The first time I saw Kelly she had her back to me so of course the first thing I noticed was her nice round ass hanging out of the extremely short cutoffs she was wearing. As a she turned towards me I saw she also had on a flower print sheer slut shirt tied at her waist exposing her belly. On her head she wore a red bandanna tied in back.
I looked at her face thinking, 'This is one cute hippie chick. Nice tits too.' because I could see them through the shirt.
She smiled at me saying, "Hi." then turned back toward the stove and continued cooking.
Since she was Sparrows woman, an ex-con and on again off again junkie who was prone to violent mood swings, I just said "Hi" back and forgot about trying anything with her.
Kelly and Sparrow lived in a small white house on the edge of a nice sized river in the country. I had known Sparrow for about a year because he and his buds, Everett, a one legged junkie who lost it going over the high side on his bike, and The Woolly Bully, another old time junkie, liked to party at Joanne and Kerry’s new flat in the City. For some reason junkies always leave their women at home when they party and these three were no exception, so I’d never met Kelly until the day that Sparrow rented a house about 10 miles from the tipi in which I was living. He’d invited me over to check it out. Sparrow had come to party at the tipi field one day and had loved it. He told me this was the kind of place where he could clean up his act and asked me if I knew of a place to rent. I put the word out and three weeks later he and Kelly became country hippies.
We visited each other a few times a week and partied together for a couple of months which usually involve spotlighting a mountain steer then roasting it over an open fire, except for the liver which we ate raw. We had lots of fun until one night Sparrow who was in a foul mood, got real drunk and sullen because he'd had a run in with a County Mountie over an open container. All of a sudden he got out of his chair and told everyone that we had to leave, and NOW! Or there would be trouble big time.
We said, "Okay Jose, no problem."
We went down the river, built a fire and continued to party until we all crashed out on the riverbank. Next morning Sparrow apologized for his bad manners but said that he'd had enough of this country shit and was moving back to the City that day. I would never see Sparrow again.
Around two months later I was in the City at the house on 25th St. to party, when Pie Makin’ Marie walked in and said, "Did ya Hear? Sparrow's dead. He OD'ed last night."
Well, what could we say to that, junkies OD'ed all the time, sometimes it killed them, sometimes not, it was all just part of the trip. It was always sad to see them go but it was not unexpected. Marie said that she'd just left Kelly who was feeling mighty bad. I called Kelly up to say how sorry we all were to hear about Sparrow. I asked her if she had any grass to help her through the next few days.
She told me, "Yeah, but not much."
So I told her I’d bring her some to help hold her over. When I got their house it was full of people commiserating with each other over the death of a friend so I told Kelly, "Let's get out of here and take a walk in the sunshine. It's way too morbid in here."
She said okay and we walked to the top of Bernal Heights, sat on a rock and smoked a doobie. We sat there for a while not saying much until she felt a little better then she said she should get back to the wake. I walked her back to the house, hugged her good bye and though that would be probably the last time I ever saw her. Man, was I wrong.
Two weeks later at the weekend party at Joanne and Kerry's when Kelly showed up and spent the night dancing, drinking and doping. I was impressed, she took as many drugs and drank as much as anyone else, and she lasted. In fact, for sunrise service everyone except she and me had crashed. She told me that she had moved out the Bernal Heights house and had found a converted garage just a block from here and that I should visit her sometimes. This was good news to me, not only was she a cute babe but any chick who could keep up with me drinking and doping, I automatically liked. I went back to the tipi that week so I didn't see her until the next weekend for the annual costume Holloween bash that Joanne and Kerry always had.
I went to St. Vinnies and got an entire Girl Scout uniform for the event even including the little green beret. I put some garish make up on, sprinkled silver glitter in my hair and beard, put on combat boots, scented my lace panties and was ready to Party! Kelly came as a blue Fairy and again partyed hardy. About 4 a.m. Kelly said that she was going. I though about asking her if she'd like some company but, well let's face it folks, I chickened out so she went home alone. I did visit her the next day and saw her new place, a small one room affair but unattached and very cheap. We spent the day together but when it got dark since she didn't ask me to stay so this time it was me who went home alone.
