CIELO HANGOVER

Sometimes I think that I'm on the right track
But I keep coming back to the same place

It was yet another perfect August morning in San Francisco as swarms of people hit Bolinas beach. Sitting in the back of her young lover's beat up looking VW camper van, Patricia, recovering from a late night beach party that included a seance with dead soldiers in Vietnam, was shocked to hear the sudden radio newsflash about her ex-husband Mike Angelo's accidental shooting of movie star Jack Reynolds. The contrast between the turquoise perfection of the scenery in front of her eyes and the horror of hearing the awful news in her ears created a disturbing and unsettling contrast. Although she was no direct way complicit in the crime, she couldn't help thinking the whole disastrous incident might have been avoided if she hadn't run away with "Wave Breaker", otherwise known as Bobby Blue. But she soon snapped herself out of that train of thought knowing that Mike had always managed to keep his work life separate to his personal life. At least up until now.

"What's the matter? You look down." Bobby asked her.

"Yeah. I am down. My ex-husband just shot the biggest movie star in Hollywood."

"Paul Newman?"

Patricia rested her brow on two outstretched fingers of her right hand.

"No. Jack Reynolds."

"Wow. That's heavy man. Like really, really fucking heavy."

The young, sandy haired surfer had an uncanny ability to state the obvious in times of tremendous stress.

"Yeah. It's heavy alright."

"How do you know it was an accident, though?"

"Because Mike wouldn't kill anyone intentionally."

Bobby looked relieved hearing her say that, fearing in his own paranoid head that Mike might be seeking to avenge his running away with his ex-wife.

"Look, Bobby. I really don't want to talk about it right now. Just let me get my head round everything would you?"

Bobby knew when to give Patricia space to collect her thoughts. That was typically the time he would go off and ride waves. As he tied back his long, blonde, briny scented hair with a hairband, he tried in his own inimitable way to comfort his lady, who he also called "mother", as he could see she was in a state of genuine distress.

"Sometimes, when I'm out there skimming the surface of the ocean with the sun on my back, I have this sense that I don't exist as Bobby anymore and all this reality we all talk about is just an illusion. I don't know, maybe that might help give you some perspective right now?"

"Not really, hon. Though if reality is an illusion, maybe love is too," Patricia further added to his hippy musings, not sure if she intended that to mean the love she had for the young surfer or for her ex-husband.

Bobby shrugged, feeling slighted by her counter to his attempt at helping her.

"Maybe."

He blew her a kiss and headed off toward the shore with all the excitement of a young boy experiencing his first ever day at the beach.

Watching Bobby paddling on his board far out to sea, looking like a faraway beetle with his arms like insect legs ploughing through the water, Patricia tried to process the news of the shooting as she walked barefoot from the van in search of a shower facility close by.

She wondered if she should call Mike and at least check he was okay, but then quickly cancelled that thought. It was too soon to get involved in such a volaitile situation when they hadn't spoken for months. The last time was truly painful. It was the only time since she'd walked out on him that she had admitted that she did still truly love him but that it wasn't enough to keep their marriage alive.

Then again, she wondered to herself, perhaps the LAPD would contact her anyway? Wouldn't they need her testimony? Her mind was all too busy right now with the chaos of the situation that had just been reported.

Taking a shower in a local recreation center close to the beach, Patricia couldn't help but attempt to visualise the shooting in her mind in the most extreme way. Although the peace and love movement was perpetually asserting itself, the threat and enactment of violence was becoming increasingly prevalent. It was an era of both daisies and nuclear bombs. As the hot water cascaded above and all around her, she felt strangely numb to everything happening in her life right now as if she was suspended in a bad dream.

Everything she'd embraced with Bobby Blue was in direct contrast with everything she'd rejected about Mike Angelo. Out with the old, in with the new. Mike's curmdgeonly attitude toward the exciting new counter culture of the 60's had aged him in her mind and had turned her off him as a man. She didn't want to be looking at this much needed cultural revolution from a sun lounger at the beach club with his leather skinned friends. She wanted to be amongst it. Or at least she thought she did.

In the time she'd left her old life, she'd felt as if she was re-enacting some part of her long forgotten youth, but now with news of what had happened in Benedict Canyon she felt as if she should make some effort to reconnect with Mike.

After her shower, she had that gnawing feeling in her stomach that she had no choice but to face up to reality. It felt to Patricia as if she was being called home for dinner after playing all day with friends in the park. Perhaps her affair with Bobby was really just an affair with an idea of the 60's and what it could be at its best. But even she knew deep down it wouldn't last. Dreams never do. Not even Hollywood ones. Just look at Jack Reynolds, she thought to herself.

Passing by a record store close to the beach front, she noticed in the window a sun damaged copy of The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra which had been the last record she'd bought Mike before she left him. For some reason she had a sudden great desire to hear it.

Headed into a private listening booth inside the ramshackle store, she put some headphones on and played the first track The World We Knew (Over and Over) from side one.

Over and over, I keep going over the world we knew
Once when you walked beside me
That inconceivable, that unbelievable world we knew
When we two were in love

And every bright neon sign turned into stars
And the sun and the moon seemed to be ours
Each road that we took turned into gold
But the dream was too much for you to hold

As she turned and looked out through the window of the store back toward the beach, she could see her young lover, a shadowy speck on the horizon.

Watching Bobby surfing the waves in the distance, she suddenly realised what he represented to her.

The desire to stay young forever and never grow old. He was her Peter Pan, her Never Never boy.

But then she thought, even her surfer boy would grow old one day and riding waves would be a thing of the past for him.

As Bobby felt the surge of a major swell begin to propel him forward on his board, he found himself perfectly aligned with the impressive crest which carried him for longer than any wave he'd surfed before.

He lived for this brief moment of control in a world of perpetual chaos and even when it did eventually break, he happily surrendered to the dissolving of its watery structure. Disappearing beneath the crashing wave for a moment or two, a rush of thoughts came to his young mind in a flurry before returning to the surface for breath.

A sudden feeling of loss washed over him as if he somehow sensed that she had already gone and left him. He looked back to the distant camper van where he'd left her that morning and had a spooky feeling like he knew it would now be empty and she wouldn't be there when he got back. In all their time together he wondered he if had been nothing more than a tour guide for her through his generation's crazy new world.

He climbed on top of his board and lay on his back, staring at the sky above. With the sun on his face, he accepted what he believed was his fate and relaxed in the knowledge that he would be even freer now.

He hadn't shot anyone. The worst he had done was reawaken his very own Mrs Robinson from a sexual coma. He remembered going to watch Valley of the Dolls, with her the one and only time they ever went to see a movie together and sensing how lost she seemed clutching his hand tight as if she was a little girl in a grown woman's body. He had taken acid just before they entered the Castro theatre that afternoon and subsequently spent more time watching her and her aura than he did the movie. He felt it would take a lot of healing to free her from the constraints of the world she'd grown up in.

It must be such a bummer he thought to himself, being from that uptight, conservative generation, like being forced into a strait jacket of the soul.

Bobby, on the other hand, was by all measures of these things, as free as a bird.