J'Nelle delivered our first son in October, 1969, and we would soon leave Malibu in search of a place that was our own, without the haunts of Beverly. Somewhere in the back of my mind I worried about my womanizing. I seemed programmed to be faithful to my meandering lusts rather than to any particular woman. And I knew I'd driven Beverly away—my orphan's complex had me believing any she would dump me so I had subtlely tuned out on her. I figured I might as well get used to relationships that lasted four years or less.
        And now here I was moving again, when I'd told Herb Alexander Malibu was to be my hometown. But what did that matter when I could not locate Herb?
        By this time, too, I'd learned that writers were abused in the movie industry. You need two things to make a movie: a script and money. But everyone seemed to bend over for the money and even the authors of original screenplays didn't get chairs when watching the shooting of their scripts. Books were usually viewed as being valuable only as potential movies. Hollywood was full of brainy, talented people who were up against some of the most mendacious knuckleheads God ever made, called “the suits,” who held the power of life or death over the talented. I had decided to avoid the Hollywood scene by writing novels and selling movie rights. And so J'Nelle and I would venture forth into the bigger world in search of a place that would be ours, only ours.
        While we were packing up and preparing to store the furniture, a commune of acid proselytizers arrived from Berkeley and Hunter Thompson made a dramatic entrance.
        I'd gone to Berkeley about a month previous to interview a couple regarding the Movement. They told me about this commune and asked if I'd like to see it. They took me to a three-story house full of students. The head guy—I'll call him Jack—asked, “Are you with us?” When I opened my mouth to ask the logical question, he popped a tab of LDS onto my tongue and I was, thereafter, very much with them indeed. Except that I hadn't planned on doing LSD with a crowd of strangers, and my two friends had departed. About halfway through this sojourn, I felt gripped by loneliness in this crowd and decided to drive home. I went outside and got behind the wheel of my then-new Mercedes two-seater and was quickly corralled by Jack, who gently persuaded me that it was not a good idea to drive back to Malibu stoned on acid. Instead, he put me behind the wheel of a VW bus full of hippie-painted acidhead students and we drove up into the Berkeley hills so we could eat apples and watch the sun rise. The bus's clutch slipped so badly in high gear that it threatened to roll backwards; I had to gently coax it uphill in low gear. But at least driving the bus gave me a role to play, so I wasn't so lonely in this happy acid-dosed student crowd.
        Jack and the commune felt they owed me a really good trip, so they drove down to Malibu and arrived as I was moving furniture into a rented truck to be put into storage until J'Nelle and I found a new place to live. They arrived late in the day so we dropped early the next morning, and I got them working with me, which helped get the move done. I abhorred the idea of hiring maids or cooks or gardeners or furniture movers; it was an old habit to do such things myself, or with the help of friends.

                                22