FREE LOVE
Sexual freedom
Related Terms: Courtship, Ethics, Love, Marriage

BATHHOUSE INTELLIGENTSIA
(Confessions)
by Daniel Francis Eggink


Painting byMichael Bowen

The main subjects that dominated the intellectual Beat Scene when I entered into it in December of 1957 were Poetry, Jazz, Free Love, Zen, and Art. In June of 1958 I first encountered all these elements in one place while sitting in a communal hot tub in the cliffside bathhouse of the Big Sur Hot Springs, since called, "Esalen".

The art form that was dominating the conversation was "The Happening" and sitting in the tub with me was the man who was directing the San Francisco Happening, 6' 7" Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, proprietor of a multi-storied warehouse on San Francisco's lower Pacific Street called ,"The Party Pad". Eric had a partner, Enrico Banduci, and they owned a popular folk music club called, the "Hungry Eye", featuring, Josh White, Odetta and "The Kingston Trio". Eric took me to the club to see the eye opening paintings of Michael Bowen. Michael's art was startling but it was eclipsed by his reputation as a free lover because of his well publicized romance with the wife of movie star John Carradine and the resulting love child also called Michael Bowen.


 September 1957

I was at that time a private in the U.S. Army going through advanced basic training at Fort Ord, California, but because of going through my first 8 weeks of basic training with two hip intellectuals from New York City and being turned on by them to Jack Karouac's book, "On the Road", I knew I had to quickly get out of the Army and on the road. Inconveniently, after being seriously drunk on "Thunderbird Wine" in February of 1958, I was left with a compound fracture of the left  femur, a plaster cast extending from the hip to the ankle and a bed in the Fort Ord hospital for three months.


 April 1958

 After a couple of weeks I could walk around but not bend my leg because of the cast. A therapist took some of us to a play at the Carmel Forest Theatre to see Beckett's, "Waiting for Gadot". I met the director, Richard Bailey, and was recruited to play the part of brother Ladvinu, Joan of Arc's Confessor, in "The Lark".  A roleI could play because the black robe of a priest covered my stiff leg and cast. The part of the inquisitor was played by John "Bunny" Breckenridge, heir to the Sharon Estate, an early California fortune, and a notorious San Francisco "queen". John took a liking to myself and Kay Olay, a pixie like hip chick from New York, and invited us to his house on the bluff overlooking the south side of the Carmel River mouth. It was a modern Spanish style bungalow of tastful understated elegance. There he entertained us with grace and humour as he recounted antidotes from his outrageous past. On the Walls of his spacious living room were hundreds of gold framed photographs of John, arm in arm with such celebraties as Princess Margaret, Noel Coward, J. Edgar Hoover, Elvis Presley, Colonel Parker, Ed Sullivan and his chief talent scout, Jack Babs. High on the list of subjects was free love. John seemed to know the complete history of gay and bi-sexualality  explaining that gay came from Ganymede and spun a tale that stretched from ancient Greece to Oscar Wilde then a ramble through some Walt Whitman and on to John's Hollywood appearance in a grade B motion picture called, "Grave Robbers from Outer Space." He had a man living with him but we did not know if he was John's lover or butler and it was none of our business. John gave us a list of well-known Hollywood stars who were gay but I, being a middle class kid from Willow Glen High in San Jose, had a difficult time believing my Hollywood icons were "queer". Kay, on the other hand, was hip, from New York and married to leftist writer Lional Olay so she was able to match John's stories with first hand experiences of her own. I listened and tried to understand.

A Few months later after my cast was removed John loaned me his baby blue Thunderbird and Kay and I drove down to Big Sur and up to Partington Ridge, where she introduced me to Henry Miller and his wife, Eve. I liked them though I had no idea why Kay thought he was such a great man since I had not yet read any of his writing. I mentioned to Henry that I had recently read Karouac's "On the Road" and Henry said he had just read Karouac's newest book, "Dharma Bums" and loved it. He said the people the book was about often came up the road looking for him. Henry then went on to talk about his most recent book, " Big Sur and The Oranges of Heronymus Bosch" and the trouble his new publisher Ferlingeti was having releasing Henry's banned book, "Tropic of Cancer".

Later in the afternoon we followed Henry as he drove his old green Cadillac to the hot springs where he was to meet with Kay's husband, Lional, and another local writer, Dennis Murphy, who's first novel "Sergeant" had just been published. At the hot springs the writers held their pow-wow in the bar while Kay, Eve Miller and myself went down and bathed in the Japanese style communal hot tub. I was a bit uptight because I had never experienced nude bathing with females before and, as both women were exceptionaly attractive, every time I would attempt to get out of the tub my penis would get embarrasingly erect and I would have to drop back into the very hot water to conceal the effect. After awhile Henry and Lionel joined us and my automatic arrousal ceased.

