Sputterpub's Blog

Bill was almost as old as Max, and Keith was 15 years younger. When Sunrise ran strong they’d both been hounds, with Bill cruising the older women and Keith panting after the young ones. Keith was only 20 when he first arrived, but that was too old for what he did with the Posen twins (even though they were promiscuous, they were 12 and indiscreet, and as Max said, the commune definitely couldn’t risk that sort of attention). To the extent that the group ever had problems about sex, it was either Bill or Keith and their priapic activities with other men’s women or children, so it was a huge surprise to everyone when they decided that they were gay and for each other. They’d been a couple for 18 years. They were offended that Max was too busy with Guen to greet them.

Robert couldn’t shed any light for them. He’d been acquainted with Guen for a couple of years but he didn’t know her. He was too involved in his own cognition to pay much attention to other people. He had always been impulsive and distractable, and he set up his life to govern those conditions. He made few appointments. He was so careful to watch himself in social situations that he didn’t have the energy to notice others. He thought if he just let everyone do what they wanted, no one would have a complaint. He never altered that opinion even though it didn’t work. Half of Robert’s children dropped out of high school and never came back but he contended it was poor schools and bad luck. He met Guen in a small empowerment group, and they both enjoyed camping. He kept hoping it would lead to sex. She knew it wouldn’t.

Sunrise reunited for four and a half days, and the tension between Max and Guen continued the whole time. No matter how he tried to lecture, she modified it from the general to the personal. No matter what he tried to engineer, she revealed the emotional manipulation. It wasn’t until they were splitting up that Bill told them all he’d researched Lilith and learned that the demon Semuel was her brother. That was the name Guen had hissed. She admitted she was Max’s little sister. She was ten years younger but the Goldberg family haled from San Jose, so she spent time with the SRI guys along with her big brother. In her opinion the wakeup had to come from within. She was as charismatic as any of them, and smarter.

Max and Guen hadn’t seen each other for over a decade. She had enough money saved that they could live there awhile. Everyone else drove away from them, bumping on the dirt drive and seeing them in rearview mirrors, a pair standing in sunlight, crazed by golden dust.

Robert left in 1977. Max sent him away. He assigned Robert to San Francisco, to start a group with a woman named Kell, and after Kell allowed sex Robert wanted to marry her. She refused marriage but permitted sex as long as they ran the group.

Max couldn’t stay at Sunrise without disciples. The place was supported by the small sums people brought with them and by their group efforts at agriculture and handcrafts. It was a subsistence income in the good years, and nonexistent by 1978. Max moved farther up the valley and landed in Grass Valley. He got a job at a junior college.

The original members were inconsistently anti-technological. They liked science fiction but disdained appliances, gadgets, and electronic devices. Ironically the Internet and e-mail got them back together.

Max established a website. Within a year, Philip and Maggie and Bill and Keith checked in. All the true captains of the old Starship Sunrise, except Robert. He wasn’t connected until he met Guen who was, and then the six of them planned the reunion.

Max had visited Sunrise regularly in the intervening decades, but he hadn’t often been able to afford any work on the property. He camped there at least once a year. Scrub and brush ranged out of control.

The inevitable fire was more cathartic than catastrophic. It oxidized the outbuildings and additions, but the original stone structure survived. So did the stand of old California live oaks. The ground was scoured to a fine golden brown. Seasons passed.

It was over 22 years since the communards had been together. Philip came from his place in Oregon, with his fifth wife and four of his nine children. He looked as worn out as if he had borne the babies himself.

Maggie had been a stout girl at 28 and was a barrelhouse at 50. A gay woman who disliked lesbians for being, in general, too poor and too rigid, she hadn’t managed a relationship of longer than a few months, ever.

Maggie flew from San Francisco to Bakersfield and then rented a car to get to Sunrise. She and Philip arrived at the same time. They were standing on the front porch with Max when Robert arrived. As soon as Guen and Max saw one another, according to both Philip and Maggie, the ambient energy rose. It was like a taut wire formed between Max and Guen, and a current began zapping both ways along it. Or maybe zapping from her to him, because everyone said that Max looked shook, and Guen had a satisfied expression on her face.

“Like Lilith,” Max exhaled. Guen immediately replied with something Maggie called a hiss and Philip described as a hum.

Then she said she had to talk to Mr. Goldberg, which mystified Robert, and she walked off at an angle away from the house and the vehicles, but Max followed her, and they conversed with vehement gestures. Philip and Maggie and Robert had no idea what was happening, and the mystery wasn’t resolved when Bill and Keith drove into their midst a few minutes later.

Bill and Keith were mystery enough in themselves.

The mystery at Sunrise lasted four and a half days. A group of old hippies reunited on a Friday and it was all over by Tuesday night.

Robert said he was the catalyst but actually he brought her. He drove up in his dirty white truck and he had her with him. Her given name was Sharon and her taken name was Guen.

