It was May 14^th 1971, my seventeenth birthday. I was stuck in the restaurant kitchen at chi chi Bullocks’ Department store in Sherman Oaks, California, working the early dinner shift for Tuesday’s weekly designer fashion show. It sucked being young and poor, but restaurant work was a good source of rent and provided meals every shift; two blessings for an only child in the recession of the 70’s living with a single, bipolar mom.

I reached up, tore the sole remaining ticket off the stainless steel order wheel, and popped two slices of cheese bread into the toaster for what I hoped would be the final order of the afternoon: one of our specialty bacon, avocado, and tomato sandwiches. I paused for a deep breath, as I tried to strip the day’s work and my mother’s morning’s antics from my brain, then grinned as I thought of tonight’s birthday rendezvous with my girlfriend Jen. She had promised a special birthday gift, and her bronzed surfer-girl legs sauntered through my imagination. Distracted momentarily by the thought, I lost my grip on the final tomato slices. Tumbling to the floor, their fall was audible, like the plop of seagull poop landing on a sidewalk.

“Damn it all” shot from my mouth.

“Gary” scolded the elderly Costa Rican evangelical working the adjacent station.

“Sorry Marie” as I bent down, picked up the slices with my right hand, and jump-shot them into the gray plastic trash can six feet away. I washed my hands in the gleaming double sink, then dried them on the towel hung off my apron. Adding new slices, I plated the sandwich.

“Order up” I yelled, as Sally strode over to take this last order out to the dining room and waiting patron. Twelve long minutes passed without an order crossing the wheel, and my shift was over. Punching out, I pushed open the back door of this high-end kitchen, blinking twice as the laser-like California sun hit me squarely in the face, then walked across the asphalt parking lot to my slightly dented, nine-year old Dodge Dart. Thinking ahead, I had parked the car under a shady, grizzle-barked California Sycamore, the only remaining tree in the mall lot. Unlocking the car door, I waited a minute to let the half-day accumulation of Southern California heat escape, then slid behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and quickly was on my way to meet Jen.    

***

The proletarian Dart was my one substantive material possession–purchased the previous semester with $325 I had saved as a work-study salad maker in the Valley State College cafeteria. The car ran and that was about all one could say. Of course the relatively low purchase price portended future repairs, and my last paycheck had been consumed by new brakes, two retreaded tires, and realigned wheels. I was living on my Bullocks paycheck while Mom lived month to month on her Social Security Disability check—next month, like every month, would be tough financially. However, in mid-century LA, a car was not only a ticket to freedom, but a symbol of teen status. Everything in LA was twenty minutes from everything else–except when it wasn’t.

Jen and I were meeting a few miles away at a friend’s vacant rental home—she had hinted that my birthday present was hidden there, and the rental was sanctuary from parents and peers. We had been together a few months, and now were happily paired like hand and glove. Pulling up, I saw Jen shut the door of her blue, surf-rack equipped, VW Beetle. We embraced, interlaced our fingers, and walked to the front door—Jen smiled as she happily twirled the house key on a green and white braided nylon lanyard. Lacking both siblings and a “normal” parent, my birthday presents were few and far between. Once again my lips spread in pleasure as I pictured Jen’s forthcoming gift.

Fifteen minutes and copious cussing later, my patience was thin as a car-flattened squirrel, and Jen squinted to hold back her tears. The loaner key failed to open either front or side door, and a circuit of the house provided no entry points: rear sliding glass door blocked with a broomstick handle, and windows firmly locked. I uttered another “Damn it all”, kicked the large jade plant abutting the front porch, and said “Let’s head to the canyon.” Jen’s quick hug and nod said yes without words.

We cruised up the Woodman Avenue freeway on-ramp, and like bees returning to the hive, quickly merged the Dart into a west-bound lane of the Ventura Freeway (101). I was steering with my left hand while we chatted about Klute, a movie we had seen the previous Saturday. Jen lightly caressed the inside of my right forearm, which lay on the seat between us. She frowned, when she realized my right fist was unconsciously opening and closing, in response to the house aggravation. But it wasn’t just that–I remained stressed out by the slap across face Mom had given me at our apartment yesterday, when I failed to repair a broken electrical outlet with sufficient speed. This was just the latest in a cycle of punches and slaps that were difficult to take, especially given that corporal punishment had been lacking in my youth. Sixteen was too late to start, but these days Mom was about as rational as an attack dog.

In a life of cloudy days, my only ray of sunshine was Jen, and I guarded our relationship; pushing my painful home life to the back shelf of my mental book store. After all, my destructive maternal interactions, and early graduation from high school, were the main reasons I took my own apartment at sixteen, and entered Valley State College. But my youth gave Mom leverage. Whether she was on a low or high, all it took was my bucking just one of her chore-requests, for her to threaten “I’m going to call LAPD and have you put in Juvenile Hall.” Her demands had to be followed to the letter, even when they occurred at two thirty-seven am.

