College and my Twenties

My college years and twenties were difficult.  The social isolation I went through during high school left me with limited social skills and no sense of connection with women.  I did poorly in college, mainly because I was depressed – which I realize now was because of my sense of helplessness socially – a sense like I was different from other people and would never be accepted.  After graduating, I looked for work, working temporary labor to support myself, found a nine-month appointment with the government working as an engineering aide, then in a government job as a scientific aide, then I developed psychosis and was hospitalized, then worked for a land survey company, then for a defense research company, and then for a prominent research institution.  I turned thirty while working at the research institution.

I went to college at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.  I started in the fall of 1969.  I majored in physics.  As I said, I did not do well at Reed.

I had been a good student in high school – graduating fifth in my class out of 166 students and getting in the mid 700’s on both the math and verbal parts of the Scholastic Aptitude Tests.  My father taught political science at Simmons College in Boston, and I was able to go to Reed tuition free on a tuition exchange program – which they offered me when they accepted me on an early decision.  I withdrew my applications to the other schools where I had applied.  I wanted to go to Reed.  And I am glad I did.

But my experience a Reed left me with a deep sense of failure – not one I got over easily.  I had already felt like a failure in the social side of my life.  

My freshman year, I lived in the dorms – as most freshmen did.  (There were not dorms enough for most of the rest of the student body.)  I took a heavy load – two science classes with labs, one music class with labs, and the required humanities class.  At one point, my glasses were broken, and I missed a week or so of science lectures before I got a new pair.  I could not see the board.  My parents sent me $100/month on which to buy my books and supplies and to pay for lunches.  They paid for a two-meal meal plan for me.  I did not have enough sense to get a job.

My roommate, Monica Mayper, was nice but we did not form a friendship.  I got involved with a fellow student, Eugene Schlossberger.  He had a girlfriend back home in New Jersey and just wanted someone to have sex with.  He moved into my dorm room and Monica moved to another room.  Eugene and I both played the recorder and we stayed together for two years – the first with sex, the second without – at my insistence.  I wonder now if he had not heard about what I now think was my reputation in Hull, since he was part of the Jewish community on the East Coast.  I think Eugene was just taking two classes – the humanities class and a philosophy class.  He wanted to be a philosophy professor. (Eugene left Reed to study at Brandeis in 1971 and finished there.  He went on to get his PhD at the University of Chicago – where my father received his PhD and where I was born – and became a philosophy professor.)    

Somehow, my academic life fell apart.  Having left the structure that my parent’s home, I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning – often missing my breakfast meal.  I think I spent a lot of time ‘playing’ with Eugene.  (That is not a euphemism for sex.)  And, since our relationship was not a romantic relationship, I was depressed that I still had not had a romance.

Feminism is inherent in me.  My grandmothers and my mother firmly believed in the rights of women.  As a person who believes in equality, I have refused to hold myself to a female standard with regard to sex.  I do not artificially refrain from sex for fear for my reputation or to bargain for something.

The summer of 1970, I worked cleaning offices in downtown Boston and then, microfilming electro-encephalograms at Massachusetts General Hospital. My sophomore year at Reed, I lived in a house with two other women, Debby Dickstein and Margie Goldwater.  Eugene found a room in a house east of campus.  In the winter, I went to Mexico with another woman – Hope Yandel – during Reed’s January free study month.  We drove to a beach in Mazatlan and slept there.  There were lots of freaks there.  Hope’s Volkswagen was broken in to the first night and my suitcase was stolen.  We stayed in a hotel in the town after that.

There was a lot of drug use on the beach.  During my freshman year, Eugene had bought or got a joint and we smoked it.  That was the first time I used any drugs.  The marijuana did not affect me much, but I did think of my mother’s mother and cried a little.  My experience with marijuana is that the drug puts me in touch with my feelings – which nothing else does – and I have been through years of therapy.  (I have my North Node in Pisces in the 12th house – both associated with drug use.  The North Node is considered positive in western astrology.)  The next time I used drugs was in Mexico, that January of 1971. 

There was a place near Mazatlan called San Blas.  The town was reputed to be a place where Federales attacked American pot smokers.  I suspect now that the trip to Mexico was put together to gather evidence on what the Federales were doing.  I might have been ‘chosen’ for the trip because I spoke Spanish with less of an accent than the average American – not that I spoke more than a smattering of Spanish.  At the time, I was just there.  

We, along with some others went to San Blas.  We smoked dope.  The Federales showed up and pistol whipped two of the men, trying to get them to give up the dope.  The rest of us were sitting around watching.  After awhile I said something in Spanish to the Federales.  I think they stopped then.  Maybe my Mexico, D.F., accent scared them.

This was in the evening.  That night the whole of us rented a large room in a hotel and – there were about ten of us – slept the night there.  The Federales had told us to leave Mexico.  We went on to Puerta Vallarta and spent the next night on the beach there.  Overnight, my money and traveller checks were stolen out of my purse.  So, there I was with just the clothes on my back and no money.

I called my parents and they said they would send some money to me.  I was sleeping with a guy I met at the beach, Michael Keiffer.  We were not having sex because Michael did not want to.  Hope and her sister were going on to Acapulco and Michael was going with the two men who were pistol whipped – whose names I have forgotten – to Mexico City.  I had to decide who to go with.  I went to Mexico City.  The plan was that I would meet Hope and her sister at the beach in Mazatlan on a certain day.

We spent a day or two or more at a campsite somewhere.  The guys whose vehicle we were traveling in went to a market to buy peyote – which was legal there.  They gave me some.  Then, there was supposed to be police coming to bust us for drugs – so the men baked what they had left of the marijuana, into a cake and we all had some.  We went on to Guadalajara where the men went in to see the United States consul.  I stayed outside the room while they talked to the consul.  Then we went on to Mexico City.  After Mexico, I did not use drugs again until my first junior year.

We stayed in an – I think – American Friends hostel that I knew about.  I was able to get the money my parents sent – though the banker was hesitant to give the money to me.  A day or two later or that day I left Michael and the two guys behind and took the train back to Mazatlan.  Someone gave me a ride out to the beach – which was deserted.  I spent the night in a palm leaf shelter.  The next day, Hope and her sister showed up.  They thought I was crazy to trust them to come back.  We drove to San Diego, where I caught a flight back to Portland and they continued traveling.

The guys I was traveling with did not see that I had food to eat.  I literally starved – though I think Michael bought me some food.  (I gave him some of the money my parents sent to pay him back.)  I was dreaming of food at night and lost weight.  

When I got home, Eugene was waiting.  He had put up a banner to welcome me back.  I did not react well.  Eugene was kicked out of the place where he had been living – I think because I went up to his room once.  He then moved in with me for a while.  I think that by that time Eugene had found another place to live.  When he left for Brandeis the next year, I moved into that house.  My two female roommates from my sophomore year had both graduated.  

At some time during that winter or spring (of 1970 and 1971) Eugene came to see me in the evening and I would not let him in and shut the door.  I was alone at home.  Then he tried to climb in a back window – at which point I ran out the front door – in bare feet and no jacket.  I think a drizzle was coming down.  I walked for about an hour and when I got home, Eugene was gone.  I was very upset.  I still dream about the incident.

I think that spring break of 1971 or the spring break of my freshman year, Eugene and I hitchhiked to San Francisco – at my instigation.  Coming back, we got as far as Sacramento, then took the bus back to Portland.  My brothers hitchhiked, so I figured I would too.  I also did not have much money.

Academically, I could not do anything, though I tried.  I took an early music course in the fall, a black history course in the spring, and two full year courses – sophomore physics and a two-years-in-one calculus course (which was really a real analysis course.)  My advisor wanted me to take the regular calculus course, but I insisted on taking the two years in one course.  My mistake.

Eugene’s parents had given him a car.  We drove together back to the east coast after school was out.  On the way east, we went through Glacier National Park in Montana and stopped to see my uncle – a farmer – in Minnesota.  I helped Eugene find a place to stay in Waltham that summer.  I spent most of the summer helping my brother Erik and my father build a cabin on land that my parents had bought in 1968 or 69 – in Lunenburg, Vermont.

In the fall, I flew back to Portland and moved into 4911 SE Ramona St.  There were two guys living there and one woman – Russ Boyles, Greg Maskarinec, and Jean Emery (?).  Later, a guy named David Blankenhorn moved in.  Jean was living in the room where Eugene had lived – where I thought I would be – so I moved into a downstairs bedroom.

I immediately developed a crush on Russ – which lasted several years.  However, I was too shy to talk to him.  He was good looking and popular.  I saw guys like Russ as unattainable and have, over most of my life, repeatedly developed crushes on guys I saw as unattainable while getting involved with more average guys.

By then, it had been over a year since I had had sex.

