There's still more to be told of my time at the Jesus Freak commune. Think of a state of food regulation, sleep deprivation, sweeping, standing away from the masses and watching it all like a movie. But I've been listening to Lola by The Kinks everyday and it reminds of a little story that might be a bit interesting to some of you.
We need to jump ahead to 1974, close enough. I wrote about some of the shitty apartments I lived in at the beginning of blog but there was one shining star. I was living in Long Beach, one of the crappiest cities in New York at the time. But this new place was about two blocks from the boardwalk and the beach. It was after the apartment on Park Avenue that was condemned for super bad plumbing and cockroaches.
Cute building from the 30's. I lived on the ground floor which was the coolest. It had a side door into the old kitchen. Good working order. Old stove, old refrigerator. Living room in the front, bedroom in the back. Hardly any cockroaches 'cause everyone in the building was pretty clean. So lucky to get it. I don't know how it is there now... but in those days you had to go to a real estate agent for rentals unless you knew the landlord. It was always a woman in her 40's or 50's dealing with apartments. This one lady liked me for some reason and tried real hard to find something decent. Good job lady.
This story isn't about the apartment but about a few of the people that happened to visit.
So it starts with Mike B. One of the kids in Catholic school, a grade ahead. He was one of 13 children. There were quite a number of families that size. No wonder the parents were all alcoholics. Anyway, I have something to say about how judgy people are about kid raising. When you're around families like that you witness the miracle that we are individuals. Is it a spark in the soul? I don't know. Families can produce saints, priests, nuns, derelicts, drug addicts and criminals all in one group. No rhyme or reason. You just gotta try.
Mike was a New York hippie. Not the wussy stereotype west coast style. Peace in the world, but bar fights if pushed. Mike had strength of character and decency to no end. There's a story about him taking the worst part of a drug rap (a small joint) under the Rockefeller Laws to spare others. But it's really his older brother we're talking about here. I forget his first name because everyone called him by his Polish last name. Guys that tough on the southwestern shores of Long Island didn't use their real first names.
The ethnic Catholics in those days could be very heavy drinkers. Mike stuck with the pot, but older B drank like Van and Jim. Those of us that were goofier and hippier used to try to convert them to just weed and a little Mateus but to no avail. "Yeah. That's the drug of the establishment." Didn't work.
Well, my man used to meet up with the older B on occasion in a few of the many available dive bars on Long Island. We didn't call them that, they were just bars or old man bars. Older B looked like he'd turn and knock you down with his pinky, but he was a gent to the ladies. Word was he had criminal ties, but I didn't pay attention to that stuff. I was always into the entertainment value. You almost couldn't avoid it.
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Mike B and older B never came over together. They didn't hang out with each other. Older B started bringing his girlfriend. I couldn't tell you her real name, it was different every time. 😅 I'm going to call her Lola 'cause that's the most memorable.
Lola was a topless dancer at one of the sleezy clubs in a nearby town. I think it was Freeport. Some towns had them, some didn't. Older B was a white Polish Catholic, in those days we said Polack, and Lola was black. That was still quite a deal in the early 70's. Especially to the old timers. Watch the movie Joe to get a taste of what they were like.
She was naturally flamboyant and I was curious about her personality and her lifestyle. The fellas would be drinkin' and we'd be talking about womanly stuff. It wasn't just talk about sex, but about life and the sucky things in society. You can think what you want, but birth control and more freedom for women was still in its early days. There was some tough stuff to put up with.
But the reason I named this story after Strasberg was that she was completely into her "work characters." She started coming over to just talk with me. She knocked on the front door and each time I opened the door it was a different human. Different wig, different outfit, different name. I opened the door one day and she had on a blonde wig. "Don't you know me, S.? It's Lola."
"Oh Lola. C'mon in." Isn't it cute that she liked to talk to me 'cause I was a goofy flower child?
One evening I was sleeping already and my man was in the living room. Apparently. It's hard to explain the way some people thought about different things during that time. We were forcing change, I guess. I'm not taking all the credit though. I think it's some kind of strange force in the universe. Dorks we were, huh?
Who knows why I was knocked out already? Maybe a long day at the beach? I loved the challenge of body surfing with crowds of people. The waves could knock you over when they were big enough, if you didn't dive into them at just the right moment. You'd end up scraping along the bottom, for example, if a fat guy got knocked over and then went ahead and knocked you over like a bowling pin. You'd be riding the wave with him on top and you with the shells.
Sleeping, sleeping. There was an open widow a couple of feet from the bed. I hear my name. "S. S." It was Lola outside calling my name. Huh? I got up because she was whispering. What? "I just gave your man a blow job." Huh? I just woke up. She repeated "I just gave your man a blow job. I thought you should know." One of the weirdest ways I ever woke up.
I laid back down. How do I explain what was happening then. We were so anti-establishment. People were trying for free and honest. There was a lot of it in certain circles. Humans are so weird. Changing back and forth, back and forth. We can't make up our god damn minds.
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