Sensing that my mood was sliding downward, Jen attempted a diversion; “Do you really think a hooker deep in ‘The Life’ like Bree could fall for a straight-arrow small town cop like Klute?” I shrugged “You know, I’ve seen so much crazy shit from Mom, I now believe anything is possible in the behavior of humans.”

The chaparral-clothed mountains separating the San Fernando Valley from LA proper, pulled Jen’s gaze to the left, while I drove a steady seventy miles-per-hour in the fast lane of the post-work-day freeway traffic. Clouds in the ocean-blue sky glowed with persimmons and scarlets that only smog and an LA sunset could provide. Fantastic weather and the sweet incense of blue sage and spicebush were daily gifts from the Southern California landscape.

But, the sun’s twilight scrape of sky had not eased our frustrations over the key fiasco, and I tried to lever myself out of my emotional ditch.  Seeking solace and escape from the late May heat, we drove to Decker Canyon, a favored spot we visited almost weekly and considered “ours.” Decker was one of a series of canyons in Malibu that extended like fingers on the landscapes’ giant sandy hand, up into the sage-painted coastal mountains. There we could spread my beach quilt out in a grassy meadow overlooking the ocean, while listening to the rollers break on the sandy shore below. Decker Canyon, with its hairpin turns and undulations in elevation, had little traffic, unlike other Corvette and Harley-frequented canyons bisecting the mountains of Malibu.

Suddenly, a red Z28 Camaro cut us off going only fifty-five. I slammed on the brakes, exclaiming “Sonofabitch” as I swerved out of the way. Jen flinched, the quick deceleration sweeping her long auburn hair out the right window.

Anger crossed my face as I turned to Jen and said, “What an a-hole.”

Flipping her hair back into the sedan’s interior, Jen faced me and asked “What did Tom say about car windows the other day, they’re hippie air conditioning?”

I chuckled and said “Really, they’re just poor-kid air conditioning.”

Seeking comfort I reached over for Jen’s hand, switched into the third lane to pass the Camaro, and thought “Lucky prick probably didn’t have to work on his birthday either.”

***

My family was both small and impoverished, just myself, Mom, and her monthly Social Security Disability check. Dad had been MIA since before my birth, and although just a teen, I worked hard to maintain a semblance of emotional equilibrium given Mom’s bi-polar oscillations between esoteric crafting and catatonia.

I had begun working as a grocery bagger just after my fifteenth birthday. Given that our family enterprise continually teetered on the cliff of eviction, I had been paying for most of my own needs, everything but groceries and rent. Whenever I returned home with a book or new pair of pants, tinges of shame flashed across Mom’s face but her only response was “I’m glad you’re reading so much” or “Couldn’t you have bought some nicer pants?” 

Finally Mom’s emotional oscillations and slaps proved too much to bear, and I moved out two months before my seventeenth birthday: uncoupling both physically and emotionally from the person responsible for my existence.

My living expenses were minor; I wasn’t a clotheshorse or dope addict. My tastes in clothes were purely functional and my summer wardrobe consisted of cut-offs and pocket tees, while in winter my muscled five-foot-six inch frame was garbed in flannel shirts and 501 jeans. Pennys and K-Mart, were my fashion houses, and my “look” that was part hippie, part Bakersfield farm hand. Jen, whose upper-middle-class parents provisioned her with clothes mirroring the flowers of London’s Kew Gardens in high summer, once jokingly asked if I owned a single piece of clothing that wasn’t blue or green. But when my eyes and mouth tightened, she reached for my forearm, fingers curling taut, and said, “You know I love you.”

Even though Jen and I were raised on different sides of the tracks, class distinctions had broken down in the social fluidity of the 60’s and 70’s, and we had climbed the high peak of teenage love without care. Nevertheless, our pursuits and interests differed somewhat. I was a fisherman and backpacker, whereas, Jen surfed, skied, and had a pet quarter horse—a signifier of “We’ve got it made” in upper-echelon LA families.

I was a first semester biology major on financial aid, and on days when my thoughts darkened like twice-burnt coal, wondered if Jen had only agreed to become my girlfriend because her horse had taken to me. Flash was a prickly roan gelding, won over by my steady hand, nascent riding skills, and pockets-full of apples and carrots. Despite coming from different economic strata, our love of mountain trails, local beaches, and endurance of abusive parental behavior, lit a fuse that burned bright and colorful as the sky at Fourth of July.