I found David Blankenhorn attractive.  He rejected my attempts to get involved with him, but I did eventually get him to have sex with me and we started sleeping together.  Just this past week I had thoughts in my head that were surprised that I did not know he was married.  He may have been.  Since he was in our house and alone, I figured he was available.  Neither of us felt like we did well in school that fall.  He decided to drop out.  I thought about dropping out, but also about the free tuition I would lose.  At Christmas, I think, he dropped out and went back to California, which was where his parents lived.  I decided, school wise, to drop back and punt.

I took classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and complex analysis that fall of 1971, plus a half unit lab course.  I failed the full unit courses, I think, and repeated them in 1972.  In the spring, I think I took speech for the theater, the second year of humanities, a literature course on Shakespeare, and modern dance.  I loved the theater and dance classes

.

There were some drugs around the house I lived in.  Over the year I was at the house on Ramona St., I got stoned a few times on marijuana or hash and used mescaline once.  When I smashed my thumb in a car door, I took some of a housemate’s codeine, without his permission.  He was not home at the time.

It was sometime that fall or winter that I began my diary.  And sometime that fall a friend of David’s came to visit on his motorcycle – David Dressel.

After David Blankenhorn left, I wanted to get involved with someone again.  David Dressel attracted me.  I heard he had crashed his motorcycle and was recuperating where he lived in southwest Portland.  I decided to visit him.  I hitchhiked there, picking flowers in some person’s garden to take to him.  In late January, or February, he showed up at 4911 SE Ramona and asked me if he could stay.  I thought he wanted to get involved with me.  Years later he told me he just wanted a place to stay near school since he was starting school again.  But we slept together from the start.  Sex took a few days.

That spring, I developed mononucleosis and dropped some of my courses or took incomplete’s.

That first junior year, before school started, I hitchhiked to the coast by myself before school started.  I turned back toward Portland near Florence – where I would later live.  The spring of 1972, during spring break, David D. and I hitchhiked to Berkeley – where I was supposed to see David B.  David B. decided not to come up to meet us.  David D. and I went back to Portland.

I can see now that I was trying to follow a couple of ideals – having adventures and going to school.  I should have spent my breaks studying. 

That summer David D. and I spent much of the summer in southwest Portland.  I found a job cutting drapes in Milwaukee – a town south of Portland on the east side of the Willamette River.   I took a city bus to work.  Toward the end of the summer, David and I hitchhiked to Vancouver, Canada – by way of Port Townsend and Victoria – and took the train from Vancouver to Montreal, where my brother and a friend of his met us.  We went to Massachusetts by way of Vermont.  How we got back to Portland is very fuzzy for me.  I think we went back to the west coast by flying to Vancouver and taking the bus to Portland.  I still have dreams about Vancouver.

In the fall of 1972 – my second junior year – I think I took classical mechanics, electromagnetism, complex analysis, and dance.  One of my professors, Bob Reynolds I think, explained to me how to do calculus – you just replace one expression with another when you take a derivative.  Integrals are a bit more involved.  My grades improved afterward.  

That fall, David and I moved out of 4911 SE Ramona St. and moved to 6919 SE 50th Ave.  We rented a house with an older woman with a child, Mary Chambers, and her daughter Zoe.  She had no ties with Reed.  Mary befriended me, one of the few women to do so.  I enjoyed talking with her.  She lived with us now and then and was some of the time with her husband, Glenn Chambers.  David and I did not go anywhere for Christmas break – but spent some time around Christmas with Mary and Glenn east of Mt. Hood.  

I took classical mechanics, electromagnetism, solid state, and dance in the spring of 1973, I think.  David dropped out at some point and began working for a real estate maintenance company.  In the summer, I remember being at loose ends.  I only remember working a couple of days as a cocktail waitress.  I spilled beer down someone’s shirt, so the job did not work out.  I do not know if David supported me or if I had some money saved.

David B. had given me a subscription to Organic Gardening Magazine.  I read the magazine religiously for several years, renewing the subscription each year.  At 50th Ave. we started a garden.  David built a compost pile.  He had access to as many grass clippings as he wanted and made much compost.  The two crops I remember from the garden were pumpkins and Swiss chard.  Those two and the marijuana plant David grew.  David was into drugs and had been an acid head.  

Somehow a copy of The Good Earth Catalogue was in our house.  I read the catalogue cover to cover, then went to the Portland Public Library to read the references on alternative energy.  I read in Sewage Works Journal about anaerobic digestion of sewage and in the proceedings of a 1964 United Nations conference on renewable energy for papers on utilizing solar energy for heating, cooking, and power.

I had to borrow money for my last semester at Reed.  The tuition was $1,000 (at least that is what I borrowed – my parents may have paid the rest.)  My parents co-signed for the loan.  My parents continued to support me at $200/month, I believe.  I also worked making salads in the cafeteria in the commons and grading freshman science papers.  I think I took quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, a history of theater class and dance and wrote my thesis that last semester – the school let me take a one semester senior year.

For my thesis, David helped me build two thermal solar absorbers.  I put them on the physics building roof in February, I believe.  Only one was used.  Using a strip chart recorder and a thermocouple, I recorded a measure of the temperature of an ethylene glycol solution, which was pumped through the absorber with a water pick pump.  The measurements were taken over a few days.  I then modeled the heat transfers into and out of the absorber using the measurements.  This research is why I know the physical process of the greenhouse effect.

The organic dope David raised was very good.  Some time that fall a couple we barely knew came to visit when I was home alone.  They wanted to smoke dope, then having smoked some, to buy some.  I told the guy to take what he thought $10 was worth and he took a lot.  David got very angry when he found out.  By that time our relationship was starting to fall apart. 

David bought an old Volkswagen Beetle that fall and spent the evenings in the fall rebuilding the engine in a shed behind a – female – who acted like she did not like me – neighbor’s house.  For Christmas, we drove to New Mexico – where he grew up – to visit his family.  That was the winter of 1973/ 1974, and the oil embargo was on.  We went by way of Boulder, Colorado – where his brother lived – and came back across the Southwest and up the California coast.  His family was friendly.

I finished my thesis in February and went back to Massachusetts to visit my family.  In April, I got a letter from David in which he wrote that he had fallen in love with a woman down the street.

I went back to Portland.  My mother and I took the bus to Chicago, then she took a side trip to Denver to see an old friend while I went on to Portland.  She came later, for my graduation.  My mother, Mary, Glenn, Zoe, and David cheered me on when I went up for my diploma – they were the only ones to do something like that.  I stayed at the 50th Ave. house for a month or two – I do not think I payed David any rent – and then moved into a house in northwest Portland.  A month or so later the others in the house said the landlord was going to tear the house down so I moved to an apartment in southwest Portland, west of downtown. 

That summer the secondary progressed moon and transiting Saturn were in my natal fourth house.  Secondary progressed Venus, which was retrograde when I was born, was stationing direct.  Transiting Uranus was semi-square my natal Sun.  And transiting Pluto was stationing direct in my sixth house and conjunct my secondary progressed Saturn for the last time.  Solar arc Vulcan was square, while solar arc south node was conjunct, my natal Saturn.  Solar arc Cent, Jupiter, and Uranus (in a tight tee-square – with Neptune making it a grand-square – in my natal chart) were at six degrees of Aquarius, Taurus, and Leo respectively.  My natal Mercury is at six degrees of Virgo and Mercury is the traditional ruler of my natal Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Venus.  With the progressed moon and transiting Saturn just starting to move up the west side of my chart, I had gotten to a bottom and was starting to climb back up.

The woman David had gotten involved with was Gale Durham and she was married to Jeff Trion.  That summer, when I was still living on 50th Ave., Jeff and I started having sex.  I suppose he wanted to make Gale jealous.  He is the only one I am still in touch with from back then.  We had an on and off relationship for a couple years – off when we did not live near each other.  

Mainly from that summer of 1974 to the summer of 1975, I was trying to figure out how to support myself.  I found jobs in the newspaper –  like taking inventories in retail stores – something they did in Oregon – or delivering coffee samples to houses.  The first job attempt was picking strawberries, but I barely made gas money.  I think I borrowed David’s car to get to the field.  Eventually, I started working for Kelly Industrial.  First, I worked at a company that packaged vitamins.  Then I worked pulling stock at a Pendleton warehouse – which I enjoyed.  We were hired for the Christmas rush.  

At some point, we were all standing around looking at something where the seamstress sewed Pendleton shirt tags into the inside collars of garments.  I said I would really like some tags and my co-workers encouraged me to take some.  I took three and thought nothing of it. I was laid off a week earlier than the others.  The person I was teamed with left at the same time in protest.  The warehouse had been losing valuable stock to theft and I suppose they were making an example of me. After that, I only got one more – one day – job with Kelly Industrial.

