In 1979 I moved down to Monterey to go to school at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC). When I think back on it now, my decision to move to Monterey was probably ill-advised. Many of my life decisions have been ill-advised.
The idea was first implanted in my head by my high school friend Jim. His sister had lived in Monterey and had gone to MPC. I found Jim's sister attractive and thought maybe there were more like her down there. (Odd logic, I know, but I was 19.)
I also remembered taking a trip to Monterey with my family when I was a kid. It was during the summer and it was particularly warm on the days we were there. I remembered making sand castles on the little beach by Lovers' Point. I remembered the white sand beach at Carmel. It was a place of great beauty.
Then there was the Monterey Jazz Festival. I love jazz. I loved it when I was 19 and I love it now. In high school I listened to Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, and the Stan Kenton band. I'd read about how all these guys (cats) had played at Monterey. Monterey, and Newport on the east coast, were meccas for jazz.
So there I was in Monterey. I had moved down in August and when September rolled around it was time for the jazz festival. Another old high school friend of mine, Mark, who was going to Berkeley, came down to go with me.
Mark came down on a Friday afternoon. The immediate thing to do when he arrived was to get high. Marijuana and booze were the drugs of choice. The marijuana back then wasn't as strong as it is today, so you had to keep smoking to maintain a buzz.
After driving around Monterey, checking out MPC and the beaches at Asilomar and Carmel, we decided to drive down to Big Sur.
Even though I was still new to the area, I had discovered Big Sur a couple of weeks earlier when one of my new classmates at MPC coaxed me to drive down to the River Inn with him to check out Jake Stock and the Abalone Stompers. I found out then that it was easy for under-aged guys to get a drink there.
Even though I was only 19, I usually didn't have much of a problem getting served alcohol. I had a fairly thick mustache. I also had the faint beginnings of a bald patch on the back of my head -- a great source of insecurity for me, but it did allow me to get a beer pretty much everywhere I went. My friend Mark, on the other hand, looked about 16. But I figured if there was a place where he wouldn't get carded, it was the River Inn.
By the time we got to Big Sur it was getting late. Probably around 10:00 or so. Jake's band wasn't playing. They usually only played Sunday afternoons. Rather, there was a trio comprised of bass, guitar, and drums. The bass player impressed me in that he was missing a finger from his left hand, but he still swung like hell.
I was right about the River Inn. Mark was able to order drinks with no problem.
After a while, we decided we were hungry. The kitchen must have been closed because we ended up going over to this little store across the parking lot to get some chips and shit for the drive back up.
As we were coming out the door, there was this dude about our age sitting on the steps. He saw us smoking and asked if he could bum a cigarette. He introduced himself as Eric.
We ended up talking to the guy and found out that he lived around there, down the road a bit at this place called Eselen. He asked if we'd heard of it. We hadn't. He then asked us if we could give him a ride.
As I navigated the turns on Highway One, Eric explained to us that his dad was therapist at this retreat center. We asked about the therapy but he was closed mouthed about it all. "It's kind of hard to explain," he said. Maybe he really didn't know what his dad did.
He told us that Eselen was famous for its sulfur hot springs -- that the hot water came right out of the sides of the cliff and that they had built these baths to capture it. "Far out," I thought.
When we got down there, we had to pass this funny little guard shack. Some spaced-out woman recognized Eric and waved us through. Eric explained to us that we were there during non-public hours, but because he lived there, it wasn't a problem. He asked us if we wanted to check out the place. We parked and got out of the car. By then it was getting close to midnight. It was a perfect night. The moon was out and was shining on the surface of a very calm Pacific Ocean.
"The baths are this way," he said. We walked down a short path to the back of this building, went down a few steps, through an open doorway, and ended up in this dressing room that reminded me a little of a pool house.
"You can put your clothes in one of these baskets," Eric said, as he held up something that looked like a shopping basket.
Up until then I wasn't sure whether we were gonna actually go in the baths, but since we were there, why not?
After we undressed, we headed through this other doorway and down another, longer, steeper, darker, flight of stairs. At the bottom we came out onto this landing built on a cliff over the Pacific. I could hear the sound of the surf below. Only the dim yellow light shone down from the room at the top of the stairs, all other light came from the moon and stars.
The smell of the sulfur from the baths was overwhelming. There were two large baths made of concrete. They were about ten by twenty feet, and about three feet high. Water ran over their sides. More steaming water was running into them form pipes protruding from the wall.
I moved to the nearest bath and stuck my foot in. The water was scalding hot and I exclaimed and immediately jerked back. I noticed a woman at the far end of the bath rising a bit out of the water.
I was taken back to realize someone was there. I thought we had the place to ourselves. She was an older woman, probably in her thirties, and having her there was awkward for me -- the naive small town boy.
"This one's not so hot," Eric called over, so I joined him and Mark in the other tub.
He was right. It wasn't so hot. I settled in and, once I became accustomed to the smell of the sulfur, all was bliss. Buzzed from the evening's smoking and imbibing, lulled by the sound of the gentle Pacific, lying naked in the planet's medicinal waters …all very good.
At one point the woman in the other tub got up. I checked her out and remember noticing how she sagged in places. She wasn't a bad looking woman but, as I said, she was old -- in her mid-thirties at least. Perhaps even 40. I thought, if she were only younger, how much more interesting the situation might be.
We must have stayed about an hour. It was hard leaving the baths, but after a while, it was time to go.
When we crept back up the stairs and entered the dressing room, I was shocked to see a group of five or six naked girls milling about. When I say girls, I mean girls as in children. These kids were probably about nine or ten.
As we were drying ourselves off, the girls came over and started chatting with us. A couple of them seemed to recognize Eric. I guess, as the daughters of "enlightened Eselen folk," these kids had no issue with the group nudity thing. The whole situation seemed very routine to them. However, I found it awkward having these little girls standing there checking me out.
Thinking back on it now, that was probably the closest thing to a Lolita experience I've ever had. It wasn't -- I mean the girls were too young, as were we, for it to be a true Lolita experience. At the time, the perversity that comes with age had not yet twisted my mind enough to take me there. But I remember looking back on the experience later and thinking, if those girls had only been two or three years older, it could have gotten real interesting. And much later, as a parent, I remember wondering what those damned Eselen hippies were thinking, letting their daughters run around like that in the middle of the night!
Mark and I drove back up the coast pretty much in silence. We were both pretty burnt. We smoked cigarettes and pondered the day ahead. Tomorrow was the jazz festival.
