California, 1976

I loved being in southern California. I bought a big yellow t-shirt bearing the logo of a brand of surfboards and a pair of green flip flops.

I loved the geography. Each town in southern California looked the same, and each represented the whole of southern California. They were linked together by a barely perceptible membrane of municipal sovereignty. You could drive from town to town to town and not find yourself anywhere different. The uniformity seemed to go on into infinity. Everywhere there were hot parking lots that burned your feet, and the same restaurant chains and the same giant billboards broadcasting images of the same kind of smooth southern California experience.

I was talking too much, or not talking enough. Either way, I was an oddity. I didn’t have parents. I had a guardian, whatever that was.

“Does your guardian let you do what you like?” Louise, my friends’ mother, said. I couldn’t answer the question. I could barely understand it.

The days clicked by, and soon it was July 3rd 1976, the day before Bicentennial Day.

Oceanside was near Camp Pendleton, a huge Marine Corps base.

Beer cans accumulated on the coffee table in the living room. The marine who lived downstairs was washing his van. In Oceanside there were a lot of men in crew cuts watering their lawns with hoses.

On the evening before Bicentennial Day we went out for ice cream at a Baskin Robbins. A lot of off-duty marines were hanging out on the street, probably out on leave for the evening from Camp Pendleton. It was the southern California equivalent of the Italian passegiata, the evening stroll. Most of the marines weren’t old enough to go into bars, because the legal drinking age in California was 21, so they sat on benches and watched the pairs of girls walk by on the sidewalk. The girls carried big coloured handbags and did their best to ignore the marines. Every now and then one of the marines would whistle or call out to them, “Hey girls!” mainly, it seemed, to amuse his buddies. The marines wore big colorful shirts for their night out, and t-shirts with lewd slogans on them like “help stamp out virginity” and pictures of marijuana leaves. In the magazine shops they ogled the glossy flesh of the centerfolds. In the head shop they looked at rolling papers and water pipes. We went into the head shop and talked to the teenage girls who were running it. They seemed relieved to see us because we didn’t have high and tight crew cuts. We told them we were from England and they told us which English groups they liked.

On Bicentennial Day, July 4th, 1976, we went to the San Diego County Fair.

But first, Louise’s friends Betty Ann and Margaret came over in the morning. Margaret wore bright yellow slacks and a brown blouse. She wore a bright yellow scarf around her neck. The ends of it were long and stuck out horizontally on either side of her neck. I wanted to ask her if she had a sore throat.

She sat on a tall stool, and the three women drank white wine. Margaret smoked 120mm cigarettes. Margaret and Betty Ann had got into some kind of trouble the night before. Margaret had given her telephone number to a bartender as the night got old, and in the same way Betty Ann had made a date with someone whose name she couldn’t remember now.

They fell silent for a moment, all with looks of worry on their faces. Margaret swirled the white wine in her glass and shifted her position on the stool. Her back was to the sea. She was wearing octagonal-framed sunglasses with purple lenses, and matching octagonal earrings.

Betty Ann broke the silence.

“This is terrible,” she said. “What if he calls me?”

“You could say you’re not in,” Margaret said.

“Can you remember what his name was?” Betty Ann said.

Betty Ann shrugged: she didn’t know.

Louise said, gushingly, in support of her friend, “Betty Ann, you always get yourself into trouble.”

After lunch, we went to the San Diego County Fair.

This close to Mexico, the San Diego County Fair had a Mexican flavour. The food stalls sold more tacos and burritos than hot dogs and hamburgers. You could buy beer, but it was what they called 3.2 beer (meaning low-alcohol) or near beer, served in big wax paper cups.

The fairground had a big exhibition hall. Among the multitude of stands was one presenting the local branch of the California State Police. They brought in one of their police cars for the display, and a glass case showing souvenirs of their work. There were knuckle dusters and revolvers and knives, each with typewritten labels beside them explaining what each thing was. There was also a marijuana cigarette about three inches long, which inspired Eli, Callum and me to compete with one another in smartass teenage wit.

“Holy shit, man! A marijuana cigarette! I bet they got that when they busted some hippy drug addict!” That kind of thing.

We watched the Bicentennial fireworks, and then drove back to Oceanside.

I was not getting on well with Louise, my friends’ mother. The routine of hamburgers and sunburn continued. Gilligan’s Island was on TV six times a day, and the TV was always on, and we spent a lot of time looking at the overcast sky over the sea, waiting for the weather to get better, but it never did.

One day Callum and I took a bus to San Diego to visit a friend I had made while inter-railing in Europe the year before. His name was Dave and he was a few years older than me. We met on a train going from one city in Europe to another, a train in which summer backpackers were all piled in together. He had given me his telephone number, and not only did I keep it in case I were ever in San Diego, but now that I was in the San Diego area I used it and called him. He was delighted to hear from me, and invited me and my friend to visit.

He and his wife lived in a condominium apartment and had a water bed. His wife Sandy was a nice woman who lived in a bubble of sunny optimism. They had just been to a Fleetwood Mac concert, and she told us about it enthusiastically.

We spent the afternoon smoking weed on the deep sofas in his living room and listening to his stereo.

We talked in a stoned way in the dim light.

“This place is like a motel,” Dave said.

He seemed to do nothing but smoke weed all day. That was the southern California lifestyle.

We went back a couple of times, and even went across the border to Tijuana with him in his car. We drank beer in a bar.

I bought an once of weed from him. By the time we got back to Oceanside that night I was stoned and filthy.

The following evening, we went to a Denny’s restaurant for dinner.

Louise, my friends’ mother, asked me, “Do you smoke pot?”

I don’t remember the answer, if any, that I gave her.

After a few more days, my friends’ mother said to me, “The rent man is coming in a few days. We’ve only paid rent for four people. If he sees you’re here, he’ll charge us an extra $50 a day. Can you find somewhere else to stay?”

She was kicking me out.