Jeff left in the fall to go to the University of Oregon in Eugene.  That fall, I would go to David’s to play cards.  David had started going to a computer school and one of his classmates, Gerry Magnus, would play with us.  It seems like there must have been a fourth person but I do not remember whom.  On Christmas Eve, I think, I suggested to Gerry that we find a midnight church service.  We could not find one, but we ended up at his place – in a rooming house is northeast Portland, I think.  We talked and had sex.  Gerry took me out to dinner and a movie once a week that spring and he would sleep over Saturday nights.  He told me that he was homosexual mainly, but we had a normal sex life – though we did have anal and oral sex, as I had with both Davids – at my instigation.  In April or May, he got a job in San Francisco.

April Whitley was a roommate of Gale and Jeff.  She was part of a dance collective.  I also joined the collective that year.  I do not remember much about it.  And I tried out for a part in the musical Hair.  I was called back – but did not get into the cast.  I was aware that I had a dynamic, energetic side to me – but that I also was timid and withdrawn.  I understand now that both are real parts of my personality – which is explained by the astrology of my natal chart.

The winter and spring of 1975 I was living on savings mainly.  My mother’s aunt had died, and my mother gave me $200 from what she had inherited.  (Actually, she also put $1000 in a CD for me – joint with her.  But I did not get that money until much later.) In March and April, I got food stamps.  Since I had little income, I think I got them for free.  The second time I saw the food stamp worker, she said I needed to find a job.  In May, I found a job with the J.C. Penny drapery workroom – cutting drapes again.  I had borrowed $200 from Gerry before he left, and I began paying him back.  I still qualified for food stamps, but my income was enough that I did not take time off work to go to the food stamp office – my benefit would have been small and I would have had to come up with the money to pay for the rest of the food stamps.

Over that year, I decided to try to become a land surveyor.  When I was young, my brother and I had climbed some of the Franconia Notch mountains in New Hampshire.  At Reed, I took mountain climbing my freshman year.  For one trip, we went to climb Mt. Hood.  I started out for the climb but turned back.  (I thought at the time that – since success was making me miserable – I would let myself fail fo a while.) 

I love hiking and climbing – but tire easily.  (I found out recently that I have a weak heart – which may explain why I have always tired easily.)  I also like working with instruments, like levels and transits.  Surveyors work outside in the elements and do mathematical, technical work using instruments.  

It takes several years of experience to qualify to take the test to become a licensed land surveyor.  This was in 1974, and the country was in a deep recession.  I talked to several surveying and engineering firms in the Portland area but was told to get experience with the government – the firms were not hiring.  I think I talked with the Federal Highway Administration the summer or fall of 1974 or else the state employment office helped me.  I was told to take the civil service exam for engineering aide – which I did – I cannot say when – I do not remember.  The exam was a high school graduate level exam.

In May or June of 1975, I had a job interview for an Engineering Aide nine-month appointment in Mapleton, Oregon – which job I got.  David drove me to Mapleton, then on to Florence to find a place to live.  I found a room in a rooming house for not much money a month – with a hot plate and refrigerator. The bathroom was separate and shared.  There was no phone or phone service.  David loaned me some money to buy the steel toed boots and bluejeans I was told to get.  David may have leant me the money for rent too.    

Since I did not have a car, the chief engineer in Mapleton, Roy Hewitt, told the other temporary workers to give me rides to and from work.  We all carpooled – with different people driving each day, as I remember.  The FHWA had hired another woman – with a masters degree in some scientific field – so I would not be the only woman at the level I was working.  She was the daughter of a general and had gone to Oregon State University.  Her name was Cheryl, I think.  The Federal Highway Administration office also had a female secretary/ clerk working – Jodi was her name I think.  Most of the men there were veterans – most had served in Korea or Vietnam.

I was told I had scored at the top of the civil service test I took – even after veteran’s preference was account for, I think.  I suspect the Federal Highway Administration had to hire me.  Those nine months in Florence was transformational.  Two things were going on – I was working as an equal with men and I was going after sex like men.  This was intentional.

Florence is on the Pacific coast, over the Coast Mountains from Eugene, Oregon.  Jeff was living in Eugene, going to the University of Oregon.  I started going to Eugene on the weekends to see him.  I think I usually got a ride with a coworker to get there and hitchhiked to get back to Florence – or maybe Jeff would drive me back.  I think that this is the progression of events.  I was seeing Jeff on the weekends.  At some point, Jeff left Eugene for San Jose, California, because his father was dying.

In August, I think, I went out for drinks with a co-worker, Dale Halvorson.  I spent the night with him.  After that, he dropped me.  He may have had a girlfriend elsewhere – which did not occur to me at the time, I do not think.

My experience with sex and men at that time was that sex would lead to a relationship that lasted for awhile.  I am afraid that I was entering the world of the double standard meat grinder – where women had reputations and men went by them.

Workwise, I was working on the survey crews – sometimes with a party chief named Don Dillworth (?) and sometimes with a party chief named Jay Worthington.  The guys on the crew were Dale, Brian Oestenson (?), Art (?), and Dave (?).  Later Dale would leave and Wade (?) would join the crew.  The people I carpooled with would pick me up in the morning outside of the rooming house.  I was often late getting down there, since – with my depression – I had trouble getting out of bed.

Don was a Mormon.  I was comfortable talking to him and did not think anything of the talking.  Jay was a troublemaker.  He did not want to be there.  I think he was sent there to make trouble for me.  He did things like bring a Hustler magazine with him in the truck and show us pictures.  Also, he liked to tell stories about harassing people who were hired because of affirmative action.  I ignored the harassment. I did not talk about the harassment with anyone.

One day, Don said something about wanting to go live on an island on the Siuslaw River – by which we were working – with me.  I was nonplussed.  I liked him and liked talking to him but had no idea he was attracted to me.  I think he asked to get out of working in Mapleton because of the attraction.  He must have left at some point.  I suspected Jay did something similar later – not because he was attracted to me, but to get away from Mapleton.

We were slope staking the cut or fill – putting up lath with instructions for the persons running the machines that did the cutting and filling.  The job involved a person on the level and a person at the end of the tape who ran the rod (a pole with marks at tenths and one hundredths of feet).  At first, I taped and ran the rod or marked the lath.  I believe Art was running the level.  I think he was a Seabee (which my later husband, also, was) with a instrument man rating (?) – which means he would have been trained in the service for what he was doing.  Eventually I was running the level.

Art was living with a girlfriend who was pregnant.  He and Cheryl acted attracted to each other.  Brian was separated or divorced and living with someone from town or involved with her.  Wade and Jodi acted attracted to each other.  Dave, I think, was lonely but very unattractive and not very personable.

Hewitt was giving Art a hard time because we were often late, and we were often late because of my difficulty getting out of bed in the morning.  One day, Art left without me, so I hitchhiked to Mapleton.  No one was in the office.  I climbed in a window (something I learned to do as a kid.)  Art ended up getting fired.  Cheryl and Wade – who was buddies with Art – blamed me for the firing.  I was told by one of the older men not to blame myself, that Art had been giving the party chiefs a hard time.  I was taken off the crew.  Jay did not like Art (or me) – maybe because Art’s girlfriend was pregnant and he was attracted to Cheryl.  Jay achieved what I think was his goal of getting me off the crew and getting rid of Art.  Granted, I was slow moving.  The crew went about their work more quickly after I was not on it, I think.

After work, I think I pretty much stayed in my room and read, wrote, or slept.  On the weekends, I went to Eugene or Portland – hitchhiking or by bus to Portland.  There was no bus between Eugene and Florence.  I was paid well by the FHWA and was able to pay off David, Jerry, and my student loan in a month or two.  About half of my take home pay was per diem.

After being taken off the crew, I worked calculating cuts and fills and graphing them – in the office.  There was a formula I was supposed to use.  The calculations were trigonometric.  I, without thinking about it much, changed the formula of the calculation to one that was equivalent.  It is possible that my formula contained a tangent – which can cause errors if the sign is not put in right.  The world was just entering the era of calculators and I was using a basic Hewlett Packard scientific calculator that cost about $600.  This was before programmable calculators.  I got in trouble for making the change – which surprised me.  I am afraid the person supervising me – Ed Sprague (?), I think – thought he would have to redo the calculations.  I do not remember what happened.  I remember singing at the top of my lungs while doing the calculating.  Also, obsessing about a man named George.  I was the only one in the office most of the time.

Eventually, I was the last person of the summer temporary hires left there.  I spent the last month or two testing samples from the rock being quarried and ground, in Mapleton, to be used in the paving for the highway on which we were working.  There was one person there to supervise me.  I do not remember his name.  The powers that be decided to let me take a truck home so I could get to and from work.  Cheryl has been doing the testing before me.

