riggy

i spent the spring and summer of 1971 on Martha's Vineyard, a year before band after band took over my life. 1971 was the tail end of all the summers of love of which i'd believed in like a hippie evangelical, mucho acid consumed. in fact on my very first 'on island' landing i was ripped. i'd hitched down route 3 with Pat and Sam. we got our last ride on a 16 wheeler, got off the ferry and got a ride to Oak Bluffs which, under the influence or not, looked like the Shire. the gingerbread cottages, undulating in the LSD air, had to have been built by Hobbits. we were looking for Toby. he'd been in a motorcycle accident and was hospitalized. turns out his room mate was a lesbian pilot, one of seven from an all-lesbian-pilot cove. (no kidding - they flew the island in v-formations.) she offered him a house on a field in Menemsha if he'd shingle the roof. she said he could live there until the job was done. we squatters took her at her word. in less than a week five of us moved in. we brought a100 lb bag of brown rice, kerosene lamps, sleeping bags and an upright piano that we liberated from a church. we set it up in the kitchen, banging away as Michelle cooked awesome vegetarian dinners by candle light. it was a circus with nudity, pot, booze and LSD taking center ring. this was gonna be our fucking summer of love, brakes off. Michelle painted a white bone on a slab of driftwood to mark the unmarked dirt road that led up to the house. we got day jobs as a painters, working for a Portuguese who mocked our beards ('why grow on your chin what grows wild around your asshole?') but who went easy on us and our faux Wavy Gravy lifestyle. we painted rich people's houses, high on ladders and drugs and listened to Joni Mitchell and Carol King on a paint spattered boom box. after work we'd gas up for the ride home and hit the booze and the drugs. the kid who pumped gas in town reminded me of a Wyeth painting, the one with the boy with that huge listening ear. he was from Indiana, a farm boy with yellow hair and overalls. he drove out to the 'farm' on a Vespa for one of our perpetual day/night parties. he vomited in the front seat of a truck when i went down on him and bolted. i never went back for gas and i never saw him again. it was that kind of summer. on weekends we'd drive to a fresh water pond, skinny dip, walk a sandy path from pond to ocean, swim in salt water where pebbles, shells and rocks looked like the crown jewels and stumble back, rinsing off in the pond, drive home, eat, drink and renew the cycle all over again. we were unstoppable, happy and wild on life. one clear as a bell afternoon i dropped, hit the pond, slipped on a pair of fluorescent flippers, slid into the cool water and pumped the circumference at what felt like 90 mph. round and round and round i swam on my back, the convex sky rising above me in fish-eye distortion. back by the beach i hear my dad yelling: 'Riggy! Riggy!' (how the fuck did he get here? how did he find me?). with my sister's high school friend standing beside him he stood at the top of the incline, a styrofoam carry-all crammed with ice, cups, vodka and tonic in one unsteady grip. he'd been dipping into this all afternoon while they hitched and drank their way around the island and now, lo and behold, here he was, SURPISE! he ripped off his shorts and plunged naked down the slope and into the water where my incredibly high, skinny dipping friends were treading water and grinning hard-wired, Captain Beefheart - 'my smile is stuck, i can't go back to my frown land' ear-to-ear grins. he seemed overly real. he stayed a few nights at the farm, charming my hippie room mates and leering at the broads. he walked in on me one night as i was going down on some guy in my bedroom, flailing about in the kerosene light. he ducked back out the door without a word. i shrugged and resumed. at dawn he was spotted hugging his knees on a rock in the surrounding field cooing 'wiporwil...wiporwil' as if the bird might land on his shoulder. my dad let his freak flag fly.