Sunrise is an old commune. In its heyday, around 1972, as many as 58 people lived there, ranging in age from newborn to 40. It’s situated in a shallow valley in the hills above Bakersfield, California, and it’s named for the way the light sweeps west to east across it as the sun rises each morning above the eastern mountains.

It is 12 acres all told, but most of it is useless for cultivation or building. The terrain is rocky, the soil is full of clay, and there’s not enough water. In fact, the property isn’t very desirable, which is the reason it’s still private, these days, in California.

Sunrise was originally part of the Del Rios estate; by 1963 it was the property of the sole descendant of that once-numerous family, the lesbian Maria Elena del Rios Smythe. Maena, as she was called, had no children, but at the age of 60 she met and fell in thrall to the teachings of the guru Maximillion Gold (born Maxwell Goldberg). Max and Maena were close friends until her death in 1970, and she bequeathed the property to him.

There was a small scandal at the time. A male heir for Maena surprised a number of people; her attendant, her secretary, and her former companion all contested the will. And although neighbors were few and those few were accustomed to Maena’s strange house parties, there were protests when the longhairs began to arrive. But Max had been leading groups in the Los Angeles area for several years then, he had a vision of Sunrise as a sort of counter-university, and there was no stopping the commune once he had title to the property.

Robert was one of the original members. By then he had followed Max for a year. He read Max’s flyer on the wall of the Free Clinic while waiting for VD treatment with his first wife. He was 28 and had married 19 year-old Tracy because he loved having sex, but she loved having sex even more, and had it with others than him, and that’s why they were both in the Clinic that night, in front of the flyer that Max made. Robert took Tracy with him to the first Max session, and even had her by his side during the all-night talk that followed and for the first five meetings in Max’s LA apartment, but by the time Max and Robert went to Sunrise, Tracy was long gone.

They established the commune in late 1970, it peaked in 1972, and it was derelict by 1978. When they first drove out with their duffle bags Max was 38 and Robert near 30. There was one acolyte older than Max, and she took on a lot of the cooking chores; the rest of the group was younger.

They wore and tore the buildings but they tended to respect the high desert land. In an attempt to wake them up and help them remember themselves, Max distracted them from sleep and assigned them strange duties. Turning the house into a starship for a week was a good idea, except that their exuberance to cover all windows had an adverse effect on the custom draperies. The building of an addition onto the main house was a necessity, especially after the babies started coming, but it would have been wiser to hire a professional than to design that (unroofable) wing themselves. Max sent introverts to drama lessons and extroverts to the library. Anything to get people off autopilot.

It didn’t work for everybody, but it did for Max and Robert. Most of the other members eventually reverted to habit and instinct. Sexual jealousies conquered theories of non-possessiveness. Hunger for goods overpowered the sweet rewards of cooperation. Imperfect nuclear families formed and reformed and, as the children grew too old to run naked on the hard-packed golden dirt, dry-skinned grownups packed them into cars and drove off to small stucco houses and smaller dead jobs, in Fresno and Bakersfield and Stockton.

Alec and Cheryl wanted to stay together, for Liam and also for their second child just starting to gestate then. So they created a little space by sleeping apart. She and her growing belly remained in the big bed but he took to floor-sleeping on the carpet in Liam’s small room.

That helped. So did the easy birth and infancy of their daughter Angela, and Alec’s inheritance. They bought their first house and began to spend money.

But they also grew apart. Alec developed chronic heartburn and trouble with hemorrhoids, and his domestic goals began to resemble those of his dead wealthy parents. Cheryl found less to laugh about, wrestled with daily sadness, put on weight, became nostalgic for the working-class homelife she’d despised when she was growing up. They set up separate studies at home. After the kids were asleep Alec liked to drink vodka and watch cable TV in his room. Cheryl tried handcrafts in hers but, what with the kids and her depression, she tended to nap most evenings.

Even so, time passed. Life went by faster each year. By the time Liam and Angela were in expensive private middle schools, mid-life was upon their parents. Alec had never been highly sexed, so he was safe from silly affairs. He bought a Ferrari and racked up enough moving violations (including two DUIs) that car insurance became one of their biggest expenses. Cheryl joined a weight loss boot camp and decided to finally do something about her name.

They say you don’t have to formally change your name. Just start using whatever you like and soon it will be yours. But when she thought about that, it seemed impractical. Where would a middle-aged woman start that process? How would she get her first ID with the new name?

It’s a little work but no problem to change a woman’s name when she marries. The system is set up for that. The utility companies don’t require a credit deposit for name change due to marriage or divorce. But it’s another set of hassles entirely to do it legally and without a change in status. Cheryl had to petition the court, post notices, deal separately with every account registration.

And she had to choose the right name.

