“Well!”  

My friend Nick stood in front of his boss’s Ferrari, glaring at me.  Then he laughed. 

“Okay.  You’re going.  But you gotta wear flowers in your hair.” 

He leaned over to the little garden in front of my apartment building, plucked a hydrangea stem, and stuck it awkwardly into the space between my glasses and my ear.

“There,” he said.  “You’re ready.”

An hour later, I was on the plane, headed across the country.  Nick’s voice ringing in my ears.

“You know this is ridiculous, right?” Nick had counseled as he sat next to me at the gate waiting for me to board.  “He’s never going to change.  He can’t, Carla. For God’s sake, girl, he’s gay.”

I knew he was right.  But San Francisco!  Everyone wanted to go to San Francisco. And I had a reason. Well, sort of a reason.

I was going to patch things up with my sort-of-a husband Mickey.  

“Listen,” Mickey had said on the phone a week ago .  “I think you should come out here.  I want you to see my place, meet my roommates.  You’ll love it. . . it’s so much cleaner and cooler than New York . . . a place where we can make a great life together.“

We talked for an hour, and naturally, to my 19-year-old’s sense of wisdom, I was all in. I told myself that we never gave ourselves a chance, and we owed each other that much. We were pals first and foremost.  How could we fail? 

I mean.  That night in Albuquerque, the night we ran away together, when I got a bit teary-eyed listening to Simon and Garfunkle on the jukebox singing “Homeward Bound,” he got it right away.  “You wanna go home, don’t you.” 

“Wow,” I thought.  “Not only is he the best-looking guy in my class at UNM.  He’s deep.  Sensitive.”

“Let’s do it,” he said. And the next thing I knew we had dropped out of school and were on our way to New York City.  Somewhere over Arkansas or Oklahoma, I remembered that we might be in trouble.

“It’s against the law for an unmarried couple to cohabitate in the city.  We might not be able to find a place to live.”

He answered instantly. “So why don’t we get married?  After all, I like you, and you like me. . . . “

“Yes!” I was jubilant.

“Only thing,” he might have stammered a little here. “You know I’m gay, right?  I can’t –”’

“No problem,” I effused. “I’m frigid. I can handle a platonic relationship.” 

He believed me.

“Good,” he said. “And I promise I’ll be careful.”   

I believed him. 

That was in October.  By December, I had fallen in love with him, and he had contracted deadly hepatitis from his profligate lifestyle.  He left me to return to his native San Francisco, and though I cried myself to sleep for six months, by the time he called at the end of June, I was past the pain.  

I  should have known better. But San Francisco!

The ground agent announced we were boarding, and Nick put a little pill into my palm.

“Take this as soon as you get into your seat,” he counseled.  “By the time you finish the meal they bring you, you’ll be fast asleep.”

I woke up as the plane bounced onto the SFO tarmac.  It took at least ten minutes before I figured out where I was and why. I disembarked.  Mickey was not there to meet me. I wandered around the airport, hoping he’d show up. He did not.  I found a bus, rode to the city, and got off at Haight and Ashbury.  Where else would a 19-year-old New Yorker want to be in 1967?  Even though I didn’t know it then, it was the summer of love, and Haight Ashbury was where it was at.

On a pay phone, I called Mickey’s house.  His roommate said he told her to tell me he’d meet me at 5 PM by Buena Vista Park. Why had I thought he’d be excited to see me?

No matter. I was dazzled.  San Francisco seemed to me a vast mescalin dream, a rainbow of color, a cacophony of sounds, and a panoply of personalities and smells.  Beautiful half-naked people my own age floated by on their hallucinogenic clouds, couples let it all hang out between them, and everywhere there were people dancing in the streets. 

I wandered around, stopping to watch street theater, jumping away from a pickpocket, laughing at a puppet show, then ducked into a Tad’s Steak House and had some chicken and fries, before I sauntered back onto the street.  It was only 2 PM.  As I stood in front of the Tad’s deciding where to go next, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

“What’re you doin’ here, missy?” The question emanated from the very gruff voice of a very big policeman. 

“Waiting.”

“Yeah, sure y’are.  How much money you carryin’?”

“What? Money? A few cents, actually. I just spent my last three dollars on—”

“Okay, missy, you’re comin’ with me.”

“Why? What’d I do, Officer?”  I stammered.  I smiled at him.  He did not smile back.  Cops in New York were so much friendlier.  I liked NY cops. This guy was menacing.

“No back talk, lady.  Just keep your mouth quiet and come with me.”

I followed him, and he put me in the back of a wagon with several women in various pieces of quasi-garb.  A light flashed in my brain.  When the officer pulled me out of the van to escort me into the station house, I stopped and forced him to look right at me.

“If I were doing what arresting me implies I am doing, wouldn’t I have more than a few cents on me?  You don’t think I can do business?”

He did not respond.  Just yanked my arm and pulled me inside.  They didn’t formally arrest me, I guess, because they didn’t stand me in front of a wall and take my photo or roll my fingers in ink to get prints.  The clerk did ask me for a local address and phone number – I gave them Mickey’s info – before someone else pushed me into a cage, where I sat for I don’t know how long.  

I think I dozed off, and when I woke up, Mickey was standing outside the cage shaking his head.  

“Well,” he muttered, disgust dripping from his tone.  “I guess I was wrong.  First thing tomorrow, I’m throwing you back on the plane.  You’re going home.”

 I should have known.