Jubilee Hitchhiker (73 page)

The next evening, Andrew Hoyem threw a party he called “Meet My Television Set” at his Fell Street flat. The guest list ranged from fellow poets to Hells Angels and society people. Among the hundred or more who “came and went” were Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, James Broughton, Thomas Parkinson, and Richard Brautigan, who took off all his clothes “except for bead necklaces and tall hat.” Regarding Brautigan's tendency to strip naked at social events, Hoyem observed, “I was always astonished how successful he would be with the girls
after
he'd taken his clothes off.”

Antiquarian booksellers David and Dorothy Magee brought the front of a busted TV as a present for Hoyem's machine. Poet/artist Albert Saijo, now working as a Yellow Cab driver, came wearing his cabbie's cap “and obligingly took two guests home.” At one point in the evening, Richard Brautigan found himself standing next to Gary Snyder, who sat in an armchair drinking a glass of bourbon on ice. Hoyem recounted the episode: “Richard's dong was in close proximity, so Gary raised his glass and used Richard's dick as a swizzle stick, sending the naked author skyward.”

A couple days later, Hoyem received a note from Brautigan: “Thank you for the party. I'm sure I had a wonderful time.”

Saturday, January 14, turned out to be a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, fulfilling the prophesies of Gavin Arthur, who along with fellow astrologer Ambrose Hollingsworth (once the manager of Quicksilver Messenger Service) had selected the date as auspicious for the big planned Be-In. The Parks Department granted a permit for the use of the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park, an area large enough to encompass six city blocks, and by midmorning swarms of young people streamed in under the trees, heading for the “powwow.” They had been alerted by constant hype on the Bay Area's radio stations, a cover story in the
Oracle
, five eye-catching posters (including work by Michael Bowen, Mouse, and newly arrived cartoonist Rick Griffin), and a press conference two days before at the Print Mint, featuring Gary Snyder and aspiring revolutionary Jerry Rubin.

Twenty thousand people showed up by one o'clock. Gary Snyder officially started things off by blowing a beaded Japanese conch shell, the ceremonial instrument of the Yamabushi Buddhist sect. A group of poets faced the vast crowd, sitting in a lotus-position line along a raised stage covered with Eastern bedspreads. Ginsberg, Snyder, Lenore Kandel, Michael McClure (with autoharp), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti all read their poetry, although at times the public address system failed. They were joined onstage by mantra-chanting Maretta Greer and Freewheelin' Frank, shaking his tambourine. Through it all, Shunryu Suzuki-
roshi
, founder of the San Francisco Soto Zen Center, silently sat zazen behind them.

Richard Brautigan and Andrew Hoyem were not invited to participate with the better-known poets. They wandered among the disinterested crowd, two more foam-flecks amid a sea of faces adrift beneath rippling tie-dye banners and upthrust god's eye totems. The inadequate PA system frequently broke down. The Dead, the Airplane, Big Brother, the Loading Zone, Quicksilver, and Country Joe all played that afternoon, and thousands danced, even if they couldn't hear the music very well. The Diggers gave away a truckload of sandwiches made from several dozen turkeys donated by Owsley Stanley, who also kicked in innumerable hits of White Lightning, the strongest acid he had yet manufactured. At sunset, Gary Snyder produced another blast on his conch shell. Allen Ginsberg chanted “Om Shri Maitreya.” As the crowd drifted off, he exhorted them to pick up their trash. The people left the Polo Fields cleaner than they had found it.

Emmett Grogan thought the whole thing a shuck put on by the Thelin brothers' business organization, the Haight Independent Proprietors (HIP), for their own benefit. Not a gathering of the tribes, but “actually more a gathering of the suburbs with only a sprinkling of nonwhites in the crowd [. . .] a showcase for beaded hipsterism [. . .] a single stage with a series of schmucks schlepping all over it, making speeches and reciting poetry nobody could hear [. . .]” They were all just “ham chewers” gathered at “one great big fashion show.”

Grogan blamed the HIP merchants for the vast influx of newcomers he anticipated in the near future. In Emmett's opinion, “the truth was that the disastrous arrival of thousands too many only meant more money for the operators of fly-by-night underground-culture outfits, the dope dealers, and the worst of the lot, the shopkeepers who hired desperate runaways to do piecework for them at sweatshop wages. It was a catastrophe [. . .]”