If she’d had a particular heritage she might have used it. But Cheryl was of mixed Northern European stock, with no strong Scottish or Irish or Scandinavian or even (despite her maiden name) German claim to chromosomes. So she went with what she liked.

She’d always been attracted to the “au” of Paul and Saul, but she didn’t want a feminization of some boy name, like Paulette or Claudia. She didn’t even want a terminal “a.” She settled on Laurie first.

And she’d had it with the last initial “S.” Even though she didn’t expect to be organized into alphabetical order now that she was middle-aged, she decided to move up. She liked the sound of Adams and took it as her new surname.

Laurie Adams sounded good to her.

As long as she was going to the trouble, she figured she’d take a middle name too. Her parents had given her Patricia, after her mother’s mother, and the only thing she’d liked about it had been the letter “P.” But she knew her classics – Greek myths had been her reading mainstay in 8^th grade – and she languished in the dark of every winter. What the hell, she thought and then giggled; she typed “Persephone” onto the legal form.

So it was as Laurie P. Adams that I met her. We struck up a conversation last winter while each of us awaited an appointment in our dermatologist’s office. Dr. Ringrose is still practicing medicine, still a great guy who takes whatever time is necessary with patients, and thus always running late.

Laurie and I shared our contempt for the People and US Weekly magazines in the room, and that led to a talk about good books, with a remarkable amount of agreement. We exchanged numbers and began an acquaintance.

I think it was during our second or third lunch out that I told her how much I like her name. I was surprised at her gratification. Her pale face seemed to pick up depth, and her skin looked younger. “Thank you so much!” she gushed. And she then began to tell me her story, about how she chose it for herself.

It wasn’t until she was 12 years old that Cheryl Schwarzkopf really began to hate her name. Actually, by then she was a prolific reader; she used “detest,” “loathe,” and “abhor” instead of just “hate.”

Her first name was bad enough, and she tried to modify it to Sherry, and then Cherry, and even Cherri with a daisy over the “i.” But she didn’t have enough sympathy or friends to make the change. Cheryl she remained.

It was her last name that was the unkindest cut. She preferred her father’s family to the Brents her mother contributed, but Cheryl was stricken early with acne and as soon as her schoolmates discovered what Schwartzkopf meant, they wouldn’t let up.

Some folks say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but Cheryl Schwartzkopf didn’t name-toughen throughout high school. The teasing diminished but the acne didn’t, and she winced whenever she was called by her last name.

Cheryl tried to heal her skin. She stopped eating chocolate and she eliminated all fried foods from her teenage diet. Her choices became so healthy that she lost the baby fat forever. She tried every topical cream she found.

Nothing worked. The creams dried her facial oils till her nose flaked, but still the pimples came. Even in college, when she had grown as inured to the sound of Schwartzkopf as she ever would, she continued to break out on the face, the shoulders, sometimes even her upper chest.

She was otherwise attractive. Her height was about average and she had a girlish but pleasant figure. Her long brown hair grew thick and glossy, with a natural wave and auburn highlights. Her fingers and toes were graceful, and her nails were large and shapely.

And she’d spent enough time alone, with books, being teased, that she had developed a personality. She spoke with a rich vocabulary and some wit. She had a few odd opinions and could defend them. She was never described as a popular girl, but she had friends and dates. She married younger than many.

It didn’t surprise anyone who knew her when she took her husband’s name. No one expected her to hyphenate – she’d made it clear that she thought that was as affected in an American as spelling center centre or favor with a “u” – and her friends knew her boyfriend would have to have a last name ending in “schitz” or “weiner” to make her keep her own. She married Alec and became Cheryl Smith.

Her acne persisted. There was a little improvement during pregnancy, but she was back to square one after she weaned Liam. Finally she gave herself something her parents never had: a visit to the dermatologist.

Dr. Ringrose examined her eruptions and diagnosed allergy. Unlike her parents, he told her she would not outgrow it; he referred her to a specialist for tests. It seemed beyond ironic to Cheryl when she learned that she was allergic to most of the healthy foods she’d been eating. She was warned away from all dairy products, citrus, most tree nuts, and even canola oil. She who was vegetarian by then had to resume eating meat; meals would have been almost impossible otherwise. And she enjoyed those steaks.

Her skin cleared. It wasn’t peaches-and-cream or anything lovely – too many years of insults had roughened her face and aged it prematurely – but finally Cheryl could look in the mirror without anguish.

She might have been happy then, but she wasn’t. Liam had reached the challenging age of 2½, and she and Alec were bickering incessantly. Some of the problem was caused by simple sleep deprivation, but most of it came from co-parenting. They had incompatible ideas about breakfast foods, how much TV should be allowed, what kind of toys to acquire. Alec had always been a serious fellow – Cheryl’s sense of humor was one of her attractions for him – but as he passed into his late 20s he became more quiet, prone to minor health complaints, morose, even curmudgeonly. He found Cheryl unsympathetic and she thought he was a drag.