CHAPTER TEN

MILA KINSLOW

(Excerpted from interview #MC1803/D)

Sweet Pete had a beater of a car and a little bread he’d set aside from playing with the band, so we took our time driving up the coast. We celebrated my eighteenth birthday at a seafood restaurant outside of Brookings, Oregon, and took a walk after dinner by the bay. We watched seagulls fuss over fish scraps that had been washed from the boat decks, and the otters and seals as they played inside the breakwater, the whole place smelling like decaying seaweed and old fish.

I knew that Pete had a thing for me that went all the way back to when we’d first met at the Whisky. But, like I told you before, he was always a gentleman, and set his feelings aside the whole time I was with Jack McCall.

Pete and I made love for the first time that night, on a squeaky spring mattress in a motel room with a long view down the coastline. Afterward we stood outside on the balcony in the cool wind, lit up a J, and watched the lights of the night fishermen move along the horizon. Earlier that day, I had picked up an inexpensive souvenir from one of the tourist shops we’d visited. It was a medal with the image of Saint Christopher sealed beneath a layer of blue enamel, hanging from a chain just like the pull-cord on a bedside lamp. That night on the balcony, after we’d made love, I slipped it from around my neck and gave it to Sweet Pete.

That drive was so peaceful I don’t think either one of us wanted it to come to an end, but it did, and two days later we finally located the tiny turnoff that led off the paved road to the Rainbow Ranch. At first we thought we’d taken a wrong turn. Branches of wild berry bushes scratched against both sides of the car as we drove through the tall timber, but the road was so narrow we couldn’t turn around even if we wanted to. It seemed like it took half an hour to break into the open, and get our first peek at the place.

I don’t think that either of us really knew what to expect, and I admit to being a little bit freaked out as we drove past the gates. But the first person to greet us was a sweet little slip of a thing with big doe eyes and chestnut-colored hair that the sun had turned to gold down at the ends. The minute she spoke I could tell she was a Southern girl like me, except she had a Coppertone tan and the healthy orthodontics of someone whose daddy had money. She told us she’d been there six months. Her name had been CeCe—short for Celeste—when she first arrived, but the Deva had rechristened her “Aurora.” Pete and me had no idea what a Deva was, but I knew we would figure it out.

The air smelled like pine trees and reminded me of the hill country back home, and I felt a stab of sadness in my stomach. I didn’t have the time to think about it too long, though, because Aurora took hold of Sweet Pete and me just then, and practically skipped up the stairs to the house behind where we had parked.

She tugged us inside and introduced us to this burly guy with the longest, blackest hair I had ever seen on a man, and a beard that crawled all the way up past his cheekbones, almost to his eyes. He stared at us and didn’t speak for so long that I thought something was wrong with him, but then he reached out and took one of my hands inside both of his and he smiled like he’d been expecting us all along.

Both me and Pete took to the guy right away, but you could tell there was something about him that he held back for himself, like a man who was hiding, but hiding right out in the open—a combination of a big friendly bear and a mountain man who had just wandered out of the wild. I don’t know, cause it’s hard to explain, but one part of you wanted to give yourself over to him, while another part wanted to run.

There was a circle of big army surplus tents where everybody crashed. There were probably nine or ten of them scattered around, and you just found a place inside one where you felt good and made up a soft mat on the floor for yourself. Outside, in the center of the tent village, was a huge fire pit that was encircled by stones. At night after supper, everyone gathered around it and sang songs, or smoked weed, and the Deva would assign chores for the following day.

The first few nights were strange, and I had a hard time falling asleep. I felt out of place, lonely, and homesick for Sandi and our friends in LA. Sweet Pete would hold me close to him, but I could not accustom myself to the sounds and the smells of lovemaking and bodily functions inside a tent we shared with so many strangers. I was embarrassed and conflicted, kind of mad at myself for the way that I felt. I had wanted to come here because I craved something that seemed like a family, which was weird because when I’d actually had one, I didn’t think I had wanted or needed it at all. But, by the end of the first cycle—we did not use conventional calendars at Rainbow Ranch, we marked time by the phases of the moon—I felt like I finally fit in somewhere.