***

As we headed towards Decker Canyon, the day’s angst faded as the sun eased low in the West, and we could even ignore the ever-present hot-rodders in muscle cars weaving among lanes like the needles of industrial sewing machines. Pulling off the 101 at Malibu Canyon Road, the scents of California lilac and toyon streamed through the open car windows, like the perfume counter at Macys. Driving the canyons was a regular form of aromatherapy for me. Perhaps it was the aromatic hillsides, perhaps it was the ever-changing Crayola light, but Southern California’s oak-savannah landscapes had the capacity to blunt the emotional barbed-wire that encased my esophagus and stomach weekly.

Halfway through Malibu Canyon, we passed the Wild Fox Inn, a rustically cedar-shingled, organic restaurant, nested under a stand of two-hundred-foot-tall eucalyptus. Jen’s ex-boyfriend, a cook, had been fired by the restaurant for poor performance a year earlier. Jen was just a teen, but Bill was five years her senior, and a possessive, abusive partner. Tonight, the parking lot was full, and as we sped past the Inn, our smiles spread like a soaring swallow’s wings; I suspect Jen was thinking about her emotional strength in splitting from her tyrannical former beau, which flashed across my mind as well.

The anaconda-sized curves of the canyon made for enjoyable driving, as I drifted the Dart downhill towards the Pacific Coast Highway 1 (PCH) and the beach.

The herbal fragrant breeze and canyon curves both began to soothe, as the corners of my mouth tilted upwards in an unconscious grin. Not for the first time, I thought of how lucky we were to live in a landscape surrounded by natural beauty such as the Santa Monica Mountains.

I thumbed open my mental notebook from AP high school biology, and turned to Jen “In biology we learned that chaparral plants send out aromatic chemicals that suppress their competitors to guard their own supplies of nitrogen, magnesium, and phosphorus.”

Jen faced me and replied “Far out, I love it when you teach me things about nature.”

Reaching the end of Malibu Canyon Road, we turned right onto the PCH, and headed north alongside the row of steel, glass and pastel beachside houses that guarded the shore from plebs like me and my friends. Thirty-four minutes later we reached Decker Canyon Road and drove up the canyon.

In a few minutes I veered the Dart into a pull-out leading to a large meadow overlooking the beach, that was one of “our spots”. Decker Canyon was mostly composed of chalkstone and colluvium–white fossil-laden soils and crumbly rocks that emitted a milky reflective glow in the light of the full moon. The thud of the closing car doors echoed off the adjacent rocky hillside as Jen and I headed for the meadow. Scanning the ground, I bent over to pick up a cappuccino-colored fossil clam. Flashing back to my family situation, and my survival technique of retreating within an emotional shell to survive Mom’s abuse, I handed the fossil to Jen and said “Before I met you I was as rigid and closed-up as this clam.”

Jen cupped the calcified shell in her hand, and rubbed her thumb over its ribbed rays. She flipped her chestnut bangs out of her eyes, and ran the V of her extended index and middle fingers down my chest.

“We’re nothing like that now.” She slipped the fossil into her back pocket, then embraced me with both arms, fitting her curves into mine.

Jen’s family also was a mess. Jen’s dad didn’t hesitate to shove his spouse when differences of opinion arose.  Several times, I had been scared by the shouting that forced its way through her parents locked bedroom door. Given that children often marry a version of their parents, it was unsurprising that Jen’s first ex- was an angry man who spent the last month of their relationship trying to convince her she was neither smart, nor pretty enough, to attract another boyfriend. However, Jen, a strong-willed, five-foot-three survivor, had sufficient emotional strength to abandon her ex- while he shouted at her diminishing exhaust from the parking lot of the Wild Fox. Driving away for the last time, she shot him a bird for good riddance, and became a comet finally returning to stable, healthy orbit.

Our respective family histories drew us together in the sense that we both sought out the tenderness and acceptance missing within our respective families. It was an hour past sunset, and we walked out into the waving long stems of deer-grass comprising the meadow. We unpacked my green backpack which held a worn quilt, a fresh baguette, and two cans of Ballantine Pale Ale gifted by an older friend. Spreading the quilt out in the remnants of an indentation where we had lain the week before, we watched moonbeams slide over the small breakers as their soft booms parted the spring night air.

The salty breeze periodically bent back the deer-grass, and I plucked a stem, peeled off the outer husk and chewed on the sweet inner pulp, as I lay back, decompressing in the salty air, and the proximity of our torsos. Laying entwined in each other’s arms, we alternately kissed and caressed each other’s bodies through loosened clothes, while watching for shooting stars.

“So what about my present?” I asked, and Jen answered, “Stop talking” and began kissing my throat. 