Romantically – dare I say that – things got crazy.  I remember that I set a goal of having sex at least once a week.  Sometime at the end of September or early October, I went out to a local bar.  Jeff must have gone to San Jose about then.  A guy, Paul Carter, asked me out.  I went out with him, I think, once and had sex with him.  He was from Eugene and working as a logger.  When I met him, he was with an older man – George Farmer – who, I think, was his foreman.  After the date, he moved back to Eugene.  

I, also, started taking piano lessons from a young woman in town – something I had always wanted to do.  I do not remember her name.  I would go to Eugene and practice at a University of Oregon music building.  On one trip to Eugene, I tried to meet up with Paul, but his mother was supposed to pick me up at the music building and she never showed.  I also bought myself an opal necklace and a book on Van Gogh, full of paintings.  These were major purchases for me.  My piano teacher went to Poland for a Chopin contest at some point.  She did not win.  My ease at learning the piano fell apart as my time in Florence passed.

A week later, I think, I returned to the bar – Don’s was the name, I think.  George Farmer was there, and I picked him up – thinking I would make Paul jealous – and we had sex.  I went out with George one or two more times.  He had married the summer before, but his wife had left him, he told me.  There was a picture of a happy man from the summer before.  He looked unhappy when I met him.  (I realized around then that I seemed to be attracted to unhappy men – which surprised me.)  He told me he was 30 years old – which I did not question – and I think I met him on his birthday.  Now I think he was several years older.  Also, he had been in prison, I think.

I began obsessing about George.  At one point, I needed some dental work, so I had a day off work.  After seeing to dentist, I walked to the house that George lived.  There were several people there. but George was not there.  They were smoking dope, so I stayed a bit and smoked some too.  

At one point when I was hitchhiking, a young man picked me up.  His name was Roy Kinnard.  He lived with his parents.  He took me to his home and had me sit in a vibrating recliner – which I thought was strange.  Then he took me home, I think, or I walked home.  He told me he was 24, I think, but, looking back, he was probably in or just out of high school.  He talked about working at Knott’s Berry Farm in California.  We would go out to bars and shoot pool on weekends, but I was not interested in having sex with him.  I do not think he was interested in anything else with me and that he kept going out with me in hopes that he would have sex.  I wonder now if we did not have the same mental illness.  A few years ago, I was looking online to see where people I knew were.  He was living in Portland, on the streets.

At some point, probably a week or two after meeting George, a guy moved into the room across the hall from me.  He looked like a hippy and was probably in his forties.  His name was Trevor Cox.  He was hiding from the law.  He said the police were after him because he owed his wife child support.  We got involved.  We would play cribbage.

Trevor was into marijuana.  The summer of 1974, David had grown some and told me I could have some of the crop.  I went to the house on 50th Street after moving downtown.  Gale was there, but not David.  She told me to take what I wanted, so I took a plant.  That plant stayed in a room at my apartment that I did not use.  I think I smoked some of the dope once while I lived in Portland.  The dope went with me to Florence.  I think it took just few days for Trevor and me to go through it.

At some point – November, I think – I went to Portland and bought a used car – a 1968 or 1969 green Volvo 122S two door sedan.  (I still have the car – Bessie.)  David and Gale went with me to look at the car and then, the next day, I bought it.  The car’s engine knocked when I drove the car back to Florence, so I decided I needed to put a new engine in the car.  Anyway, the car was in the shed behind where I lived.

At some point, Trevor said the police were coming for him and asked if he could hide in my car.  I let him.  That night, I drove to a motel, and we spent the night there.  Then he left to make a connection, and I went home and then to work.  He was arrested – I do not know how I heard.  Turns out he had cut the brake lines of his wife’s car.

About a week after that, I think, I was in my room – the room was on the second story and faced the shed – lying on the bed when Roy was looking at me through the window.  I did not realize this, but there was a fire escape ladder that went to the ground from my window.  I let him in and let him have sex with me. After that, I only saw him one more time. 

I suspected that George had put the word out that anyone who had sex with me would get in trouble.  I guess Roy was abandoned in a town south of Florence and had to hitchhike back to town without a jacket.  And Trevor was arrested.

By then, Jeff was back in Eugene.  His father had passed away and he was back in school.

I flew down to see Gerry in San Francisco in September, I think – probably Labor Day weekend and near my birthday.  He flew up to see me around New Year’s.  David came once and spent the night.  That night, George showed up out of nowhere and came up to the room, so I him walked to his place and stayed till morning – no sex.  Not a good visit for David.  I wonder now if he was thinking of asking me to marry him and that George read his mind and wanted to block him because he saw a use for me.  I had not seen George for a few months at that time, I think.

Before Jeff came back, I went to Don’s and the bartender poisoned my beer.  I walked home, threw up in the sink and did not go back.

My obsession with George was a delusion.  I realize that now, but the realization was a long time coming.  For some reason, I thought I was in love with him.  I do not know what year he was born, or what day.  There might be a Vulcan connection (Vulcan is an astrological/ astronomical point that I use – the mean over the shortest arc of the asteroids Juno, Pallas, and Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.  To me, it is – among other things – the point of mental love and rules Libra.)  Since I barely knew him, the energy I was projecting on his image was the energy of maleness that I was familiar with.  I now think the energy I was focusing was my older brother’s energy.

The whole situation there in Florence was very crazy.  I was getting more and more isolated at work and after work and more and more desperate romantically.  I still had not had the ‘falling in love’ experience – I know now that my relationship with David was important and that I loved him – but we did not’fall in love’.  So, in my desperation, I dumped the longing for a ‘love’ relationship on George.  Maybe there was an astrological connection.  Anyway, it made perfect sense to me that I would go with George – the person I was in love with – when he showed up when David was visiting.  It does not make sense now.

Bessie – I bought an engine in Eugene.  I do not know how I got it to Florence, but I did.  Over the next few months, I got the engine ready to put into Bessie.  I bought and borrowed tools and followed a book I had purchased on the 122 Volvos.  I would hitchhike to Eugene to buy parts and tools, and hitchhike back to Florence with them. I would eat at a Mexican restaurant in Eugene.  In March, when my job ended, I still did not have the new engine in. My mother was waiting for me in LA for me to pick her up so we could drive back to Hull.  At some point, I borrowed a come along, several older men sat around the car in the shed to watch and help as needed, and I put the engine in.  Someone helped me with lining up the bell housing.  Other than that, I did the job on my own.  The trip to LA was Bessie’s maiden voyage.  Jeff had helped me pull the old engine, I think, and drove the engine to the Eugene junkyard where I bought the new one.  I got some money back by giving the junk yard the engine.  The new engine was from a P1800 but fit okay.  It was a B18D rather than a B18B.

At some point, I was with Gerry in Portland, and we visited his aunt – who was a psychic.  She had real art over the walls of her small apartment.  I believe she or her husband had known Henry or William James.  Gerry was from German and Norwegian aristocracy.  She was very nice and said I had golden energy.  I asked her about George.  She told me to not get involved with him – that he would crush me like a butterfly. 

Christmas day, I drove to the beach – my car still had the old engine – and walked about 10 miles.  I bought a present for the little boy of the woman who took care of the rooming house.  My family sent me a big box of presents.  I had not been home in two-and-one-half years.

My mother and I drove back to Massachusetts through Needles, California; Amarillo, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; and, I think, Nashville, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.  – then up to Hull by the back way.  

The universal joint went out in Needles.  Somehow, Bessie was repaired in two days, I think.  They had to get the part elsewhere.  In Amarillo, a bolt was off a stabilizing part of the frame.  A Volvo dealer there fixed the problem.  In New Jersey, the manifold bolts started coming off.  I do not remember how I dealt with that.

I talked to my mother about her past.  How she had been fond of a guy when she worked in St. Louis, but he had left for England.  And how my father has been fond of someone he did not marry.  I used to sing My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean and Come Back to the Red River Valley (my father grew up near the Red River of the North) over and over when I was growing up.  A bit strange – but not as much as one would think.

I will mention this here, but I am not sure when my mother said this.  My mother told me that she had gone over in her mind every birthday that I had had when growing up.  Not sure who was behind that, but probably someone was setting up to steal my energy.

I do not remember much of being home.  I helped my brother Erik clean and paint an apartment he was moving into in New York City.  He was going to grad school in New York – he went to the New School and some state school at different times.  Later, I took my two older nieces to New York City to see him.  We took Amtrak down and back.  On the train, I was off to somewhere on the train and the conductor said something that I felt was rude.  I burst into tears and sobbed for a while.  It happens now and then.  My life has been so much about duty and necessity and emotional control and sometimes it gets to be too much.

I sent a letter to George Farmer about how I was in love with him.  I remembered he had PO Box 1 in Florence.  I did not hear anything back.

