Blake was alone, so he decided to sleep on the street. He had been thinking about it for a long time. George Orwell did it. The homeless of America were among its most oppressed people, and one of the few it was possible to simply join. He would join them, he reasoned, in order to learn their plight. He would join them in order to reclaim the freedom of Jack Kerouac. It was the only freedom that had ever made sense to him, a freedom that most Americans had forgotten.
Blake had a sleeping bag. He went to Haight-Ashbury because it was the iconic center of the hippie movement, at least in history. The street looked like a normal commercial district, packed with funky marketing. He parked with great difficulty and spent the day walking up and down the street. He could only afford a cup of coffee. The restaurants were too expensive. $7 for a slice of pizza? $15 for a burger? Nearby, there was an enormous park, sprawling off like wilderness. He hid behind a tree and cooked himself a bowl of pasta with a little oil and pepper. The thin flavor depressed him, and the noodles didn’t satisfy his hunger.
When he went back to Haight-Ashbury, he sat down on the sidewalk and crossed his legs. The passers-by began to ignore him, to drift around him like a rock in a river, to glance over his body and swiftly fix their eyes ahead. They became conscious of him as an impediment, a trial, a challenge, so they overcame him swiftly by refusing to acknowledge his existence and yet dodging him adeptly. It felt like an insult or a psychological weapon, too mundane to mention. Does the boatman have any regard for the rocks and rapids of his river? The sky grew dark.
A little while later, a man came over to him and sat beside him. This man had blonde hair and a short beard. He seemed a little wily and evasive, but friendly. Blake lit his cigarette for him. They met a woman who was doing the same thing as Blake, a Latina lobbyist from Wisconsin with a long, flat face who dressed like a cross between a hunter and a librarian. They met a very woman with a round, chubby face, a jet-black bowl cut, black boots, and a black skirt who got drunk on a pint of vodka and cursed everyone around her. They met a bright pink guy with a big jaw and a blunt nose who wanted to show them the Janis Joplin Tree on Hippie Hill, but it was the middle of the night and nobody wanted to go with him. Blake suspected a trap.
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When the streets and sidewalks emptied, they invented a new game. It was like soccer, played up and down a block, using a frisbee and a tennis ball at the same time. The goal was to put either object into the box of the opposite intersection. Half the players used skateboards or bikes. Nobody kept score. Someone accused Blake of being too militaristic because he compared the skateboarders to cavalry.
A deeply weathered man, medium-brown, gave Blake a stuffed purple dragon. He said, “This is Borzo. You’ve got to watch out for him, so take care of yourself. Don’t do it for yourself. Do it for him.” It was a convincing argument: Blake wasn’t eager to take care of himself for his own sake. The man was gone a few moments later. His face had been lean and weathered, eyes bright with madness. Why had he been so kind? Blake kept that dragon for years, and he felt it might have saved his life.
It got cold. Haight-Ashbury stayed brightly lit at all hours of the day, and the pedestrians started up around 5 am. Trucks arrived to unload kegs for the bars and pallets of bread for the restaurants. Blake got no sleep. The sidewalks vibrated with the rumbles of combustion engines and diesel fumes layered the air.
Eventually, his alarm went off. He was dead tired, but he had to move Lil Ol’ Blue to avoid the parking regulations. He found a parking spot nearby and carefully noted when he’d be forced to move the car again. For breakfast, he ate bread and peanut butter, then took a nap under a tree. Eventually he decided that he needed to go camping in the woods. In the city, it was too hard to sleep and cook. Exhaustion was catching up with him.
Before leaving, he accessed a website which allowed young people to trade labor for housing at farms. He sent several such applications, and also applied to a few dozen jobs. Then he got out his map, plotted a route to the Mendocino National Forest, and started driving. It seemed like a desperate strategic move, like dodging the thrust of a blade.
