Going to Extremes

Flying low over the island of Kauai was unlike anything my 15 year old, not well-traveled eyes had ever seen.  The ocean was a patchwork of differing shades of blue, green and turquoise.  The island was a vast array of greens with rich, deep, red soil. Paradise awaited and I was excited. This was going to be fun.   

My husband, Gerry and I left Oahu after only a few days.  This was our delayed honeymoon, even more importantly, it was our escape from L.A.   Gerry was receiving regular bomb threats from the John Birch Society, at least he suspected it was them. He had taken the case of a major figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Ron Karenga who co-founded the black nationalist and social change organization US or "Us Black People".   He was getting too powerful, Gerry said, and was framed with a violent crime to sabotage the large organization he was building.  It was the only criminal case that Gerry ever lost.  Ron was sentenced to 10 years. We visited him at Chino prison before we left.  I had seen most all of the trial.  

When I should have been in first period English class and on campus at Beverly Hills High School, I was instead on Olympic Boulevard with my thumb out hitching to the downtown court house.  The first trial I watched, he won.  It was a civil rights case, involving a group of Hispanic, church-going women that were arrested on Christmas Eve in front of their church. After denied entry because the church was full, the extremely religious women refused to leave. Instead of letting the women stay on the steps outside, the police were called to remove them.  LAPD, East LA, the late 60's...one can only imagine. Gerry was a fighter on behalf of The People.  Cases like this he took for free.     

I loved to watch him brilliantly work his magic in the courtroom. It became my favorite thing to do instead of attend class at Beverly.  Anti-war activism with U.C.L.A.'s radical organization was replaced with the courtroom after Gerry and I hooked up, there was not enough time for both.  I had a new obsession.  And this was an education of it's own.  Plus, one I wanted.  He absolutely mesmerized me.  His arguments were power-packed.  His eloquence and ability to play to emotion, rocked me.  We would discuss it all over teacakes in Chinatown at lunch break then continue dissecting it, on the way back to his apartment in the car after court.  We had to make sure I got home somewhere around 9 pm, I told mother I was working for him in the evenings.  Until, it got to be too hard to go home. We wanted to be together and decided to marry.  

He reasoned to avoid mother entirely we would find somewhere in the world that did not require parental consent to marry.  With his friends Paul and Susie, in the cramped, back seat of the Porsche Targa, Paul filming with probably the first model ever, hand held, but heavy and large, video cam, we went to the U.C.L.A. Law Library.  He spent hours poring over books.  There was not one place in the world that a 15 year old could marry without parental consent.  In some countries you could be even younger but parents had to agree.  He was quite surprised.  But, plan B had to come quick, it was way past 9 pm by now.  But that's another story.  

While back on the island, it is honeymoon time.

Safety in Hawaii was a welcome relief.  In California, I had to check the ignition for wires from a bomb before entering any of our cars.  It was very scary. Waikiki held little appeal beyond some night life and Gerry assured that I would love Kauai.  He was so right.  He liked no reservations travel and immersing himself in local cultures versus the American tourist plan.  That seemed perfect to me the tourists in Waikiki were frightful. I did not want to go any where that, matching muumuus and aloha-shirted couples, went. 

We arrived on Kauai without a hotel room and Gerry decided that he did not want to rent a car.  We were going hitchhike.  He wanted to meet people who lived there.  Although, I saw where he was coming from and agreed it would fun. I had become rather comfortable driving his hot looking silver, exceedingly fast, great handling, Porsche Targa that turned me into a corner gripping, curve hugging, speed demon especially on the Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur and San Francisco.   The wild, manic and out-of-control within was getting extreme opportunities to get out. 

There were also new prompts for wildness, like the plentiful quantities of LSD, mescaline and weed that Gerry always had from bartering his legal services with dealers who had no cash flow following arrest (they had to lay low) but still had drugs.  

And oh, those parties...they were heaven to an extremist like me.  Gerry was an art collector.  Modern mostly, known, unknown, to become well-known.  We were always invited to fabulously, unique and creative studio spaces where artists lived and worked in Venice and throughout LA.  Their parties were the greatest but the art collectors could kick it up a notch.   At one collector's bash in the hills above Santa Monica, before entering you removed your shoes and people were stationed at the door to wash your feet.  Different rooms had different drugs.  There was a psychedelic room, a cocaine room and in my favorite room, where I spent most of the party, there were three, tall gray tanks of Nitrous Oxide beside a black, baby grand with a jazz pianist knocking out tunes. Both pianist and the man serving Nitrous Oxide up in balloons, were dressed in tuxedos. 

I had done most drugs already including acid before me met. Strangely, my high school friend, Debbie, got one single tab of the best Orange Sunshine ever as a gift for me. She got it in Big Sur when she was on vacation with her family.  Big Sur had the best. And it was incredible.  But, I remain uncertain as to why just me?

But, Debbie I had never mentioned wanting to take it.  You had never taken it.  Nor, had ANYONE we knew. None of our girl group, at least.  It wasn't in our Beverly Hills High formulary yet like most all other drugs of the day.   Was it that Debbie figured I would be the one most able to handle it in our group. A good guinea pig.  I was a know-it-all kid about mostly anything outside the classroom.  Inside, I was clueless. Answers to things seemed to just come to me about beyond-the-classroom stuff.  I was the go to person for certain explanations.  