By May, I was ready to go back to Oregon.  I think I got a notice for an opening at the Environmental Protection Agency office in Corvallis for a Scientific Aide.  I put a note up on an MIT bulletin board about wanting someone to ride with me west.  A man named Harry responded to the note.  We drove from Boston to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.  A hitchhiker was with us part of the way.  Harry was going to go to school at the University of Illinois.  He had been in Europe for several years.  I believe he had left the Unitec States to avoid the draft.  He was planning to go to MIT in economics, I think.  We drove straight through, arriving in southern Illinois early in the morning, as the sun was just coming up and before the gas stations were open.  Since we were almost out of gas, we had to stop and wait.  We arrived at his apartment mid-morning and I initiated sex.  Then I left and went on to Chicago.

In Chicago, I spent a day with Eugene, who was in graduate school at the University of Chicago, and his girlfriend – and later his wife – Lynn (I think that was her name.). Eugene said he had been dreaming about me, which we both thought was strange.  I said maybe the dreaming had to do with Gerry’s aunt, since she was a psychic.  More likely, the dreaming had more to do with the people in Florence.

Then I went on to Minnesota and stopped at my aunt’s, in White Bear Lake, then on to my uncle’s in western Minnesota.  My uncle farmed the family farm that my great-grandparents homesteaded around 150 years ago.  My father grew up there.  Then I took off across North Dakota.

I remember stopping at a rest area in North Dakota and sleeping for an hour or two.  I must have been exhausted.  At some point, I picked up a hitchhiker.  I think he was going to Missoula, to the University of Montana.  We stopped for the night somewhere in Montana.  I did not make any attempt to initiate sex, nor did he.  My reason was that I though that people who hitchhike a lot do not like being exploited for sex, so I was being considerate of him.  I paid for the room.

After letting him off, I continued to Ontario, Oregon – a town in eastern Oregon where Jeff’s sister lived and where Jeff was staying.  The drive through Idaho was beautiful.  I am not sure how long I stayed in Ontario, but eventually I drove to Portland and stayed with Mary – again I do not know for how long.  

It was about this time when I noticed my first distortion of reality.  I was driving my car, Bessie, to or from a job interview.  It was raining and the windshield wipers were going.  I felt like someone was looking through my eyes while I drove.

When I stayed at Mary’s, her brother-in-law was there.  I suspect he was there to get involved with me.  I think, maybe, by then my reputation was known on western Oregon towns.

Mike Chambers lived in Albany, Oregon, about twenty miles from Corvallis.  We were sleeping in Mary’s living room, Mike on the couch and me on the floor.  He initiated sex with me, and we had an affair that lasted a month or two.  He had had an accident and could not drive, so he rode a bicycle to get around.  He, also, had had a girlfriend who was pregnant with his child – so I violated my beliefs in getting involved with him.  

I was comfortable with him.  I remember riding a bicycle from Corvallis to Salem.  I was very tired by the time I got to Salem.  Only knowing that there was no other option but to keep going kept me going.  

I like to explore.  We took a road that was on a map deep into a forest to a mill town.  The town was empty.  I could see from the map that there were roads that went across to the coast, so we went down those roads.  We found ourselves in a clearcut area – no one was around.  Mike got very nervous.  We did get to the coast over some range.

We went to see a movie on Noah’s Ark.  I had nothing to say.

At some point, I went to see Trevor Cox in prison.  We had been corresponding.

Someone at work asked me out.  I think that, at that point in my life, four males had asked me out.  The man who asked me out, Dave Force, was a college graduate in soil science and was good looking.  I broke up with Mike and started going out with Dave.  

We took road trips to rural places, sleeping in his vehicle.  He was married, but his wife had left him the year before.  I was the first person he had asked out since she left – if I remember right.  Once we were in a food coop and she was there.  She was pretty.  His father had been harbormaster in Portland.

At one point, we went to Florence and Don’s – the bar.  Dave thought I was too wound up about my time in Florence.  George was there.  I talked to George outside and began going down to Florence to see him on the weekends.  Dave broke up with me.  I was falling apart at the time.  Dave and I went out for a few months, I think, but I never felt a connection with Dave, though I liked him.  Sex was good.  He bought me a jeans jacket for my birthday.  I had asked for one.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, I was running seawater samples on an atomic absorption spectrophotometer measuring trace levels of chromium.  Apparently, I did careful enough work to get results.  However, the ‘furnaces’ I was using were expensive and I was going through them quickly.

At some point, either in 1975 or 1976, I gave George a copy of the book, The Magus, by the British writer John Fowles.  John Fowles was one of my favorite writers in those years – because he wrote honestly about women and sex.  Recently, I read online that Fowles had run a writing workshop in a Federal prison in the United States in the 70’s.  Which is neither here nor there but, in 1985, Fowles published a book, The Maggot, about an young, innocent looking prostitute.  Maggot is one letter off from Margot and I was quite innocent looking, I think.  I thought at the time that the story was based on me – even though I was not a prostitute – I was sexually active – but I had no idea how that could be true.

Actually Florence may have been a place where people wanting to be writers lived.  Ken Kesey lived not far from Eugene and the closest coastal town to Eugene was Florence.  The books One Flew over a Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Madness were set partly and totally on the Oregon coast.  

That fall I would go to see George on the weekends and often missed Mondays.  I was, also, under pressure from the head of the EPA lab to not go through so many furnaces.  

George was staying by a cabin in the Siuslaw National Forest by a creek called Big Creek, a way north of Florence.  A friend of his named Bob Bailey and his new wife and her two prepubescent daughters lived in the cabin.  She was pregnant.  There was no electricity or water – they got water from the creek.  Down the road, closer to the highway, were at least two other places to live – on drives off the road.  

Bob Bailey was a writer.  He was part native.  His wife was a good cook.  They were newlyweds.  I liked them.

I remember George giving me some cocaine – which is the only time I have used the drug – and another time a black beauty.  About 25 years ago, I found out that the pill was speed.

I remember George twisting my arm one evening when I was leaving to go back to Corvallis.  He was trying to get my keys.  I did not fight it, just waited for him to stop.

I remember going to Don’s with George and his slugging a friend of his.  I have never seen anyone punched in person before and have not since.  I think the scene was staged.

I remember play dominos with George and Bob, in the cabin.

I remember noticing that George seemed to be communicating with others through his mind (rather than physically) – which I noted but decided to disbelieve.

George and I did not have much in the way of a real relationship.  I was just following my belief that I was in love with him, and I have a lot of inertia, so I kept going forward despite reality.  George was going off his own deep end, I think, drinking and using drugs – maybe dealing them.  My car would smell like beer after a weekend.  Every week, George would ‘borrow’ $10 to buy beer.  He owes me about $100.  Hopefully Bob and his wife got some of the money.

At some point, it was decided that I would move in with George in one of the cabins on Big Creek.  In Corvallis, I tried to sell my bicycle.  I do not think I succeeded.  I packed up.  At the end of November, I moved all my things down to the cabin.

I lasted about a day and one-half.  I remember we were at a party in Florence and there was a puppy.  I was playing with the puppy and George did something (I do not remember what, but it was not physical, I think) and the puppy ran away squealing.

We went to the cabin with one of George’s friends, Skip, I think his name was.  He had some link to the Hells Angels – at least one of them said he did.  I think George was trying to groom me to be a prostitute.  He talked some about opening a place there on Big Creek and calling the place Foxes Den.  They took off in my car after awhile.  There was no sex involved.  

I decided I did not like the situation and started walking down the road to walk out to the highway.  It was at night and there were no lights.  I guess the moon must have been out because I could see well enough to follow the road.  There were wild animals in the forest.  I did not think about the animals at all and felt safe.  After walking awhile, George and Skip came up the road in my car.  I let them go by.  They came back looking for me and found me and took me back to the cabin.  They were scared for me about the animals.  Also, they were worried about being accused of stealing my car.

I do not remember how the night ended.  There was no sex.  George was not intrested and Skip said something like I was focused on George.

I think George threw me out (not physically) that night and I drove to Dave Force’s in Corvallis and spent the night on the floor.  I went to Mary’s in Portland after that, I think.  A few days later, I went back to the cabin, took what I could fit in my car, and took off to go home to Massachusetts.  I left behind my bicycle, my collection of Organic Gardening magazines, my dish strainer, dishes (that my mother had collected for me from gas stations), my cutlery, the collection of house paints I had collected.  Who knows what else?  I do not remember.

My parents and I had planned to meet in Lawrence, Kansas, at my brother Erik’s, for Christmas.  Erik was doing graduate work at the University of Kansas, studying philosophy.  So, I drove toward Lawrence.  Somewhere in eastern Oregon, a patrolman stopped me because I had a taillight lens broken.  He just told me to get the lens fixed.  