A day later I was having dinner at J&K's when the phone rang. Kerry answered then said, "Hey Tai, it's Ann (Woolly Bully's epileptic wife) for you.”
I took the call and Ann said, "Hi, I'm over at Kelly's right now and we were just talking about you, so why don't you come over?"
Well, I may be a chicken but I'm not too stupid to know an invite when I hear one so I told her that I’d be right over. When I got there we all chatted for awhile then Ann said she had to go.
I asked Kelly if she'd like me to spend the night and she said, "Yes."
I spent the next week with her, and she was as good in bed as she was drinking and doping. Now I was even more impressed. During the week I told her about following my Fate so there wouldn't be no future with me. She said that was okay with her because she had just finished one long relationship and did not want another at this time. After that, whenever I was in the City, I’d come by and visit her and she always welcomed me. If she was entertaining another guy she'd tell them that they had to leave now because Tai was here. They would leave, I would stay. It made me feel real good to know that she preferred me to anybody else.
We spent the entire winter and spring this way. When summer came she told me that she was going to Cave Junction to party. She had friends in Takilma who had asked her to come and since it was wild and wide open at that time she decided to go. I told her that I’d be hitching the US going where ever, for her to have a good time and that I hoped that we'd see each other again some day. Someday was three months later again in San Francisco.
I went to a party at 22nd St. and there she was. We were so happy to see each other that we ignored everyone else and spent the whole night just talking to each other. When the party ended we slept together on the living room floor. We spent the next couple weeks with each other but then my Fate told me that it was time to go. Kelly said she'd rather I’d stayed but what could I do, I was committed. I started out hitching from San Francisco and wound up in Istanbul three months later where I ran out of money. My parents sent me enough to get back. I took the Orient Express to France then flew from Luxembourg to NYC and from there hitched back to the City. I was in Kelly's arms by Christmas.
She asked me what I planned to do next.
I told her, "Hawaii."
She asked me, "Can I come along this time?"
Happily I said, "It'd be my pleasure."
After New Years we flew to Paradise. A place called Hiana on the island of Kauai. We lived under a tarp out in the jungle and were so unbelievably poor. We each got $40 a month in food stamps, which did not last long at Lihue prices. Mostly we just lived off the jungle eating coconut, guava, lilikoi and breadfruit, and oh yeah, majick mushroom. On Sundays we had a real meal with the Hare Krishna’s. Hari Kriahna, Hari Rama, Hari Bo!
We didn't care about food too much anyway, we had each other and we were in Heaven. After a couple months there, the Oscars happened and there was a puka shell boom. We lived right on the main puka shell beach so thing got financially better real fast. We even bought a small tent. Man, it was nice not to have to swap mosquitoes all night long. We spent four months together and loved every minute of it but then my Fate said, 'time to go'. I told Kelly that I had to go and this time alone. She was not happy but said that she understood.
At this time Kauai was having a "Let's Get Rid Of The Hippies" campaign and was offering free flights back to the mainland. The catch was: Don't come back or no welfare or food stamps for one year. I took advantage of the offer and left Kauai and Kelly.
In early July while passing through San Diego, I got a letter from Kelly saying that she too had taken the free flight. She said she was back in Illinois staying at her mother’s in a small town about a hundred miles from Chicago so she was totally bored and for me to come for a visit. Having nothing else to do, I started hitching that very day. A week later we were together again. I spent two wonderful weeks with her and I got to say, her mom was totally cool. Not only did she welcome me, a longed haired hippie who she’d never met before, to her home but she even seemed happy to see Kelly and me together. Kelly and I spent the entire time up in her bedroom screwing our brains out day and night. I’m sorry to report that we completely destroyed her bed. Broke it so bad that it couldn’t be fixed and we ended up with just the mattress on the floor. Then it was time for me to go once more. We parted promising to meet again.
In late August I went to a party in the City at 22nd St. and there she was. I hadn't seen or heard from her since I had visited her so this was a special treat for me. We spent the night together enjoying one another’s body on the living room floor. Next morning we talked it over and decided to try living together and see where it would lead us.
