the OUTSIDE WORLD

On the Ranch, we were well trained to consider ourselves special and chosen. We referred to non-sannyasins with disdain and were simultaneously fearful and curious about the Outside World. Certain things from the Outside World were coveted: candy, pocket video games, meat, the color blue. Others were terrifying: bomb threats, nasty flyers constantly being dropped from airplanes to litter the Ranch, hateful looks and comments about our red clothes and malas.

At 8, I usually wanted to leave and get the candy and movies from the Outside World. I missed my mom, who lived in Berkeley, then Maui, then Laguna Beach, then Venice CA. I visited her first in Berkeley, where she lived with Akul and a group of other sannyasins. She drove a tiny beat-up Datsun and was cleaning houses I think. I was going to visit her for one week. Before I left, I was told that you weren't allowed to swear in the Outside World, it just wasn't accepted the way it was at the Ranch. I decided that I would have to get the swearing out of my system.

I rode a bus to California, all the while gazing out the window first at the high desert, then smalltown America, then cityscapes. I chanted to myself "shit. fuck. piss. goddamnit." If i could get it all out of my system before my arrival there, I wouldn't have to curse any more. The Dalles: Motherfucker. Portland: Shitkicker. Eureka: Tits. And so forth. It didn't work.

I enjoyed my time in Berkeley. My mom spoiled me for a week. Took me out to dinner and let me eat chicken, bought me candy and a new t-shirt with a batik dinosaur on it, got me a new book for the ride home and sent me on my way. The next time I visited her was later that same year on Maui.

I went for a month and she greeted me at the airport with a kiss and a candy lei. On that trip, I was reading "Forever" by Judy Blume. It was one of Judy Blume's forays into writing for adults, or at least older teens and it had a racy sex scene in it that I read over and over again. I didn't want anyone on the plane to know I was reading such a taboo novel, so I actually hid my teeny-bopper book behind the spine of a comic book.

My time in Hawaii was a challenge for my mom and me. I was in between being a boy and being a woman - I still dressed and looked like a boy, but I was just beginning to get interested and excited by sex. I read a lot of Judy Blume and was beginning to get crushes on boys. At the same time, I refused to wear a girl's bathing suit at the beach in Hawaii. We had an enormous fight over that one. I won. I wore trunks and read Judy Blume on the beach. Go figure.

My mom and I spent a lot of time at the beach. She bought me a boogie board which i used to scrape myself silly under the surf. She taught me to play solitaire and peeled my back after i got my first nasty sunburn. I spent a month living with and fighting with her and continuing to despise Akul. I also learned about tsunamis and combined that with my already disturbing preoccupation with death. To this day, I have nightmares about oncoming tidal waves.

After all the chicken and candy I could stand, I couldn't wait to get back to Sarv and the Ranch. I wouldn't visit my mom again until I was nine and would go live with her in Venice.