I reached under Jen’s orange tube top and stroked her stomach, teasing the few blond hairs that ran south from her belly button, when suddenly alternating red and white lights flared over the meadow. Jen inhaled sharply as she sat up, only to find an LA County Sheriff’s cruiser grinding to a halt behind the Dart.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed

Yet another obstacle impeded our birthday celebration.

Jen and I hastily tugged our clothes back to respectable positions and I touched the tip of my index finger to her lips for silence.

The deputy spot-lit the car and then walked, flashlight in hand, over to the vehicle to peer inside. Striding up to the front of the Dart, he rested his hand on the hood to check for engine heat. The officer then opened all four doors and searched the car, while we watched in surprise, though there was nothing to find. The deputy walked out into the meadow, swinging his long, military flashlight back and forth in an arc, and yelling “Sheriff’s department, you’re trespassing, come out right now.”

He was thirty or so feet from us when his radio issued a loud squawk and he quickly retreated to the cruiser to answer the radio call. After a short conversation, he spent a few more minutes painting the meadow with beams from the cruiser’s search light, while Jen and I lay flat as pancakes in the high deer-grass.

Before peeling out, the deputy shouted through his window “I know you’re out there”.

The deputy spun the Dodge like a pinwheel, gravel shooting everywhere, as he headed back towards PCH 1 and the beach.  Jen and I looked at each other, and simultaneously exhaled breaths we didn’t even realize we were holding.

Pulling her bra strap over her left shoulder, Jen said “Damn that was close.”

It was now past 10 pm, the curfew for LA kids under 18. Despite the many roadblocks the universe had set in our way, we sought to preserve a final bit of joy by getting away from the deputy and returning home. I opened the Dart’s trunk to conceal the empty ale cans beneath the spare tire, and threw the folded quilt on the back seat. Nothing untoward was in the car, just some empty soda cans, crumpled up wrappers, and a pair of Bushnell birding field glasses on the back window ledge. Nonetheless we waited ten minutes to ensure the deputy wouldn’t return.

I started the Dart, engaged the clutch, and shifted into first, as we headed back down the esses of the canyon. The annoyances of the day had wrung us out like damp shirts from an old washing machine.

“I suppose you’ll go back to the rental house tomorrow for my birthday present” I said. Jen’s eyes crinkled as she said “of course.”

About four hundred yards from PCH, the deputy appeared in my rear-view mirror, oscillating red and white lights flashing.

“I can outrun this SOB”, I mumbled and floored the accelerator.

The deputy pulled up behind the Dart, almost kissing my rear bumper with his cruiser, and all thoughts of escape fled my mind.

Jen, voice quivering, said “You’ve got to pull over”.

I slid the Dart over at the first wide-spot in the road, turned off the ignition, and waited while the deputy, five-cell flashlight in hand.

I rolled down my window, as the officer said “Show me your IDs“, flicking the flashlight beam over our faces.

The deputy looked at Jen, then ordered “Open the glove box.”

He ran his flashlight beam over the inside of the glove compartment, then the car interior, and spotted the rumpled quilt in the back seat. The deputy peered at our licenses, his eyes roaming back and forth over the text. His mouth suddenly opening and closing like a just-caught sand bass. His fingers tightened on the door frame of the car, as he blurted “Oh my God, your sister!”

I turned to Jen and smiled.

Then replied “No, no relation at all, isn’t that odd” because Jen and I happened to share the same uncommon last name.

The deputy gave us a stern three-minute lecture about trespassing, ending with “Don’t ever come back here again.” He ambled back to the cruiser, and took off, tires shooting rocks and dust everywhere.

We shook our heads in unison, and headed back to the 101, then east up the Valley to Jen’s neighborhood. I turned north on Woodman Avenue, east onto Magnolia, when Jen suddenly said “Turn right here.”

The street was a cul-de-sac with only two partially completed houses and no street lights.

Jen said “Let’s get into the back seat.”

I glanced at her in surprise “Sure.”

We closed the doors, carefully holding up the latches to muffle sound, and slid towards the back seat when Jen said “Wait a minute”

She opened and spread the quilt, clean side up, across the seat. We got in and Jen began to pull her tube top over her head as she lay across the seat. The cramped, vinyl, back was not a new venue for us, but I tilted my head slightly and looked at Jen with a quizzical smile. She took my face between her hands and said “I’m surprised you didn’t guess what your birthday present was. Now, help me with my pants.”   

Et voila, my virginity was gently taken by my first true love in the back seat of my 1963 Dodge Dart. We had a torrid couple of years until I was done with LA and moved to Berkeley to continue university. Tears in both our eyes, Jen waved goodbye and stayed in LA.

– Gary Grossman