The Santa Monica hills were brown, and roadside signs warned that this was a Fire Area. The hero drove through it with his eyes squinted, smoking a cigarette, squealing around every curve in the freeway. He drove up onto a wide avenue identified as Sunset Boulevard, continued driving onto Sunset Strip and then pulled into a hamburger joint where a redheaded carhop in a short skirt and boots came over to take his order. I looked at Sandy’s legs again. I kept wishing that the hero of the movie would find another girl and undress her. He found another girl soon enough: there were girls sprinkled everywhere through the picture. When he pulled in for gas, in fact, I expected the station attendant to be a tall brunette in skin-tight slacks, but she wasn’t. The next girl didn’t appear until the hero went to his evening dramatics group someplace on Wilshire Boulevard, I believe it was, and she was an aspiring actress of about seventeen, just a little older than Sandy, with breasts very much like Sandy’s when they were finally revealed in a scene outdoors under the eucalyptus trees where she and the actor wrestled playfully for a while until he stripped her down naked, she giggling all the while and Sandy’s nipple growing hard. I began to feel terribly grubby about what we were doing because the theater was very brightly lighted for a little hick theater, and I was certain everyone knew exactly what was going on. Once, when my fingers brushed David’s, I smiled and then idiotically thought I had laughed aloud, and quickly looked over my shoulder to make certain no one was watching us. The interesting thing about it all was that the people on the screen were actually doing much more than we were in our seats, which possibly was the point of the film, after alclass="underline" our hang-up with illusion, our put-down of reality. In other words, was the play-acting on the screen more exciting than what was really going on with Sandy? I don’t think I actually wondered that at the time, in fact I’m sure I didn’t. I was too caught up in what was happening, you see, too thoroughly bombarded by images flashing in beautiful color sequence before my eyes, the two young starlets in the bedroom with the hero, the baby writhing in fever downstairs, Sandy’s smooth brown legs crossing and recrossing, the now familiar feel of her breast, the awareness of my own immense masculinity, and the further knowledge of our secret, the secret we three shared, we could do this, she would allow us to do this.
On the way to the ferry slip, we talked about the film. The street bordering the bay was silent and dark. Most of the business district was built inland, of course, and as a result there never was too much action along the bay front. But this was still comparatively early on a Saturday night, and you didn’t expect the sidewalks to be pulled in right after dinner. It was sort of eerie. Here we were in the midst of what was supposed to be civilization, but the only sign of life came from a fisherman’s bar spilling orange and blue neon into the street up ahead.
“He wasn’t involved with any of them,” David said, “that was the point. None of the people in that picture ever really touched each other.”
“There was something very phony about that picture,” Sandy said. “I mean, if the point was that all that running around and fooling around was so unattractive, then why did the director make it so exciting?”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” I said.
“On the other hand,” Sandy said, “maybe the excitement had nothing to do with the movie.”
David and I said nothing. We both knew what she meant, but we were somewhat startled that she was willing to talk about it, even though we’d agreed to be completely honest with each other.
“Maybe it had to do with touching me,” she said. “And getting me so hot I thought I would faint,” she said, and that was when the three boys appeared on the sidewalk ahead of us. We had just passed the bar, and we were bathed in an eerie disharmony of vivid orange and blue, surprised by Sandy’s frankness, more than a little unsettled by the sudden appearance of the trio ahead. They were standing in a loose-hipped imitation of every teenage hoodlum pose they had ever seen, the perfect stereotype of black leather-jacketed youth, except that they were wearing tee shirts and levis. The image was identical nonetheless, a trite reproduction of evil intent. And because we had been exposed to it so many times before, and recognized it immediately, our response was clichéd as welclass="underline" immediate fear coupled with a pounding sense of imminent danger, a rising excitement at the prospect of a rumble. We turned without a word to each other and began running. The boat was supposed to leave for Greensward at eleven sharp. It was now close to 10:45, and we had no doubt that the boat was already in and loading passengers. It occurred to me, as we ran up the street away from the ferry slip, that we could very easily miss the boat and be trapped here on the mainland with three specimens who, it was fair to surmise, were not overly interested in discussing illusion, reality, or alienation. I had no idea whether or not they were the same boys who had been ogling Sandy outside the theater before the picture began. But there was an urgency in the clatter of their chase, and I began to think we were making a mistake by running deeper into a town they undoubtedly knew well, rather than heading for the protection of the ferry waiting room and the civilized people boarding the boat for Greensward.
And then — I don’t know what caused it, perhaps it was the influence of the film, perhaps we were all still deeply caught up in the film’s message — a sudden giddiness came over the three of us. As we ran through the deserted streets of the town, we began giggling, and then laughing aloud. Behind us, one of the townies yelled, “Hey, Long Legs, wait up!” and another one shouted, “Give us a peek at you, honey!” and rather than striking terror into our hearts, their words absolutely broke us up. The laughter was a curious thing in that we recognized it might affect our ability to run, and yet we couldn’t stop it. I was developing a stitch in my side, partly from running, partly from laughing, and Sandy was gasping for breath as we rounded a corner and cut across a vacant lot behind the drugstore. “Come on, Long Legs,” one of the townies shouted, “we ain’t gonna hurt you,” and David said, “Not much,” and we all burst out laughing again. “Get rid of them two queers,” one of the boys yelled, and I said, “Hit him with your purse, David,” all of this while we were tearing across the lot and avoiding bottles and piles of ashes and bags of garbage and trying to figure out a way to circle around back toward the ferry slip, laughing wildly. They must have thought we were crazy. Maybe we were. It seemed to me, though, that the reality of the chase, even the reality of the menace it represented, had been diminished by the fact that we had lived it too often before, if only vicariously. How real could these hoods behind us be when they were shouting banalities like, “Come on, honey, we got something for you,” or “Slow down, baby, you’ll love it?” How real could any of this idiotic chase be when we had already witnessed wilder chases on motion picture screens? Laughing, stumbling, our eyes tearing, we came out onto a long dark street flanked on one side by a closed supermarket and on the other by a closed dry-cleaning store, a closed bookshop, and a closed Italian restaurant with a sign announcing the house specialty as veal parmigana. The misspelling on the sign caught my eye as we rushed past, commenting beyond any doubt on the quality of the house specialty and further adding another dimension of fantasy to the chase, an Italian restaurant that could not spell in Italian. Out of breath, David said, “Do we stand and fight?” and Sandy said, “Shit, no,” which caused more laughter, while behind us the hoods were getting more and more agitated. And then, through luck or intuition, we made an abrupt right turn and found ourselves once again on the street with the open bar, its blue and orange neon flashing ahead like some gaudy oasis. “Let’s go, gang!” David shouted, and we began running faster and in dead earnest, though still chuckling with recognition of the absurdity of it all. Behind us, the cleverest of the townies shouted, “Aw, baby, don’t be mean,” and Sandy shouted, “Goodnight, lover,” as we saw the ferry slip ahead. The boat was already in. We boarded it rapidly just as the three hoods came panting onto the dock, standing again in stereotyped tough-guys-hands-on-hips postures while we mingled with the other passengers, and then tauntingly thumbed our noses at them from the quarterdeck. Sandy laughed then, a high blaring hoot that caused some of the other passengers to turn and stare at us, a derisive challenge to the gangsters below. Tossing her golden hair in the light of the pilot house, she looped her arms through ours and led us aft.