanted to do things with me instead of with Bill.  This was slightly confusing to me since she was my friend’s girlfriend.  I considered her “off limits.”  She explained her reasons, including the statement that she was going to break up with him in any case.  I agreed with her proposition to be more than mere friends and we started hanging out together as a couple. 

She was a theater major, so I spent a great deal of time visiting her in the theater department. I would stop by and visit as often as I could, thoroughly enjoying the other theater students.  I got to know everyone, was welcomed back stage during rehearsals and productions, got to help in the make-up room and building stage sets.  Darlene designed and made costumes, so I spent time in the costume department visiting her and her friends.  I was really amazed with the process of the process of painting very fluid looking watercolor paintings of the costumes, watch them be transformed into doll sized ¼ scale models, and finally into full gowns worn on the stage.

I was having a marvelous time.  Darlene and I spent most of our free time together talking, walking on the beach or in the woods, cooking for each other, making love, and all of those things that lovers do.  At one point she wanted to go to the Pleasure Faire in Marin County, so she made us really neat costumes.  She made my costume by purchasing standard patterns at the fabric store, then modifying them to fit her design and my body.  The Pleasure Faire was intimidating to me, but she got right into the swing of things and played the part to the fullest.  She ended up on a stage giving a production, and talked and acted in the style of the ancient times.  She was being very theatrical and visible; I was being very shy but enjoying being included in the “inner circle” of theatrical folks. 

Fall came, and we just continued to enjoy our time together.  I was in bliss, feeling so open and free because I had found someone who always looked delighted to see me, who welcomed my attentions, who seemed to love me, and who just liked to play. I found it amazing that I could be on top of the hill on campus and could pick her out of the crowd of hundreds from far away just by the way that she moved and walked.  It was almost as if it was a black and white view, but she was colored bright yellow.  My attention would instantly go to her, even when it seemed impossible to distinguish her in the crowd.

One day I met her in front of the theater building, and while talking to her on the sidewalk she told me that we were through.  She said that I was being too forceful, was paying too much attention to her, and that she felt too confined by my attentions.  I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t talk.  She just said that it was time to move on, and that our relationship was finished.  And then she walked away.

I was stunned.  The day instantly turned from being a pretty fall day to one of pain, fear and darkness.  I could hardly breathe, and couldn’t think at all.  My mind just started swirling around as I replayed the events that we had enjoyed together wondering how I could have so missed the clues that must have been there.  Up until that instant I had no idea that we weren’t both feeling the same.  Obviously I was wrong; I would never have considered breaking our relationship off because she wanted to spend too much time with me!  She had a much different view of things than me, but I was blind to the differences until that moment.

I wandered around for a couple of hours in shock, trying to understand what had just happened.  I couldn’t. It was too unexpected and too far from anything that I understood.  I finally decided to take my old Renault for a ride to see if that might help clear my head and soothe the pain.  I had no idea where I was headed, in fact, I wasn’t really headed anywhere. I just wanted to do something to occupy my mind.  I went east on highway 299, toward the Sacramento Valley.  The highway was steep and twisting, I was driving too fast. 

I eventually came to the town of Willow Creek and decided that I had driven enough and had been lucky to have stayed on the road.  It was getting late in the afternoon, and I decided to stop at a local bar and have a beer before returning home.  I pulled into the parking lot of the first bar that I came to, which was an old time rustic affair.  The front door faced on the street, but I entered through the side door to the parking lot.  It took my eyes a little while to get used to the darkness.  I walked up to the long bar and ordered a beer.  At the far end of the bar, near the front door, there were four or five guys who obviously worked in the woods because they were dressed in the traditional black pants with the cuffs torn off (to let them rip should they get caught by a cable or snag of a tree), plaid shirts with suspenders, and boots.  They all appeared to be local Indians. I guessed they were probably from the nearby Hoopa reservation.  I didn’t pay much attention to them.  There was also an “older” white guy and his much younger, blond girlfriend standing near where I had ordered my beer.

The old guy started up a conversation about nothing in particular.  He was a friendly, jovial kind of a guy who seemed to be enjoying himself and his lady friend.  I was immediately attracted to the blond, even though she appeared to be completely out of place because of  her dress and manner.  She was obviously a city lady, probably from Los Angeles.  My first reaction was that she was a “floozy” but found her to be pretty, engaging, flirtatious and funny.