The next day was Sunday, and Richard Brautigan slept in, lingering abed, making love twice with Michaela. By early afternoon, he loaded his travel kit into Andrew Hoyem's car, and the two poets-in-residence set off on the road to L.A. They arrived in Pasadena that night and were accommodated in the guest suite at Ricketts House on the campus of the California Institute of Technology. Impromptu greetings kept them up late. At three in the morning, Richard wrote “The Beautiful Poem” just before going to sleep. Holding his penis while taking a bedtime leak made him think of his passionate morning with Michaela. Richard was so tired, he dated the poem incorrectly, thinking it was still the fifteenth.

Monday afternoon, Richard and Andrew gave a reading at Hoyem's alma mater, Pomona College in Claremont, also the home of Scripps and Pitzer, two other small distinguished schools. Looking more like a sylvan transplant from New England than a Southern California suburb, tree-lined Claremont retained an easy casual charm. Buffered by the three college campuses, fast-food joints and other abominations of the automobile culture had been held to a minimum in Claremont. After the reading (for which Brautigan was paid $50), the faculties of the various colleges hosted a cocktail reception at the home of Irish poet W. R. “Bertie” Rodgers, poet-in-residence at Pitzer. “There was a lot of broken glassware,” Andrew Hoyem recalled.

The new ten-day poets-in-residence at Caltech made a contrasting pair. Hoyem appeared “nattily dressed” in a bold-checked sports jackets or a three-piece suit and tie. Brautigan maintained his unique style. John F. Crawford described him as “wearing a floppy Stetson hat, an old vest, adorned from head to toe with two necklaces, a San Francisco dog tag, and Italian studded shoes.” He also sported, perhaps only for this SoCal visit, an enormous Mad Hatter bow tie. When a
student campus-tour guide spotted Richard walking along the quad, he blurted, “Oh, he can't be a Techer! We're more normal than
that
!”

Brautigan and Hoyem soon established a routine on campus. They dined each evening at a different student residential house, taking their campaign as resident “pied pipers” directly to the undergraduates, a studious scientific lot somewhat shy and suspicious at first. A morning coffee hour with readings and literary discussions provided another way to break the ice. They soon had a small group of fans following their every move. Inspired by steaming mugs of hot black java, Richard and Andrew compiled a list of fifteen amusing coffee quotes, which they called “Student Stimulation Stations.” Adding to Dutch and Turkish proverbs and quotes from famous poets (Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, and Wallace Stevens), Hoyem and Brautigan wrote many of the aphorisms themselves. Among others, Richard contributed “The nice thing about coffee is that it's legal” and “It's always midnight on Coffee Standard Time.” The poets mimeographed the list of coffee quotations and distributed copies around the campus.

During their free time, Brautigan wrote “Fisherman's Lake,” while Hoyem worked on a prose poem he called “Bric-A-Brac.” Both poets read before the student assembly. Andrew led off with “The Litter,” a long poem his friend John Crawford found “macabre and powerful [. . .] a recounting of his dream visit to the House of Death.” Hoyem's gravity captured the attention of the audience. It was a tough act to follow, but Richard worked with a stand-up comic's timing. When he read his lament about his nose growing old and how it might affect his future sex appeal, he won the students over.

Richard wrote to Michaela Blake-Grand three times during his stay at Caltech. He drafted a poem beginning “I feel my blood / joined to the stars [. . .]” and included a copy in his letter to Michaela the next day. “Mammal Fortress” consisted of two short stanzas, the first a plaintive cry, “Where the doe is queen / and the buck is king, / I need you. I love you.” Brautigan sent it along with his third letter to Blake-Grand.

The poets-in-residence had a pleasant stay at Caltech. Their 11:00 AM coffee gatherings attracted growing numbers of students. Frequently photographed, Andrew and Richard larked about the campus, paying regular visits to the humanities division to flirt with the secretaries. They sat in on classes, at times “awed and discomfited by teaching, science, and the power of technology.” At other times, they simply pursued coeds. Some evenings, they got away from the mysteries of science and drove into Hollywood. Hoyem remembered the sidewalk kids cracking up over Brautigan. “I may not be funny looking,” Richard quipped, “but I'll do until something better comes along.”