There was a ceremony of sorts that marked the occasion, at the campfire, where Sweet Pete and I were officially welcomed into the community. Nobody called it a “commune”; it was a “community,” because it’s not like we sat around talking about Chairman Mao or anything. It was about sharing, and living, and love. You contributed what you had and what you were good at, and shared in the fruits of what others did real well. Sweet Pete gave up his car for the use of the community, and I gave up most of the clothes I had packed inside the suitcase I’d carried with me since I split Tennessee. I even handed over that beat-up old American Tourister too.

As Deva says, “Who owns the daisy? Who owns the thistle?”

Thing is, we all felt like we were part of some beautiful outdoor palace, where all of us were royalty, but there was not a crown in sight.

I made friends with the girls I did chores with; the men and the women were separated for these. The men hunted for game or butchered the livestock, worked in the woods, or at building or repairing whatever was broken. We had a huge grove of old pines that they sawed down by hand, then cut up the logs for firewood with gas-fueled log splitters. There were a couple of guys who were really good with mechanical things who worked inside a big metal building on the far side of the forest where the generators and cars and motorcycles were stored. They didn’t hang out with the rest of us too much, which was okay, cause both of them gave me the creeps, and I didn’t want them even thinking about putting their hands on me.

The women tended the fruit trees and vegetable gardens, operated the record store and the sandwich shop in town, and took care of all the food preparation for the whole Rainbow Ranch community. Meal times were called by the ringing of an iron bell from the terrace of Deva Ravi’s house. We took turns doing the cooking or cleaning up afterward, and there was always someone playing music of some kind. Those were the times I liked best because it gave us the chance to get to know one another, and to talk about where we were on our individual paths. Often the conversations would drift to the messages that Deva would share with us about the mystical threads of the Universal Mind.

Some of the other girls at the ranch had been runaways, angry at their parents, and angry at the world. They talked about parochial schools, having to dress exactly like everyone else, and being hovered over and hounded by gray-faced women wearing long, scary, black outfits. Their stories sounded sad to me, and I was grateful that we didn’t have those kinds of schools where I came from. Of course, we also talked about sex.

It wasn’t the feminist woman, hear-me-roar kind of thing that was popular at the time. We loved being female and being appreciated for what we were. It was empowering to have control over what we all knew men wanted. It’s primal, you know? You can’t pass rules or laws to make that go away. It wasn’t about bra burning or marching or politics, either, it was all about pure freedom for us. The whole women’s lib deal just seemed like some other old ladies’ club. If you wanted to stay home and cook and do dishes and raise kids, that was cool. I can dig that. We figured if that’s what you want to do, then do it. Bliss out on your own trip. It was impossible to imagine doing something you didn’t want to do. But the whole sex thing is a natural deal. I mean, it would be a total drag to eat the same food for every meal, right?

One afternoon, I was called up to the main house for an aura check with Deva Ravi. It was the most beautiful afternoon of my life.

I had seen the effects that hard drugs had on people, had seen it up close with Jack McCall. It had never been my bag, so I stuck with pot, or maybe a hit of acid every once in a while. Truth is, I never dug acid too much; I’ve got strange enough thoughts in my head without adding chemicals, and I didn’t need spiders or rats crawling under my skin, or to see someone’s face melting off their skull.

Anyway, that afternoon was like magic.

Deva Ravi made a strong, bitter tea that he poured from a little Chinese pot, and we shared it together, alone in the Spirit Room, surrounded by the sweet fragrance of incense. It was what I imagined it would smell like up in heaven. He spoke to me of the universe and its plan for me, and that was the day that he renamed me ‘Dawn,’ because he said I had brought a new light, a new day, into the community.

My body began to feel as though it could no longer contain me, and reality and dreamtime moved together as one, showing me things that might or might not be true. I even thought I saw into the soul of the Deva, past that strange thing that always seemed present in him. I saw that he was a duality, both man and spirit, and that it was the part that was a man who concealed or was eclipsed; that he enjoyed hiding right there in plain sight.

I don’t know for how long, or how many times we made love together. After a while it was as though we could do it without even touching.

We thought of you all—the squares, I mean—as poor suckers who were just plodding through life to survive. I mean, to us, you all seemed like you were as afraid of living as you were of dying. And we thought we had a handle on all of it, man. It sounds arrogant or conceited now, but we had bought all the way in. There was no political or economic hustle at the Rainbow. We meant no harm to anyone, even though it was clear that most of the straights in town thought we were freaks, and barely considered us human. But for us, it was all about love and sharing and freedom and light.

For a while anyway.