I finished my beer and started to leave, but they asked me to stay and have a beer on them.  That sounded good to me, so I let them buy me a beer and settled in to talk a bit. The man then started to tease me about my pony tail and long beard.  I took it as a joke, and just played along.  Then he pulled on my beard, which I didn’t like much.  However, when I showed a bit of a reaction, he bought me another beer – which settled me down again.  His girlfriend started flirting with me, which caught my attention – even though she was ten years older than me, she was quite attractive.  They played back and forth for awhile, doing things to irritate me, and then soothing me.  He encouraged his girl to flirt, then would get pushy about it.  It was an odd little cat and mouse game.  I would start to leave, he would buy a beer.  I would start to get angry; she would snuggle up and flirt with me.  I was getting kind of disoriented, as well as pretty drunk.  The Indians at the other end of the bar were watching, but not joining in the activities.

At one point he grabbed my pony tail and pulled me along the bar.  This really got me mad.  I stood up to him and said that was too much, if he wanted to act like that we could go outside and have a fight. I was pretty strong at that point in my life, and felt like I could take on anyone.  This was not my normal way of acting, but for some reason that is where I ended up that day.  He just laughed at me and asked if I knew who he was.  I said I hadn’t a clue, but that it didn’t matter, I wasn’t putting up with his actions any longer.  He introduced himself as “Rocky.”  I said, “nice to meet you Rocky, I am Charlie.”  Then I reiterated my challenge, which he turned down.  He then bought me another beer, and left with his girl friend.

Now I was sitting alone at the end of the bar furthest from the Indians.  I could see that they were pretty drunk, and were not looking at all friendly.  In fact, they were looking positively hostile.  The bartender came over and said that he heard them talking among themselves and that they were planning to beat me up and steal what little money I had in my pocket (they wouldn’t have gotten much) when I left the bar.  This was a problem! 

The bartender asked if I knew who I had been “playing” with.  I said I had no clue.  He then told me that I had just asked Rocky Marciano (the World Heavyweight boxing champion) to go fight in the parking lot!  I guess I lucked out when he wouldn’t take me up on the offer. I think by the laws of the day he couldn’t fight me or it would have been attempted murder.  The bartender told me that Rocky came every year to Willow Creek to hunt deer, fish in the rivers, and just spend time in the mountains. 

As I was sitting there wondering how I was going to get out of there alive, Rocky walked back in.  He said that he was worried about me and the Indians, and had come to rescue me.  He walked me to my car and said goodbye in a nice friendly way. I was relieved that I no longer had to try to figure out how to get out of there.  (Rocky was killed in a plane crash the following year at the age of 45, so he wasn’t really such as old guy after all.)

By now it was dark and raining.  The drive back down off of the mountain was going to be a little more difficult because it was difficult to see, the roads were slick, and I was drunk.  I was driving too fast down the hill going around a sharp turn when my headlights went out.  Now I was in real trouble, all of a sudden I couldn’t see the road.  I tried to remember the corner, but hadn’t been paying all that much attention. 

Then I noticed smoke and fire coming from under my dashboard, so I guessed that the wires had burned and shorted.  I reached under the dash with my right hand while steering with my left, grabbed a handful of wires and crushed them together.  Amazingly, the headlights came back on so I could see to get around the corner.  The wires were still burning and sparking, burning my fingers and the palm of my hand.  However, I could at least see and made it around the corner.  I stopped the car by the side of the road and checked out the wiring.  It appeared to be working, so I continued down the hill to home.  I finally made it home and fell exhausted into my bed, worn out by a day that seemed to go on forever.  

In the morning when I woke up it felt like I had woken up from a huge dream.  It seemed like I had been in some kind of trance during my time with Darlene.  I was unable to recall many of the details of what had happened during that period of time.  I tried to think about how long it was, but couldn’t really put a date on it. I thought that it must have been a year or more, but that didn’t seem right because the seasons hadn’t changed and things that happen during a year hadn’t.  Confused, I went to find my brother to ask him what the date was.   It took me awhile to figure out the month, and then the day, and found it had only been a couple of months.   I searched around papers on my desk and figured out what classes I was enrolled in, and what I was doing there.  Somehow I hadn’t flunked out of my math and physics classes, but I think I missed almost everything being taught.  I found my school books and some homework that I had somehow done.  I must have been attending classes and doing things, but I didn’t recall it then, and still don’t have any memory of those activities.  I managed to pass all of my classes, but only by attending them in some kind of a fog.

It felt like an extra year in my life.  I had all of these experiences, all that I would expect in a year or year and a half, but it only took two months.  It remains an odd period of my life that just doesn’t fit into the rest of it.  It was a kind of side trip into love and lust, ending in heartbreak.  I was crushed for weeks because I missed the feeling of bliss and joy that had made time stand still for me, but was finally out of my trance.