I spent the night in Nevada at a motel.  The clerk put me in an overheated room.  I would not open the door to cool off the room because I did not trust the people there.  The next day, I picked up a hitchhiker.  He was from Finland.  He seemed frightened of me.  He helped me drive to Denver.  I dropped him off at a Christian house.  At that time, Christian sects were forming around the country with houses where people could gather and stay. The movement was an underground.

I drove to a town aways east of Denver and spent the night in a motel.  I felt happy and safe, but I am not sure why.  For years, I have wondered what town it was and if there is some astrological reason for the feeling.  The next day I got to Lawrence.

I had been masturbating a lot over that time, from Florence on.  My brother had an apartment.  I spent my days sleeping and masturbating while my brother went to school.  He took me to see Carnal Knowledge.  

I had gotten there a few weeks early.  My parents arrived a week or two later.  We celebrated Christmas.  I did some work on Bessie.  My father helped me.  I think maybe I had someone do some of the work because I could not get some part off.

My parents and I, with our two cars, drove back to Hull.  I do not remember much of the trip, except that we lost my father in Scranton.  He was driving my parent’s truck – I think it was a truck rather than a car – and my mother and I were in Bessie.  He kept going when we got separated.  My mother and I went to the state police and asked for help.  We wondered if he had had an accident.  I think that eventually he called my brother Rolf and Rolf called the state police office to let us know where he was.  My mother and I spent the night at a Holiday Inn in Scranton – a place we would never have stayed – too ritzy.

I slept the spring away in my bedroom in the basement, getting more and more psychotic.  I remember going to MIT to ask a professor about economics and the butterfly effect – vaguely.  I remember spending time with my friend Anne and her husband – who was Liberian.  I remember Anne and me working in her father’s garden, trying to clear bamboo, while her husband watched.  Her husband was developing psychosis too.  My brother, Erik, and I went to Warwick, Rhode Island, to help clean a house that the Methodist minister in Hull owned – I believe it was her father’s.

George stole my last paycheck from the Environmental Protection Agency.  I had had the check sent to George’s post office box in Florence.  I had left a forwarding address at the Florence Post Office, I think, or sent the post office the address.  The check was not forwarded.  I finally called the Environmental Protection Agency about the check.  They were able to tell me who cashed the check.  I was able to get in touch with her through Don’s – bar, which I called.  I was able to get George to pay back most, though not all, of the money.

George sent me at least one letter.  I think he was writing about how he was getting into religion.  Since I was, and still am, angry at the male move toward religion at that time, I did not have an interest in returning.  Never mind his behavior.

That spring, I increasingly believed I was communicating with George in my head.  My psyche became more and more removed from average normality.  I remember having a conversation about love and jealousy and about reading a Plato dialog on Alcibiades about the subject.  I remember meeting my parents in Filene’s Basement.  I came into Boston by myself, probably by the T or I drove and was meeting my parents to give them a ride home, or maybe they were meeting me to give me a ride home.  I do not remember.

On Washington Street, there were street musicians a block or so away.  I saw them as being influenced by what was going on in my head and was frightened by the sense.  I remember listening to the radio and feeling that I was being suppressed by more and more people listening to the radio and by more and more people in the Boston area.  By being suppressed, I mean that my feelings were being weighted down into a flat plane through my heart and my thoughts and understanding were being blocked.  I remember thinking that witches were messing with my mind and that Hull was full of witches.

At the time, and for many years after, I thought George Farmer was responsible for the breakdown.  Looking back, I think, maybe, the Catholic and Mormon communities or churches were attacking me, based on their desire to prove their ideas about sex right.  George may have had ties with the Mormon church.  The area of Hull where I lived was mainly Catholic.

I remember going down to the beach below our house and being frightened by the thought that what was happening in my mind was tied to the destruction of minds and the knowledge of our Western civilization.  My mother and I went to the sandy beach in another part of town and walked with a woman and her mother who went to the church we went to.  I thought the mother looked at me curiously.

My father was retiring from his job teaching political science.  He was 62 years old.  In May, someone in my family got me in to see a social worker somewhere.  (My mother was a social worker.)  I wrote something for the appointment about witches and what I thought they were doing.  The social worker told me she thought I was out of touch with my feelings.  My father’s retirement party was on, I think, May 19th.  None of us children went, unless my brother Erik did.  My brother Rolf came to my parents’ house, where I was living, and took me to Medfield State Hospital, a mental hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts.

I was in the hospital for two weeks.  The doctors put me on Prolixin (an antipsychotic), ran me through tests, and observed me.  My family came to visit every day, I think, and brought me Pepup (an Adele Davis concoction I drank every day – I know now eating yeast products is part of what causes my mental health problems – I was drinking the stuff for the B vitamins.). The antipsychotic shut down the noise in my mind and I was comfortable, but I became quite stupid.

I do not know who paid for my stay.  I had no income or insurance and not much savings.  I did not pay the bill and I never asked who did.

After getting out of the hospital, I remember going out with my brother Rolf, lobstering.  He was supporting his family by lobstering at that point, I think.  It was summer.  I looked for work.  In August, I found a job with a company called Electroswitch as an engineer, I think, where I was hired for a one-month probationary period.  I could not do the work – even though I could see how to do it and the work was not hard, I could not make the connection to do what needed to be done – so I was not hired permanently.

In August, the mental health system in Massachusetts found me a doctor who would see me without fees.  He was working for the government in Quincy, for a social services part of the government.  I saw him at his work.  His name is Dr. Richard Makman and I am still in touch with him.  Dr. Makman would see me weekly for six years – sometimes, when I did not have insurance, on state time – and sometimes, when I was working with insurance, for reduced fees.  I expect I owe my ability to keep going on with my life despite my illness to him.

If I remember right, I said nothing or almost nothing the first time I saw him.  I spent much of the time over the years talking about my reasons for doing what I was doing regarding sex and men.

In September, I went off the Prolixin, because the Prolixin was making my mind not work, and I found a job with a land survey company, Boston Survey Consultants.  The company was in South Boston, just over the canal south of South Station.  The noise in my head started up again after a few weeks.  I lived with the noise.

My way of dealing with my illness was to not confront the sensation in my chest – which often felt like an elastic band across my heart, separating an upper region of consciousness from a lower region of consciousness.  I let the band be and continued functioning most of the time.

When working for Boston Survey Consultants, I worked on the survey crew most of the time.  During the winter when most of the crew was laid off, I was too for a while.  But, also, I spent a few weeks sorting the map files.  And I made blueprints with a machine that took drawings and printed blueprints of the drawings.  The process uses ammonia.  I did some rough drafting, and, towards the end, I drove a company vehicle, took the T, or walked to courthouses to get copies of abstracts or to deliver reports to businesses.

I got involved with a guy I worked with, Dave Williams.  He had a degree in civil engineering from Northeastern and worked on the survey crew with me.  I thought he was attractive, and I was not threatened by him.  I asked him out.  If I remember right, he was not really interested in going out with me.  He was a virgin.  He seemed interested in the way our relationship was going until, a few weeks into the relationship, I told him how many guys I had had sex with.  He lived in Woburn with a couple of other guys, in a house, I think.  He was from Brockton.  I was living at home.

His half-brother had had schizophrenia and had killed himself.  The brother had been illegitimate.  Dave is very talented and was very people oriented when I knew him.  I am not either.

We started going out in October, I think.  I seduced him in late December, I think.  I did not hide my intentions and he did not hide his distaste.  I was 26 and he was 25.  He was half a year younger than me.  For me, sex is a normal and average part of life.  I guess he was saving himself for marriage.  Our sex life was never very good.  At some point, he left Boston Survey Consultants and went to work for another company.  We went out until the summer of 1978.  He broke up with me.  We both have Aries ascendents near each other.

During this time, I had a crush on one of the party chiefs, Peter Gruelich (?), the son of one of the owners of the company.  He was married, and, I think, he was Zen Buddhist.  The family was a German family.  I made no attempt to pursue the crush.  I think Dave was jealous.

I remember meeting Dave at the Boston Public Library after work a few times.  I would read books while waiting for him.  The library had comfortable chairs in which to read.  There were men who were on the streets who spent time there.  Apparently, they would sell themselves in the basement of the library.  At some point, the library removed the comfortable chairs to stop the street people from using the library to have a place to go and get out of the cold.

Once, we were on Boylston Street, I think, and some of the street people were – what looked like and was probably true – trying to take down a man who was interacting with them.  I remember hearing a voice in my head that asked if I had had sex with Peter.  As I remember, Dave was asking me something and that is what I heard.  And, I asked him to repeat his question and heard the same thing again.

In February or March, Anne and I went to Bermuda for a few days.  I think that was the only real vacation I have had in my life.  My life has been very much about worry and striving for the future.

Around this time, Anne and I would go to evening talks at the New England Aquarium on types of alternative energy sources.  The talks were put on by some part of Harvard, I think.

