Leaving Lotus Land

...Leaving Lotus Land A Walk on the West Side: California on the Brink Bv Herbert Gold Arbor 236 pp $12 95 Reviewed by Walter Goodman For a couple of decades Herb Gold, out of Ohio via New York City, has been wrestling with Califorrua Drawn there by sun, sky and the promise of sin that shimmered over San Francisco 20 years ago, Gold, twice divorced, now finds himself a searcher after the elusive satisfactions of good old monogamy The experiments of the '60s that took root in the welcoming Western soil have produced outlandish growths Gold looks at the flora of liberation, communion, fulfillment, etc with the eye of the middle-aged expatriate grown tired and a bit scared of a dreamland that has become a nightmare No, he doesn't kid himself about going home again, but there is no repose for him among the lotuses He just isn't cracked enough or crooked enough to play forever at swingalong Also, he's too smart Not all the pieces in this collection, padded with items from the old scratch pad, are as good as Gold at his best But even the softer items have bite The anthropological asides about the denizens of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palm Springs, and Big Sur produce a generous complement of zippy lines "Hey mister," implores the bum in West-wood, "gimme a quarter for a frozen yogurt " In Big Sur these days, we learn," space mates" tend to replace spouses, "and there is never a fight, although sometimes an interpersonal conflict will break out " We are let in on the rules of open marriage No criticisms of one's real spouse or of anyone's sexual performance, and "you must be friendly, kind, reserved, though erotically inventive and scrubbed in body " Gold tells us of the TV movie-of-the-week producer who calls a filmmaker and anthropologist after seeing their documentary on a poverty-stricken neighborhood of old Jews "Will you take a meet''" he asks "The producer tells them he sees magic, he teels it, he can almost taste it The documentary is wonderful He smells audience, humanity, ratings Who could want more'' There is only one problem 'Do these people have to be Jewish'''" And who can go altoget her w rong writing about a citv, otherwise known as Halloween-bv-the-bay, wheretheshernt obliginglv brings in a homosexual minister to serve like-minded occupants of the county j ail But the major engagement of this book, the main bout, is between Gold, the hyped up, laid back resident outsider, participant-observer, and those of his fellow Cahformans who are endlessly breaking out, dropping out, hanging out, acting out, or whatever is in these days Life on the Pacific is like a television commercial "Permanent youth, perpetual growth, stalwart adventures, erotic play are long-term possibilities brought to us all with the help of sport, vitamins, hair care and regular exercise " Gold grapples with some very peculiar people who, the point is, are not all that peculiar m that place and this time The lovely young dancer who aborts the pregnancy caused by one or another of three recent acquaintances because "I'm looking for some better genes for the father of my child " The six women and one man arrested for running a brothel, who insist that they are therapists performing a psycho-medical service," helping out clients with premature ejaculation problems, sadism problems, water sports problems, exhibitionism and voyeurism problems The fellow doing a book on Men's Liberation who is obsessed with the question of whether Gold kisses his men friends on the lips The blind date who in a former incarnation as a man was the "wife" of the male friend of Gold who arranged the date His subjects, thoroughly involved with themselves, tend to talk like this "My men's group thinks I'm still performance-oriented I'm success-hungry I can't relax, it's my hang-up from my parents " The reporting is done more in anguish than in anger An example is the sad little vignette about Gold's friendly neighbor Virgil, who is Group Chairman of the Jungian Men's Liberation Study Group, "first among equals in a problem-solving committee inspired by the worker's communes of Chinese factories,' Founding Director of the Gay Moralist's Union, Director of theCam-pus Venereal Disease Holistic Club, and librarian for the Congregationalists for Victory Over Sexism Summer Seminars But some of the fools he meets, like the "Do you kiss them on the hps9" man, Gold will not suffer "The soldier of Androgyny, in his Indian shirt of blue and white gauze, was preaching a gospel of loving everyone, man and woman, with the same kisses, hugs, strok-mgs, googoo murmurs, baby vocabulary Is it comfort9 Is it courtship9 Is it consolation for the human destiny9 No, for him it all came down to a challenge If you're not an ideologically pure, indiscriminately erotic, big-trme universal lover, you're a reactionary " These pieces are full of sharp details and good jokes—only Gold isn't laughing He is at bay on the bay, staving off a society gone amok, where "most marriages seem to be in escrow, most relationships in a state of sustained title search," where "every open marriage I know has dissolved in horrific recriminations " It is not always possible out West to tell the therapists from the pan-derers, the gurus from the con artists, the perpetual seekers from the lunatics and nitwits All those human potential-lsts, chasing their karmas, riding with the flow, on "a nomadic quest forEsa-len, Sandstone, Anca, est, brotherhood, sisterhood, selfhood " Gold sees the singles bars, the polyfidehty groups, the constant quest for an "other," as "a preoccupation comparable to the classic pains of the metaphysically lost " He identifies himself repeatedly as the outsider, Jewish, gray bearded, burdened by the past, a Jeremiah of the drive-ins How can he connect, and keep on endlessly connecting9 Herb Gold, "scarred veteran of marital wars," places his own disappointments within the prevailing madness and suggests wistfully that raising children really does require two people in the house "Wasn't marriage made to surround kids with care9" he asks like some middle American moral majon-tanan A courageous question in his neighborhood, a cry from the heart of a freeway father Maybe the Jewish kid from the East really is ready to go home...