You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

JULY FOURTH 1970

Over the Summer of 1970, I volunteered with Architect Christopher Alexander in Berkeley. Housing is extremely tight in Berkeley. Maura and I were fortunate to find an apartment. It was a one bedroom efficiency unit, and as with most apartments in Berkeley, this one was shared. We rented the bedroom. Another couple rented the living room. And a young street vendor rented the broom closet in the kitchen for himself and all of his possessions, one change of clothes, a guitar, and his taro cards, which he used to tell the fortunes of passersby on Telegraph Avenue. The floor of his closet was kept clear for sleeping. However the closet was not large enough to lay down normally, so he slept there curled up on the floor. On occasion, we would wake earlier than he and find that he had left the closet door open so that he could stretch out on the kitchen floor, with his head still in the closet. He was not gay but he was certainly coming out of the closet.

It was a terribly cramped living situation. So we were delighted when we were invited to attend a Fourth of July garden party at Loren Sear’s home in the hills of rural Marin County. We arrived at his hill top garden cottage around 2:30 PM. The party was just getting underway. It was a potluck lunch, Loren provided fruit punch in a large stainless steel pot. He decided to enhance the festivities by adding a conservative amount of LSD to the punch. Unaware that Loren had already spiked it, and without consulting with him, a guest decided to light some early fireworks and discreetly added more LSD to the punch. No one realized that the electric punch was high voltage. Maura and I, being from Kansas, did not know about electric cool-aid. It was the 4th of July. We were thirsty. We each had three cups of punch. Other guests must have suspected it would be electrified and drank only one.

Maura had gone up to Loren’s house, a gardener’s cottage, to use the bathroom. Ten minutes after she left, I heard a woman screaming from the direction of the cottage. I didn’t recognize her voice, I had never heard Maura scream. A woman came rushing down to where I was sitting among olive trees to tell me “Your wife is having a problem.” I then realized it had been Maura who was screaming. By the time I reached the cottage, she was sobbing. She was surrounded by other guests, mostly women, who were consoling her and telling her that she was not losing her mind, she was experiencing LSD. It was then that both Loren and his guest confessed to spiking the punch. Loren suggested that we sit in the pine trees overlooking a few cabins on the opposite side of the hill from the party. We found a comfortable spot. Maura was no longer panicky. Now that she knew that it was LSD that was causing the strange experiences. Shortly after sitting down, I began to see the trees pulsing as if in a synchronized dance. It wasn’t long until both of us were in the full grips of the trip. Neither of us could stand. So we sat and watched the perceptual fireworks of our first acid trip. If it became too much for her, I would say “I’m here, I will take care of you”. And when it became overwhelming for me, she would reassure me in the same way. Neither of us moved, we sat there through the night, watching dancing stars and pulsing lights of the cabins below Loren’s hilltop. Fortunately it was warm and we were able to doze off and on, so we did get some sleep.

By dawn the effects of the acid had worn off and we felt normal. Loren, and a handful of guests who had also stayed all night, were milling around his cottage. Loren announced that he would be harvesting zucchini flowers from his vegetable garden and sauteing them in butter. He also prepared scrambled eggs and toast. We ate in the sun, sitting on old chairs and benches outside of his cottage. It was a very memorable breakfast, perhaps enhanced by the lingering effects of the LSD. We stayed at Loren’s hilltop through the morning before heading west to Point Reyes, on the coast, to meet my friend, Edith Kramer, for an early supper. One of Loren’s guests suggested that since we would be driving by it, we stop at the swimming hole off Sir Francis Drake Highway near Labunitas. He warned us that there were no signs indicating where it was, so he gave us directions. We followed his directions and soon realized that we had no idea of where along the narrow two-lane highway we would find the trail to the swimming hole. The road took us to a place where a number of older cars were parked on the shoulder. We decided this must be it. Our old VW bug joined the others of it’s kind. We found a trail cut into the steep hillside. It must have been a logging road reclaimed by the forest. Eventually the trail widened. Without trees on the downhill side, it formed an overlook. As if looking from the top row of a football stadium, we could see a small lake, no bigger than a football field. Around the lake stretched out on the gravel bank or sitting on rocks, were naked people. As many as 50 of them. We found our way down the steep trail to the lake. We located a grassy spot in the sun next to the water, took off our clothes, and settled in for a whole-body tan.

There was a relaxed, carefree, atmosphere among the people there. Most of the bathers were our age, around 30. A couple near us was engaged in a jocular exchange. Although they were naked, I could tell that they were clean-cut, and looked to be business manager types, possibly stock brokers, from San Francisco. The young woman was teasing her partner. It seemed to me that he had told her of his concern about having an erection at a nude swimming hole. His girlfriend was trying various ploys to make his fears come true.

I had the same reservation, however, I found that the experience of being with many naked people was unpredictably comfortable. Unlike most beaches or pools where people are showing off their expensive swimming suits or flashing a bit too much flesh. Here there was nothing left to the imagination. We were all totally exposed. It was not what I had imagined. After my initial discomfort, I found it to be relaxing and enjoyable to be sitting around a small pond with 50 strangers, and all of us naked.

We stayed there for a couple of hours. We would have stayed longer but we had plans to meet Edith. Before we left we noticed two older women standing at the overlook above the pool. They paused briefly and continued their walk up the trail. We dressed and climbed the trail to the overlook. There, we were surprised to find a man photographing the nude bathers with his camera on a tripod. This was no snapshot taker. His camera had a large telephoto lens and a cable release. He didn’t look like a sleazy voyeur. He was fit and well-groomed. I told him it would be more civil and more enjoyable for him to go down, take off his clothes, and join the group. He looked away nervously. While walking down the trail to our car I found myself reflecting on how strange it was to see a man like that secretly photographing naked people.

We drove to Point Reyes for a relaxed meal followed by a short walk along the shore with Edith. When we parted we took the same highway, back to our crowded apartment in Berkeley. It was around 7:00 PM when we approached the trail to the swimming hole. Traffic slowed to a crawl. Several black vans with flashing lights were blocking one lane of the highway. We were required to Take turns alternating with oncoming cars, we slowly drove past the vans and trail head. There we saw police leading the, now fully clothed, people from the swimming hole into their vans. As we drove on I thought back to the voyeur with the telescopic lens on his camera and realized he was a plain-clothed cop gathering evidence. He was there, with all his photographic equipment, shortly after the two women had passed. Were the women part of a contrived case? Had it not been for our plans to meet Edith, we would have been among those arrested.

I later read, in the San Francisco Chronicle, that the arrests were made because two innocent women, out for a walk, were confronted with the terribly disturbing experience of seeing all those naked hippies. The judge wisely threw the case out recognizing that the police had contrived the whole event. He called it an intrusion of the police into a peaceful pass-time of law-abiding citizens. This case could well have set the laissez-faire public view of nude bathing. It may have removed a legal barrier, and opened the door to California’s nude beaches of today.