In late March, Anne and I, along with our parents, went to the Boston Flower Show (?).  An astrologer was there selling her books on astrology – Frances Sakoian and The Astrologer’s Handbook.  I wanted to buy the book, but it would be a major purchase for me.  I waffled for a while – wondering if I was making a life changing decision.  I bought the book and, with it, began my long journey into the world of astrology.

One day, the survey crew did some work in Hull.  The party chief (with all of us in the vehicle) dropped me off at my parents.  The people who owned Boston Survey Consultants were from the Boston area’s North Shore.  Hull is on the South Shore.  I have wondered if at that time the real estate interests on the North Shore became aware of that little bit of Hull.  Now, most of the old homes have been winterized and fixed up, turning the area into an upscale area.

Toward the end of my time there, the company hired two rather weird people, a man and a woman.  I felt like they were practicing some kind of magic – I am not sure why.  I remember one time, when working on the crew under Gruelich, envisioning in my head the way to organize some work we were doing (this was not part of my job) and feeling that the male they hired (who was also on the crew) grabbed the thought out of my head.  Then thought was gone from my mind.

I enjoyed the work I did for Boston Survey Consultants.  A lot of the work was outdoors and in interesting places, like Gloucester and the Charlestown Navy Yard. 

The summer of 1978, I stopped working at Boston Survey Consultants.  I do not remember why – I think I was late for work – or that the company did not have work for me.  I know that when I filed for unemployment, the company said they had work for me and I could not get the unemployment.  (I had collected unemployment after leaving the Environmental Protection Agency.)  Boston Survey Consultants did not pay me enough to live on and I was still living at home.  I, also, had the thought that I would never get the use of my mind back if I did not get back into an environment with college educated people.

For the next seven or eight months, I looked for work.  I remember going through my brother’s calculus book – which is the first time I went through a textbook on calculus.  I studied my astrology book and struggled to buy two ephemerides and a table of houses.  This was before the time of the Internet, and I had to find places to buy the books and to find the money to buy them.

I applied for a job at an insurance company (Hancock?) and, when I was taking the aptitude exam, I started with my usual ease at taking exams, and partway through the exam, my mind collapsed.  I felt like Dave Williams blocked me.

While I was going through the calculus book, my mind shut down while I was working on a math problem.  I sat for a few days and put color on paper using watercolor paint.  Gradually my mind came back, and I was able to pull together my understanding of the problem.

I looked in newspaper help wanted sections for jobs.  In March of 1979, I was able to get a job with Aerodyne Research – a think tank that mainly did work for the defense agencies and the armed services.  I am a pacifist, and I told them so, but the company hired me anyway.  My job title was Research Assistant.

I had to get a security clearance to do my work at Aerodyne.  I have had the thought for many years now that someone in my background said that they thought I was or might have been a prostitute.  That, I believe, is the source of the rumor that I think is out there that I was a prostitute.

During my time at Aerodyne, I lived at home for much of the first year, commuting from Hull (southeast of Boston) to Bedford (northwest of Boston) – about a one and one-half hour commute each way.  The actual distance is about 40 miles.  In late 1979, Dr. Makman found an anti-psychotic I would not stop using – Trilafon.  However, the drug made me drowsy, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open when driving.  I found a room in Lexington with an Indian couple (Rani and Vinod Sarin) and their daughter (Annika) – where I stayed during the week.  On the weekends, I would go to Hull or Vermont.  I agreed to babysit their daughter from time to time, which was fine.  

When I first started working at Aerodyne, my car was in a shop to get the brakes fixed.  The first few days, I drove my parents’ car but then I started carpooling with one of my co-workers, Dick Diangelo (?).  He lived in South Boston.  I think my parents would drive me to Hingham, where I would take the bus to Quincy, where I would take the T (subway train) to Andrew, I think.  Dick would pick me up there.  Because inspection was happening, the car dealership where I had Bessie took a long time to do the repair.  They did not want the job.

When I did get my car back, I think Dick and I would switch off driving.  I told him about changing oil in my car.  When you change the oil filter, you hand tighten the oil filter.  Unfortunately, Dick changed the oil in his car and hand tightened the oil-pan plug.  We were driving and the oil-plug came off and the engine seized up.  Oh well.  I drove him for awhile.

The people I was working around (in the same room with), were Dick, a man named Larry U(?), a man named Bob Lyons (?), a man named (?) Washington, a woman named Mary (?) and a man whose name I do not remember. Not all were working at the same time.  When I first started, I think Larry, Dick, Washington, and the person whose name I do not remember were there.  At some points in time, Larry, Washington, and the person whose name I cannot remember left and Mary and Bob Lyons were hired.

There was a woman working there who had received her masters degree in statistics from Iowa State University, Joy Castonguay(?).  She had her own office. I got rides from her from Cambridge to Bedford for a short while.  I would take the T to the end of the Red Line.  She was not very talkative.  She did tell me that Iowa State had a top program in statistics.  She was married.  She had a miscarriage during her time at Aerodyne.  There had been a baby shower that I went to.

When I started at Aerodyne, I worked with Alan (?) Stanton.  I was creating a computer program and had a deadline.  I did not meet the deadline but did get a functioning program running a bit later.  Alan seemed like a very badly hurt person as far as women are concerned.  I was not attracted to him.

My supervisor was Ed (?).  He was Dick’s brother-in-law.  He was very hands-off.

Some of the other people I worked for and with were John Schroeder (?), Jack Stearns, and Don Frankel.  The others I worked for and with I do not remember.

There was a man whom I was attracted to but had virtually no contact with, Dave Devore.  I guess he reminded me of David Dressel.  He was in his twenties, I think.  He had his own office.

For quite a while, I gave Larry and a woman named Una a ride to work.  I forget where I picked them up.  Una did not work at Aerodyne.

Larry appeared gay.  I think he had a crush on Dave Devore too.  He gave me a computer printout of a computer-generated drawing of the statue of David by Michelangelo.  Larry, my friend Anne, and I went out discoing once or twice.  Maybe Una came too.

Bob Lyons started working at Aerodyne some time after I started.  I think he was a friend of Larry’s.  They were both physicists.  I asked him out once.  We went to the Oyster House.  I enjoyed myself.  But, going to the Oyster House was it and I was afraid to talk to him afterwards (at work, which is where I saw him).

I went to a few parties put on by Aerodyne people – which I enjoyed.  I really have not gone to many parties in my life.

When I lived in Lexington, I would go to Anne’s apartment (that she shared with her boyfriend – a man named Mark) once a week for supper and games.  (Her family liked playing board and card games, as well as memory games.)  Mark, Anne, and I went to Anne’s and my ten-year high school reunion in the summer of 1979.  The ten-year reunion is the only one I have attended.

Other than the visits, I lived a very isolated life in Lexington.  Once, I asked Washington to see if he could figure out why the battery indicator light had a small amount of light showing when I drove.  He could not find anything wrong.  I took him, and Annika, out to supper.  I was babysitting that night.

In the spring of 1980, I flew to Oregon for a visit.  Mount Helens had just erupted.  I stayed with Mary Chambers for week or so.  I took a few days to take a trip to the Seattle area to see Eugene, who was teaching at a college there.  He had married his girlfriend by then.  I also had lunch with David Dressel.  That was the last time I was in Oregon and the last time I saw Mary, Eugene, or David.  Mary borrowed $500 dollars from me, which was never returned.

Toward the end of my time at Aerodyne, I began working with Don Frankel.  I felt like I fell in love with him.  I had not had a boyfriend or sex for two years and was quite lonely.  None of the guys at Aerodyne had showed any interest in me.  Nothing untoward happened between Don and me – I just felt like I was in love with him.  He was married and older.

I worked for Aerodyne until November of 1980.  Shortly after Reagan was elected, I walked off the job in the middle of the afternoon.  I was working on a computer program and felt like my mind was collapsing again and that something terrible would happen if I stayed.  I had just been given a promotion and pay raise.

I moved home and started looking for work again.

During my time at Aerodyne, I became more and more isolated and paranoid – a pattern that has repeated in my life.  By the end of my time there, I would sleep on a cot in the ladies’ room after lunch – another pattern that repeated a number of times.  

I found out about Recovery (Recovery, Inc., now Recovery International) while working at Aerodyne, probably from Larry.  Or, maybe, as a voice in my head.  I called the Recovery number in the phone book but could not find a meeting I could fit into my schedule.

I also started back to school, to change fields and improve my grade point.  I started taking courses at Northeastern’s Lincoln College in the fall of 1979 – the second and third quarters of calculus, the second and third quarters of FORTRAN, and two quarters of differential equations.  I received a B in the second quarter of FORTRAN and A’s in the other classes.  (My mind crashed during one of the FORTRAN exams – thus the B.) I started at the Boston main campus, but after moving to Lexington, I went to one of the satellite campuses.

