Every night I dream strange dreams about my SA friends. It is as though my subconscious is telling me to accept the break.
There is such a hot jazz festival in Boston this week. BB King, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Spyro Gyra and Dave Sanborn. Oscar Peterson is also playing. Maybe Phillipa and I will go to it.
Please keep my letters as a sort of diary for me.
Love, Les
After my reunion with Phillipa, Grant and Julia kindly offered to buy me a thirty-day Greyhound bus ticket. This meant I could travel anywhere in the States and get a feel for the country, seeing more than just Massachusetts.
ON THE ROAD:
I felt very brave, and a bit lonely the day Julia put me on the big Greyhound bus. From Boston I went to Buffalo, then on to Denver where, to my horror, I discovered the local YMCA was closed. Luckily I befriended a guy named Mike who suggested I go home with him and offered me his couch to sleep on. Later I smoked a joint with him and his flatmate and I got horribly high – their weed was grown hydroponically so it was much stronger than the ganja I’d smoked at home.
I tried to sleep, but as the ceiling swirled my mind raced. On the radio Lou Reed was singing Take a Walk on the Wild Side. I felt a thrill, a rush, in my heightened state. I was doing just that, walking on the wild side.
From Denver I went to Chicago, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas before heading to San Pedro in Los Angeles to catch up with Raymond, a long-time friend who was there doing a dive course.
I spent the weekend with him, reminiscing about our shared childhood. Like me, he’d been raised in a strict Seventh Day Adventist household. Growing up, Saturdays were our Sabbath, our holy day. This meant that from Friday at sunset until Saturday at sunset we weren’t allowed to read secular books or listen to the radio.
We marked the start of Sabbath by singing hymns together while my mom played the piano. On Saturday mornings we went to church and Sabbath school and then afterwards our families often shared lunch and went for beach or park walks.
Raymond had been the first boy to ever kiss me. I was seven and he was nine – we had kissed behind a hedge in his garden during a game of hide and seek. It was comfortable to be with someone from home who knew me and my family so well.
Reluctantly, I left my old friend and made my way to the Grand Canyon aboard a Greyhound. There I was befriended by a travelling Australian named Ross who had a car. He and I explored the canyons, marvelling at the amazing sunsets and panoramic views and kissing a lot.
I left with my new companion, glad to be travelling by car instead of the bus. But by the time we got to Wichita Falls, a town in the top corner of Texas, the second-hand jalopy had started to give trouble. We took it to a mechanic and spent the night in a cheap motel.
It was the eve of my nineteenth birthday. I managed to talk Ross into gate-crashing a party that was taking place around the corner from our motel. He was easily persuaded. I put on my denim mini and white dancing shoes and off we went.
Ross justified our presence at the party by telling everyone it was my birthday. With my novel South African accent and my youthful cheekiness, I was soon surrounded by burly Texan men. One, a disc jockey for the local radio station, took off his Stetson and offered it to me as a birthday present. His hair was pressed flat to his scalp, like he had been wearing a hat all his life. He looked insignificantly small without it, even with his rhinestone buttons, his silver cowboy buckle, and well-polished, embroidered, knee-high boots. Shaking my hand firmly and looking me square in the eye, he introduced himself as Dancin’ Dan Baker Junior. I was thrilled. Giggling, I took the hat, thinking how much Bobs would like it.
The car was going to cost too much to be fixed, and so Ross sold it. Catching another bus, we left Wichita Falls and made our way down south to New Orleans. They call it ‘The City of Enchantment’ and that it was. There I spent a week or two in hedonist bliss, returning to the backpackers in the wee hours of the morning, drunk on jazz, the smell of magnolias and too many margaritas.
I sent my brother Allen a postcard with a picture of the Kid Thomas Band playing at Preservation Hall. I wrote on the back:
Howzit brother of mine. New Orleans is fuckin’ amazing. You must go there. I would like to live there for many a month. So much jazz and hot live bands blow one’s mind. I wish you were here. Life is so good and the days go by so fast. I can’t believe I have been here for over five months.
Love you, love you lots, your friend and sister. x
At the brightly painted backpackers I befriended a fellow South African, Stefan. He had been travelling for many years and sported a thick, bushy, blond beard. He looked very different to the wide-eyed, shy-looking Free State farm boy pictured in his tattered passport. We quickly became good friends.
We left New Orleans with Ross in a drive-away car and headed for New York. This is a very convenient way to travel. One pays a deposit and then receives a car that is needed in another city by its owner. When you deliver it safely you get your deposit back.
It was so much more fun travelling with Ross and Stefan than on some skanky bus. We’d bought a couple of bottles of poppers that we sniffed in a forest on our rambling jaunt up the coast. The poppers made me laugh uncontrollably in elongated stretches, but annoyingly left me with a horrible come-down chemical headache.
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA:
The car broke down very close to a petrol station in Washington DC, manned by a mechanic. Conveniently, just next to the mechanic’s oil-fumed workshop was an unlocked and unoccupied warehouse. Inside the expansive room were row upon row of mattresses, stacked really high. After making sure no one was there, we made ourselves at home and spent the night in our mattress motel while waiting for our drive-away car to be fixed.
Ross was one of those quiet types. I thought he was a wise guy when I had met him, but over time he’d proved himself to be very boring. I found my new South African friend way more interesting. Stefan and I stole kisses that night. It felt so exciting and naughty. I was kissing my way across America.
4
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK:
Diving through tunnels and heavy traffic, Ross, Stefan and I made our way to Long Island. After delivering the car and getting our deposit back, we caught the subway to Greenwich Village. Stefan had a South African friend there who had offered him and me a place to stay. Ross found accommodation at a motel nearby.
Stefan’s friend was a publisher who lived on 10th Street. Rich and friendly, he was happy to put us up in his apartment. Stefan and I spent that first day exploring downtown Manhattan and lunching in Central Park. On our return to the village, just before twilight, we exited the subway too early. Consulting our map, we worked out that we had to go through Washington Square to get to 10th Street.
The square was full of New Yorkers enjoying the late afternoon sun. A tall, sweat-shiny exhibitionist shimmied past me on rollerblades with snakelike ease, wearing only a skimpy red Speedo and headphones. A grungy group of hippies lounged on the grass, a cloud of marijuana smoke hovering hazely-lazily around them.
At the far end of the park were heavily made-up transvestites sitting on a bench. Colourful, dreadlocked Rastafarians with thick accents tried to sell me weed.
Then I saw him. He was a humble-looking man with a big beard and a long blue shirt. He was talking to a stylish woman with bright lipstick and earrings. The contrast between the two was marked. He was pointing to the page of a small book.
I felt drawn to him. As I approached, he asked me if I ever read the Bible. ‘Every day,’ I lied. His name was Jonathan. I had never met a Jewish Christian before. With his down-to-the-knee-and-wrist shirt, baggy, nondescript trousers and well-worn leather sandals, he looked exactly how I imagined one of Jesus’s disciples would have looked. We exchanged a few more words and then I ran on to catch up to Stefan.
Returning