A few weeks later I was discharged from the Fort Ord hospital and given a 2 week leave from the army, so I went up to San Francisco to hang around North Beach and maybe meet some Dharma Bums. Some time between 2 and 3 A.M. I was sitting in the "Bagle Shop" on Grant Avenue talking to a black man named Alex when a classic beat chick, dressed in black leotard and sweater sat down next to me, who looked so unhip in my military haircut, button down collar and khaki trousers. She had a very pale face framed by long straight brown hair and was wearing bold dark eyeshadow. At first she talked over me to Alex but soon she included me in the conversation. I learned her name was Patzy and she was from Berkley. On the wall opposite us was a large poster with Henry Miller's picture on it. As an effort to appear hip I said that I knew him and spent a lot of time in Big Sur. She asked me if I could introduce him to her and I said of course. She suggested we hitchhike down the next day. Then she asked me if I had a place to stay and I told her I didn't. She told me she couldn't take me to her apartment because her roomate, "Linda Lovely", was entertaining somebody. But because she was the secretary for "Big Daddy" Eric Nord, she had the keys to the "Party pad" and we could stay there for the night as it was full of mattresses and couches. Was I dreaming? I had just been picked up by an attractive beatnik and was going to spend the night with her and hitchhike together on the road to Big Sur. I had just broken out of the middleclass courtship game and was now on the free love trip.

It's important to remember that I had just come from a college prep background where the courtship pattern involved heavy petting, including oral sex, but not sexual intercourse. That was reserved for marriage if you cared for the girl. My hip army friends from New York thought that was backwards.

After 3 days in Big Sur, during which I introduced Patsy to Henry and other interesting personalities, we returned to San Francisco and went straight to the Telegraph Hill apartment her boss Eric shared with his partner Enrico Banduci. Patsy introduced me as her new "old man" a statement that struck me as funny since she was 8 years older than myself. That night Eric showed me Michael Bowen's paintings for the first time. The next day Patsy, Eric and I led a caravan of cars containing the black congo drummers from the Party Pad back to Big Sur for drumming sessions on the terrace of Nepenthe Restaurant and beside the swimming pool at the hot springs. Marijuana was the social lubricant that facilitated our inter-racial jam sessions but created some tension with the old school bohemians who preferred the legal intoxication of alcoholic beverages. Since, I was at the time politically naive I didn't know the older bohemians were a paranoid group of liberals who had lived through the McArthy era and didn't know if they were Democrats, Socialists, Communists or Anarchists. I learned over time that the old anarchists tended to lean more toward the conservative side of the fence.


December 1964

8 years later, in 1965, I came to have a more pesonal relationship with Michael Bowen that began as he and a group of painters from Big Sur created "Mothers", San Francisco's first Psychedelic niteclub on Broadway in North Beach, financed by disc jocky Tom Donahue. Among that group was Arthur Monroe, a talented artist who I met while attending peyote meetings with the Washo and Piute Indians in Nevada two years earlier, Neal Rose and Jay Kip who I knew from my earliest days in Big Sur. Another gifted artist who attended those peyote meetings was Steve Elvin who exhibited often at the Bateman Gallery. We were a loose knit community that shared our drugs, sex partners and, often, living space.

In November of 1966, in an interview in Michael Bowen's apartment, I stated to a Time magazine reporter that San Francisco was the freest spot on earth at the time. Aids had not yet arrived on the scene and the massive amount of L.S.D. accessible to us created an ultra liberal sexual climate. L.S.D. was supposed to help us get over our ego but I found the opposite happened with frequent use and I and others began to develop very assertive personalities. The Haight Street district became a battle zone of hidden agendas. More and more heroin was available, displacing the pot, speed and L.S.D.
Meanwhile, the core of us at the San Francisco Oracle were envisioning a communal reality and seeking to raise money to buy a large piece of property and do it.

My wife Cynthia inherited $200,000 from her uncle, Don Blanding, poet laureate of Hawaii, and we intended to donate it to the Oracle project, but, drugs, theft and violence on Haight Street put an end to the Oracle so we packed up and headed east with the destination being Woodstock, New York. On the way the rear axle of our GMC carryall crystalized and the right rear wheel came off as we were passing through Hell's Gate canyon, east of Missoula Mountana. While spending a few days waiting for the vehicle to be repaired we checked out ranch property and bought 300 acres with 400 more acres of grazing leases at the end of the road on Donavan Creek one mile from where we originally broke down. It should be obvious that I was not superstitious. As a card carrying hippie I didn't believe in sin, hell or the devil. I believed in good vibrations. I mean, "if it feels good do it" kind of vibes with no limits.

Well, that didn't go over well in Montana and within one year the rich hippies from California were in jail and on the verge of bankruptcy. A jail house conversion began for me a 30 year walk by faith as a disciple of Jesus Christ, which I am still on.

Today, through the use of the internet, I am re-establishing relationships with old artist friends, such as Michael Bowen, but on a new foundation based on knowledge and experience. Now, as parents and grandparents we have more to share than our bodies. We have sampled often, even gorged on the smorgesboard of life leading to many near death experiences, yet we live to share the truth of our discoveries.

40 years later


August 1998  Sisters Loree and Susan with brother Daniel Eggink at Nepenthe
Love is always free. Lust we have to pay for, usually with our life and reputation. Ask yourself, can you take the heat?

THE HORRIBLE CAFE INTERNATIONAL

link to San Francisco Oracle

Visit Nepenthe

FREE STORE

Haight Ashbury Free Press

Daniel Eggink

Woodstock Nation Foundation

ãcopyright1998 EGGINK "a family business"
The Woodstock Nation Foundation web site is generously donated by