I even led Gerry and his girlfriend at the time through a bad acid trip that the two of them were having.  She was a psychologist.  Both of them were so very afraid of the loss of control  of strange perceptions, that neither could help the other.  I stayed right beside them both for hours.  I talked. They hardly could. They were both educated adults.  She was in her 30's, he in his 40's. I was 15. I tried to normalize their experience by sharing some of my own.  My trips had all been great, I loved the expanded consciousness, profound thoughts and my first deep philosophical conversation with my best friend's, older sister's, friend.  We sat in his pick-up truck talked for hours.  I told him there were no new ideas, they all existed and only needed be captured for our private use.  It seemed quite profound at the time.     

But, that was in LA and we were in Kauai now where I would be slowed to a crawl for the next 2 years.  A great crawl in some ways, it was beautiful place.   I was free from my dysfunctional relationship with mother, not in jeopardy of becoming a ward of the court, I had a new best friend that I loved, at least, as much as a 15 year old knows how. Gerry let me do whatever I wanted.  He gave me whatever I wanted. Life was good and I was happy. That’s all I knew.

We got a ride from a hippie chick, in a not so shiny, I think originally yellow, VW bug who told us about Taylor Camp, with treehouses in a forest just off the beach at the far end of the North Shore in a small town called Ha’ena.  She said tourists rarely went that far, it was very private, free, lots of weed, she shopped there and a Zen master.  The magic word was spoken apparently, Gerry was there already.  Zen had not made it's way into my realm yet. But I had heard Marc, my step-brother from mother's last, who I adored and who was watching our house, speak of it, so I was sure it was something to know about.  Plus, all the rest sounded perfect.  

Afterthoughts:

There were major interventions that could have gone on at this point in my life by my family, the school or caring observers, had certain things been identified.  School difficulties being the first very obvious sign.  I was with the UCLA radicals more.  I did show up occasionally for class.  I found it necessary, for example, to be there on book report day to give a presentation on Woodstock Nation written by Abbie Hoffman.   Then there was the walk-out that I had to lead single-handedly because the other three chickened out, fearful of what their teachers would think and their future college plans and such.  It was in support of the East LA movement (specifically the high school students at Roosevelt high…SWAT was called and busted heads just because they quietly protested by not going back to class after lunch).  But, Houston there was a problem.  Solution, expel me.  

At the Beverly High walk-out,  300 or so walked off campus with me, there was one cop car at the bottom of the campus.  He stayed in his car.  We even tried to provoke him by pushing the car frame up and down on the hood.  I was YIPPIE trained by then.  It didn't even cause him to call for back up.  This was Beverly Hills after all.  But, what a contrast with bloody up students in East LA victimized by SWAT for non-provocation.   

Gerry’s other girlfriend besides the psychologist, was a teacher there.  She told us the story one night. Massive protests were planned around the city.  It went far beyond just the school, I recently discovered that James Olmos did a film called Walk-out about that time.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkout_(film)   

We went to UCLA, they printed our flyers, Abbie and others provided some guidance.  Gerry's daughter, Tobi, was my classmate.  We would hitchhike to his apartment in Santa Monica after school.  

Back to the cautionary stuff…I was attending classes less and less each year for 3 years at the finest public school. How does that happen?  Why was I at UCLA with college kids doing anti-war demonstrations instead of sitting in my high school class room?   How did I keep a 45 year old Stanford Alum, attorney, formerly of O'Melveny and Meyer, the largest entertainment law firm in Los Angeles, interested enough to marry me at 15?  I wasn't dumb.  I was too smart.  I needed more.  It wasn't identified.  My passions needed outlet.  No one was there at home, school or around me to help direct it.  I was seen simply as a troubled, behavioral problem child, to be dealt with punitively.  Most importantly, the parenting that I received was woefully inadequate, from insufficient love and nurturing through lack of monitoring, poor role modelling and so much in between.  These are the messages that need to be embedded, not told.

The chemical imbalance of bipolar and a predisposition to addiction based on family history rounds it out and those would be the genetic components.  

The innate Chrys contributions, or what I was born with and what evolved due to circumstances, are that I am stubborn, head strong, sharp and precision-focused when I need to be. Natural selection with adaptation traits favored me for survival through this insanity and addiction filled life.  Like perceptive to a fault, sensitive to another fault, I know how you feel and read people immediately, if we cross paths or even wavelengths. And, my environmental exposure to a variety of experiences and people developed, at least, adequate social skills.  Truthfully, no one scares me.  I can talk to anybody these days, about anything.  And, do so quite comfortably and with ease and humor.  It is an absolutely awesome, acquired only recently; a comfort with people that I never had before.  For years, my personality construct was extremely protective of my fragile ego structure.  Got that? I felt so insecure often that I came off harsh and had to act superior to others to feel that I was okay with myself.  Ugly trait.  Glad I could shed that skin.

Thankfully, in my 30's, I got channelled towards my own dream to return to school and supported in my efforts along the way to become a therapist by my beloved psychiatrist of 30 years.  But, I have remained a real loner.  Social media has been a Godsend.  Thank you all from the bottom of my being. xo