Towns

In the morning Pamala and I woke up on the back porch of Josh the Guitarist. It wasn't really his home, it was his parents'. Judging from the decorations, furniture and such, Josh's parents are the liberal-minded, tolerant, eccentric. Their house is a split level which Josh and the father of her child have divided into influence zones. He lives upstairs, where he is free to work on his computer diversions. Josh lives downstairs, with her internet equipped computer and other tools. The walls of her bedroom (where she often entertains groups of visitors) are covered with layers and layers of magazine clippings, much of it fairly tasteful erotic images of animals. Josh plays her stereo extremely quietly, perhaps tonight this was a defensive thing; she says her musical interests are very different from mine. But we cleared up one thing: I actually do like 311, a band she erroneously recalled me dissing. She on the other hand has no interest in Kaoss Edge. Other people showed up: Jargus, a big funny extroverted guy, and then Hardris and her father returned, but the father stayed upstairs watching TV while the rest of us (especially Hardris) continued socializing downstairs. She talks continuously, and when she's not talking, she's making animal noises. She demands center stage, and this makes things a little difficult for us. But there's a consistency to it all. Elof had a counterfeit Rolex watch his grandfather stole for him. It was a real piece of metallic crap, but there was the logo and the statement of authenticity.

As we milled around preparing to leave, Hardris did a remarkable spontaneous pro-social thing: she filled little paper cups with LSD and handed them to everyone present. The demographics were a mix of white trash, punks, racist-looking whites, goth kids, generic college kids, youthful affluent couples and some aliens. As we walked up and down the street looking for an appropriate restaurant, the proximity to so much seemingly violent masculine force on the verge of explosive expression had the effect of raising my adrenaline level. Several times Pamala and I thought we heard people (punks or skinheads) shout insults at us. It was actually kind of scary. Pamala was amazed; she'd been on this same street in the middle of a weekday and found the place very mellow.