Brautigan found time to speak with his film agent, H. N. Swanson, about
The Abortion.
Swanee liked what he heard and said he'd read the book, “to see if there is a movie in it.” It rained all day on Tuesday the twenty-fourth. Richard was bored and wrote a poem about the rain and his ennui, which he called “At the California Institute of Technology.” The first lines, “I don't care how God-damn smart / these guys are” got a big laugh when he read them the next morning at the final farewell coffee hour in the lounge at Winnett house.

Brautigan was in fine spirits. Earlier that morning, armed with an introduction from John Crawford, he and Hoyem stopped by the faculty office of world-famous physicist Richard Feynman, who'd won the Nobel Prize two years earlier for his work on quantum electrodynamics. Feynman
was a noted prankster, and his varied interests included juggling, Mayan hieroglyphics, lock picking, painting, and playing the bongos. While Andrew and Richard cooled their heels, the secretary discreetly informed her eccentric boss about the visitors. When Feynman heard poets waited, he shouted, “Poets? Poets are always welcome here!” and rushed out to greet them.

The physicist invited them into his office. Richard Brautigan mentioned that there was no rhyme in the English language for the word “orange,” suggesting Richard Feynman name some newly discovered atomic particle “torange” to make up for the deficiency. After a discussion of Feynman's “passion for beautiful formulae,” the poets hurried off to their reading. Andrew's mood was enhanced by a good-looking blond he met along the way. Brautigan told his friend, “Don't wash that hand, Andrew; it has been shaken by a Nobel Prize winner and a Girl!”

Fifty coffee-sipping students showed up for the poets' final performance. Richard and Andrew read only work they had written while at Caltech. “Le grand farewell appearance” had been advertised to be “by popular demand,” but things ended on a sour note at Caltech. Brautigan and Hoyem had been promised $300 each. When they went to collect the honoraria, they found $185 apiece deducted from their payrolls for room and board. Richard and Andrew made a final romantic poetic gesture, refusing the checks and storming out in high dudgeon.

The poets-out-of-residence had dinner that night at the home of film actor Harry Carey Jr. The next afternoon at a quarter past three, Richard and Andrew sat in a parked car “on a rundown residential / back street,” staring up at the Hollywood sign high on the green hillside above the stucco bungalows and flowering jacaranda trees. The Lovin' Spoonful played on the car radio: “Do You Believe in Magic?” Richard pulled his notebook from his shirt pocket and wrote down a poem called “Hollywood.” In the fantasy town where celluloid dreams were born, Brautigan, a lifelong movie fan, observed lonely men in shirtsleeves taking out the trash.

Leaving Tinseltown after another day, the two poets drove north to Santa Barbara, a wealthy seaside resort and residential community with uniform Spanish-colonial architecture and a venerable mission. Hoyem and Brautigan's destination was the home of Jack and Vicki Shoemaker in Isla Vista, ten miles north of Santa Barbara. Shoemaker managed the Unicorn Book Shop (owned by Ken Maytag, whose grandfather made a bundle in washing machines) near the University of California Santa Barbara campus.

Jack went on to a distinguished career in publishing, cofounding North Point Press, Counterpoint, and Shoemaker & Hoard. He first got in touch with Brautigan after reading
Confederate General
, writing him a letter saying, “We were going to be putting on a reading series and would pay fifty bucks a reading, plus expenses for travel, would he ever consider coming.” Shoemaker soon had a reply from Richard. “I got back a letter from him saying, ‘Absolutely. I would love to come. When?'”

Richard and Andrew arrived at Jack and Vicki's place the afternoon of January 27. They enjoyed drinks and conversation before their scheduled reading at the Unicorn, waiting to leave until the Shoemakers' babysitter arrived. Althea Susan Morgan, a tall slender nineteen-year-old redhead who wore her boyish close-cropped hair in a Peter Pan bob, was a sophomore at UCSB. Susan worked for Jack and Vicki four nights a week. Brautigan, always keen for pretty women, was immediately drawn to the vivacious babysitter. At that point, Susan Morgan had never heard of either poet but admitted she and Richard “were instantly attracted to each other.”

Brautigan and Hoyem gave a dual reading at the Unicorn, continuing what Jack Shoemaker called “their Mutt and Jeff act—playing off each other. Richard looked quite wild and deranged, and Andrew looked like a librarian.” The bookstore, located in the residential neighborhood of UC Santa Barbara, attracted mainly undergraduates to its events, “an audience that was fairly flummoxed and quite familiar with Brautigan and not at all familiar with Hoyem.”