FLASHBACK: Pioneer Woman (1977)

Denver

I was eager to travel after two years of living and working in New York. Dad lent me his brand new Scirocco, VW's fastest model.

9912 Collette

First stop:  Elbert, Colorado about midway between Denver and Colorado Springs where JoAnn, one of my best girlfriends in high school, had moved after graduating.  She lived by herself on 180 acres.

Not counting a couple of horses.  

More significantly, JoAnn was working full-time and raising Brooke, a two-year-old daughter. While I was in college, she'd gotten married, had a baby and divorced her husband, a cowboy.  With her oversize car phone, she seemed so much more adult than I.

The quid pro quo of gay life in the 70s had started becoming apparent.  My responsibilities would never include more than supporting myself and a pet.

On the day I left JoAnne's, I drove 900 miles in 19 hours.  Driving fast exhilarated me.  Duel, Steven Spielberg's first film, inspired this shot.  

I will never forget the rush of passing multiple vehicles on a long stretch of two-lane highway somewhere in Utah with Lou Reed's "Heroin" blaring from the tape deck.  The guitars crescendoed just as a barreling truck forced me to accelerate even harder before cutting back into my lane, ahead of everyone else at last.  Pure bliss for a solo traveler.

Utah

En route to San Francisco, I pulled over for a swim at Lake Tahoe.  You could drink the cool, cold water, too.

I stopped in San Francisco to see Paul.  

He'd just moved into a new apartment with a couple buddies from law school.  Their new water bed sprang a leak, especially problematic because of drought restrictions.

2136 Steiner Street

We also spent some time in Golden Gate Park, where we made a pilgrimage to the statue of Miguel de Cervantes.  Both of us had taken a popular course about Don Quixote at Columbia.  No photographic evidence exists of our night out at a local "fern bar," as they were then known.

Driving the Pacific Coast Highway blew me away.  I stopped along the way to skinny dip with the sea lions.  Actually, the unexpected encounter literally scared the shit out of me.

I don't think I took a better photograph for many, many years.  Perfect lighting!

The final leg of the trip included a brief stay in Los Angeles.  Look at the band of smog from polluting automobiles.  Thanks to John Rechy who, like me, was born in El Paso, I even got laid in a bower.  His Sexual Outlaw steered me to Griffith Park, just as his most famous work, City of Night, lured me to New York City.  There were so few gay voices in my formative years and as the great Sondheim has noted, children will listen.

View from Griffith Park