The fall of 1980, I started taking courses at Harvard University’s Extension College instead of Northeastern.  The credits were inexpensive and the courses challenging.  I started with introductory statistics and economics courses and a course on the economics of energy.  It was quite a heavy load, which may be part of the reason I left Aerodyne.

In the week after I left Aerodyne, there was an article in the local paper about a Recovery group in Hingham (a town bordering Hull.)  I went to my first Recovery meeting that Friday, I think.  The leader was Pat Schell (?) and she was a very good leader.  Recovery is an organization of persons who have had mental or nervous illnesses and who have been helped by the Recovery method.  The method was developed by Dr. Abraham Low in the 1930’s and 40’s.  The method is a cognitive behavioral method for getting the symptoms of mental or nervous illnesses under control.  We hold weekly meetings – at which we demonstrate the method.  For those whom the method helps, the method and meetings are very effective.  Dr. Low died – in 1954, I think.  His patients and wife kept the meetings going and grew the organization.  I have been a Recovery leader since 1993.

I finished my three courses at the Harvard Extension and decided I would make one more try at trying to be an actress.  I signed up for two classes at a place called The Actor’s Workshop, located in Kenmore Square (by Fenway Park).  One was a speech class, and the other was an acting class.  I also was taking dance classes.  

I remember that Anne and I went to a performance of a play on the Donner Party in a tiny theater in the North End.  My acting teacher was in the play and recommended that we see the performance.  Anne and I were the only people in the audience.  I enjoyed the play – as much as one can enjoy a play on the Donner Party.

I went back to looking for work.  In February of 1981, I found work as a Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  I worked for a man named John McCarthy.  We were born a few days apart – to which I attached significance, since I was born shortly after a south node solar eclipse.  He was born shortly before the eclipse.

The Recovery method emphasizes moving your muscles and doing the thing you fear to do.  My fears are social.  For me, social impulses are associated with terror.  And, as had been true for most of my life, I wanted a romance.

When I started working there, a woman named Ellen Rubinstein (?) was training me.  She was getting ready to leave, to go to graduate school.  A month or two into the job, an American Palestinian man started working.  His name was Mahmoud Haleem.  John had me training him.

Ellen had trained me to run an electron microscope, which was in a special lab and managed by someone responsible for the equipment.  I was told that the microscope was inspected after each use (or something like this) and, after three failed inspections, you could not use the microscope anymore. 

The first time I used the electron microscope by myself, I was written up for leaving the microscope in disarray.  Since I had been very careful, I should have talked to the person responsible for the microscope to find out what the problem was.  However, with my illness, talking to the person would have been very difficult for me.  This happened three times and then I was off the microscope.  I suspected at the time, and the suspicion was probably true, that I was being harassed.

Toward the end of my time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John told me that he had hired me because I had experience with an atomic absorption spectrophotometer.  Aerodyne was closely associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – one of the vice-presidents was the son of Charles Draper.  I wondered for a long time if someone at Aerodyne had helped me get the job.  Maybe not, though – other than a good job recommendation – which I think I got.  But there may have been some co-workers from Aerodyne who were making trouble for me at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  That is what I have assumed for years.  I have even wondered if the problems went back to Peter Gruelich at Boston Survey Consultants.  If I remember correctly, Peter was Buddhist and I suspect Dave Devore was too – I am not sure why.

I did train Mahmoud to run the microscope and he did most of the microscope work.  He was running metals, I believe, through a furnace to deposit very small particles released at high heat on screens that were put in the electron microscope.  The microscope had the capacity to take pictures of the images.  I was responsible for analyzing the images – among other tasks.

Mahmoud and I hit it off.  I do not think I have hit it off with anyone as much, either before or since.  Mahmoud was from Lebanon and was married, but his wife’s parents had taken his wife back to the Middle East – I think because they did not approve of him.  I was just starting to practice the Recovery method then and, in interacting with Mahmoud, I was moving my muscles and doing the thing I feared to do.  Since he was married and loved his wife, I was not interested in getting involved with him – which I told him.  Still, we would go to lunch together most of the time.

There were a few others working on the project in another lab, a man named Bob and a woman whose name I do not remember.  Also, there was a graduate student, Marc Labranche, working in the lab where Mahmoud and I were.  For one summer, we had a female intern working for us.  At one point, she was told to help me in the lab.  I asked her to run a test several times and record the results.  Then I left the lab to do something else.  When I came back, the data she produced looked made up.

Marc asked me if I wanted to go somewhere (I do not remember where) not that long after I started working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  I had a dance class that evening, so I did not accept the invitation.  I was attracted to Marc.

Some time after I started working in Cambridge, I started looking for a place to live.  I found a place with two other women in Belmont (next door to Cambridge.). I was able to take the bus and subway to work, I think.  I also had my car there, I think.  The women were Angela, an older local woman, and Mari, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Angela was a culturally oriented person from Boston, I think.  She had been in a car accident – but had been a dancer before the accident and missed dancing.  I think she was of Italian heritage and had been married to a man of African heritage.  Mari was from Japan.

I think I moved to Belmont in May.  Around that time, I asked Marc out to see a movie.  I think he was somewhat hesitant but accepted.  We saw a movie about slaying a dragon.  The movie was rather boring to me, though I had thought the movie would be interesting.

We had an affair that lasted until September.  I do not remember much about the affair.  I do remember feeling that I was acting like a stereotype of a wanton woman.  I do not know if the feeling was due to Marc’s sense of me or if the feeling was due to my astrological energy in Massachusetts.   I initiated the affair shortly after we started going out.  

I remember going to see a live production of Richard III with Marc.  Also, someone who had studied physics at Reed with me was there at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he invited me a party in Rhode Island – which we went to.  He asked us not to sleep in his parents’ bedroom, but Marc had the two of us go in there, to have sex and I think to sleep.  Early in the relationship, I remember being at some public park and initiating making out with him on the ground.  No one was around, but I am embarrassed about what we did now.

I remember thinking my period was late and telling him.  Marc walked me to a park about a mile from the apartment in Belmont where there was a merry-go-round and swings.  I think we both spun around on the merry-go-round and swung on the swings.  My period came not long after the walk. 

I spent my thirtieth birthday with him.  I had asked him for flowers and champaign.  He got me daisies, I think and some champaign.  We spent the evening at his apartment, I think.

Shortly before we stopped going out, we went to Maine, by way of my parents’ place in Vermont, to climb a mountain.  I believe the mountain was near Rangely Lake and Saddleback Mountain.  The mountain was on the Appalachian Trail.  The hike was a two-day hike.  We had planned to stop at a Appalachian Mountain Club shelter for the night, but we did not make it that far and camped in the woods.  I remember that I had started bleeding and rinsed myself off in a stream.  We slept in a tent, I think.  

The first day, we got to the top of a lower mountain.  The second day, we were going to climb to the top of the mountain we had planned to climb.  We turned back part way up and started hiking to the place where we would exit the area.  (Marc thought we would not have time to get back to the road if we did not turn back.)  I had thought we would be able to get a ride back to Marc’s car because I thought there would be people at the end of the trail off the mountain.  Not so.  We had to hike out a mile or so on a gravel road to get to the highway and hitch a ride (in a semi) back to the parking lot where the car was.

On the drive back to Boston, Marc acted like he was angry.  

We had split expenses evenly during our relationship.  However, for this trip, Marc paid for the gas, I think.  I think the gas was about $10.  Marc was a strongly athletic person – into competitive sports, I think.  I was taking dance classes at that time, so was not in too bad shape.

I remember playing softball with some Massachusetts Institute of Technology people.  I do not remember if Marc was on the team.  I lost the game for the team because I could not field.  The other team kept hitting balls to me.

I remember a party at Marc’s, I think.  We had just started going out together.  His former girlfriend was there.  Marc and his girlfriend had recently split up.

Marc and I never really hit it off.  The sex was good but there was not much of a connection.  He was into a bizarre thing sexually and I did something related to what he did the last time we were together.  After that, he did not speak to me again.  The thing I did did not seem like a big deal to me.  Also, the last time we had sex, when I had an orgasm, I felt like an energy I associate with higher learning (and my family) fell on my consciousness.  Recently, I have had the thought that Marc thought I was stealing the energy – an ethos more associated with his generation than mine.

Marc was the end of my journey into sex, love, and men that was my purpose during my twenties – the culmination of my efforts.  Shortly after he stopped interacting with me, I had my Saturn return – there was only one crossing.

When the acting class finished, both Marc and Mahmoud came to the performance at the end of the class, as did my parents, I think, and Anne.  The skits were filmed, so I saw a film of myself acting.  The teacher had warned us that some people see their performance and never come back to acting.  I did not think that would happen to me, but the film stopped me from any further pursuit of acting.