Innocents on the Lamb

    We woke in the dark again, which startled me. I didn’t exactly feel rested, as if I had run some kind of marathon in my dreams, and woke to rest from it. And the feeling I’d felt at dawn, returned as something about the apartment haunted me, something different and strange of which we had just become aware, our heads opening up to new possibilities, although not particularly positive ones. Someone had told me that I would feel different once I ceased being a virgin. I hadn’t really, but now, I did. Yet could not quite nail down what that difference was or how I had changed. Something was missing, some vital piece of my previous self that I knew I would never get back again. With it, our little oriental world had changed, too, grown duller – possibly in comparison to the amazing colors we had seen during our trip, the colors of the real world tainted by gray no amount of blinking could vanquish. The rug was a disaster zone, filled with peanut shells from the...

  Dennis reappeared on our door step three days later – and brought some friends: a guy named Chris and a woman named, Doris. None of them wore business suits or carried clip boards. Chris was relatively short man with dark curly hair and a thick handlebar style moustache, which curled around the corners of his mouth like a silent movie villain. Doris was a classic California blonde, though most likely bought out of a bottle, and she had large, uncomfortable to look at brown eyes. “Al? Louise?” the somewhat dishonestly shy Dennis asked. “Is it okay for us to come in?” Louise, who had answered the door, stared back at me with the door still ajar as Dennis waited. “Are you doing another survey?” I asked. Dennis laughed. “Hell no,” he said. “The company fired us right after we left you people. We’re out on the town. So how about it? You want to party with us? We brought some beer.” I felt intruded upon. But I gave a reluctant nod. In they came with bags and noise...

    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young would later sing about two cats in the yard, defining a kind of domestic bliss. For Louise, having Bitzy back should have done the same thing – allowing us to reshape our new location from a mere apartment into a home. It didn’t quite work. Still we went on as if everything was all right. Perhaps from too many trips to the Chinese restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, Louise envisioned an oriental theme from our new place of residence. So instead of chairs, we had large and small pillows purchased from an oriental retail shop downtown and a very close to the floor table we set up in that corner nearest the kitchen on which we dined. We hung beaded curtains on doorways which rattled each time we had to go from the living room to the bathroom or bedrooms beyond. We were flush in deliveries, too. Hollywood had nothing to service middle class hippies like us, and we knew so little of   LA county that we were taking cabs downto...

    Had I known more then, I might have picked up a copy of the Los Angeles Free Press and checked out their want ads for a place to rent or gone to any of the many community bulletin boards. Instead, I let Louise talk me into going to a broker near Hollywood Boulevard, one of those agencies landlord use to screen out people they don’t want, like blacks or hippies. Since I still looked as if I had just stepped out of the military, the woman at the agency told us we would have no problem finding a place – for a fee. My journal at the time recalled it as “a soft airy place with thick rugs, beige walls and a well dressed woman who smiled at us as we entered, giving us a very friendly “hello,” whose tone would change as my hair grew.” “We’re looking for an apartment,” Louise told her. My journal claims the woman’s shimmering lips broadened into an even wider smile (I could almost hear the cash register sounding inside her head. “Her glossy lipstick shimmered in the f...