We started hitching and a week later wound up in Tucson where we rented a small two bedroom trailer Tucson is the most racist city I've ever been in in the whole world. It's divided by Interstate 10. North of the freeway is a clean modern city with all the amenities, paved streets, sidewalks, street lights shopping centers, hospitals, schools, colleges, libraries, post offices, municipal offices and new air-con buses that run every 15 minutes every day. South of the interstate the major streets are paved, the rest not, no sidewalks, few street lights, only one large grocery store, no shopping centers, no hospitals, K to 12, but no college, no library. If there was a post office, I never found it, no municipal offices, the buses were from the 1950's and only ran on major streets, then only every two hours and never on Sundays and they cost the same as the air-cons in north Tucson. Now you might say, "What's so racist about that?" Well consider this; 80% of the people living north of the freeway are white, while 90% of those living south are Latino, Indian or black. Of course, our trailer was in the south but it had nothing to do with why our experiment in living together failed.
It failed because we each had our own bedroom and we had agreed that we could not only see other people, but we could bring them home to spend the night. Now I like being part of a threesome. Or if Kelly stayed out all night or brought home some guy, screwed him then told him to leave and spent the rest of the night fucking the hell out of me, that was all right too. But for her to spend the entire night with someone else in her room and not being invited to join in made me feel so lonely that I just didn't want to take it. After two months we talked it over. Kelly said that she didn't like the arrangement either so we decided to go our own separate ways for awhile to think about what had happened. She'd go to Maui, I’d go to Mexico. Maybe we would meet up again later.
Later was six months later on the island of Maui. I was traveling with a girl named Claire and we had just spent a month on the big island. We decided to go to Maui because Claire had heard about Kelly and wanted to meet her, and I wanted to see Kelly again too. She was living in a house in Makawao with a bunch of Maharaji freaks because the rent was cheap. The three of us got together and tried it as a three-some but it didn't work out. So Kelly stayed in her house while Claire and I moved into a tent in an abandon mango orchard seven miles from Makawao. About a month after that Claire met a guy that she really liked who asked her to move in with him in his A frame in Haiku. She would visit with me a couple times a week while I visited Kelly a few times a week. Everything worked out okay for all of us. As time went on though, I started seeing less and less of Claire and more and more of Kelly. She had other boyfriends but it was like Mariposa St. all over again, when I came over they'd leave. I’d walk the seven miles to her house most evenings and we'd screw our brains out all night long while the Maharaji people were meditating under their blankets. In the morning I’d walk the seven miles back to camp and rest up. This went on for a couple of months then Kelly got some money from a lawsuit and decided that she would like to see Europe. We then lived together for a month in my tent in the jungle before she left for London. After she left I built a tree house on a pua in Haiku and didn't see her again for eight months.
In early December I got a letter from Kelly saying that she had gotten deported from Holland for the crime of not having enough money and was back again at her mother's house in Illinois. I had made a bit of cash the previous month so I called her and said, "Let's try living together again.”
She said, "Okay."
We met on Dec. 21st, 1976 at the train station in Sacramento and have been together ever since.
Not that it's always been easy, especially at first. We are both fierce individualists and we don't take no shit from nobody, not even from each other. For the first eight years we were together we always took a two month vacation from each other every year. This was because, unless we had to work, which wasn't often since Kelly supports herself with her art and I do as little as possible, we are together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. However, since we love and respect one another it's always worked out even thought it is a lot of work.
Recently an old man who'd heard our story asked me what Kelly means to me. I told him, “She's my Lover, my partner, my companion, my advisor, my teacher, but most of all she's my best friend who I would not want to live without."
He said, "Then you are a lucky man."
I agreed because I am an extremely lucky individual, not only do I get to live this wonderful life but I get to live it with someone whom I love and with someone who loves me. What I've done to deserve such a fate I do not know. But I do know that I am truly Blessed in this adventure called Life and that I will travel it in awe and amazement with Kelly by my side. After all, she is still One Hot Babe who turns me on every time I look at her. What a Woman!