My birthday was actually last November, but Christoph said I could arrange my present from him whenever I wanted: a round-trip ticket from Berlin to Lisbon and back! So we both decided it would be best in late spring/early summer and my friend Marc travelled with me in June to visit Christoph and his partner Paolo. They built a wonderful house on the coast south of Lisbon in the lazy, arid area called Meco, complete with swimming pool, lovely gardens around the house, a huge vegetable garden, fruit trees and even a private forest area towards the back of the property.

Marc and I arrived via Palma de Mallorca and Christoph picked us up in a cab and whisked us off to the middle of the city to pick up his car. We flew over the bridge travelling south and when we exited the highway onto the country road, we stopped to take down the convertible top and drove the remainder of the way under the blue sky and fantastic views of the surrounding terrain. We actually stayed in their old bungalow apt. and Christoph and Paolo spent their first nights at their new home. We would eat breakfast and dinner at the old place and spend the days at the new house’s pool. We had fantastic outdoor grilling meals, eating outside only and enjoying delicious Portugese wine and cheese - heavenly!

After three days Christoph drove Marc and I to C / L’s apartment in the city and we spent Friday night in the packed bars and clubs, the night before the Lisbon Gay Pride. The next day we went to the parade, followed it for awhile looking at all the people, taking photos but then we went home to sleep for a disco nap. Later that night we went to Lisbon’s most popular club “Lux Fragile” (that’s owned by John Malkovitch), hanging out in different areas of the two floors and then chilling on one of the many balconies while the sun came up.

The next day we went back to Meco for a day, a last chance to be by the sea, swim in the pool and just the four of us being together. We had drinks at the hip restaurant/ café on the beach and then went to dinner at a local restaurant. The World Cup was happening and everyone was glued to a TV set wherever we went.

The next day we drove back to the city because Christoph and Paolo had organized a soiree for us, to meet some of their gay and lesbian friends in Lisbon. It was great to chat with them and meet other people. Then two friends of theirs whisked me off to an infamously trashy bar/club called “Finalemente” which features a drag show that is so bizarre it defies description. It was so incredibly packed that trying to get anywhere was impossible - even leaving! I was trying my best to leave when suddenly two arms were around me from behind and I turned around to see a Brazilian boy cute as a button who was now wrapped around me. After a bout of kissing we managed to shove our way outside and into a taxi, and speeded off to his apartment. It was the first time I had encountered someone for sex in a very long time and the effect was like clearing away a ton of spider webs. By the time the morning came I hadn’t slept a wink, woke him from his deep slumber to say I was leaving and wandered into the hot Lisbon streets. After trying to find my way by asking people and not understanding a word, getting quite lost in the meantime, I took a cab which went several blocks and I was home. How embarrassing: I was just around the corner from C & L’s apartment and didn’t know it.

I had a couple of hours to get ready for the airport to go home and managed to pack everything in spite of my lack of sleep. I was still walking on clouds from the experience but managed to doze a bit in the plane on the way to Berlin.

It was really really fun to travel and party with Marc and tremendous to spend time with Christoph and Paolo again especially at their new hacienda on the coast. Every time I visit Portugal I love it more and more: the languid days, the sea breeze that cools the hot sunlight, the dry California-coast-like vegetation, the starry, lazy nights hearing the neck bells of the goats in the neighbouring hills.

More photos of the trip are in my Yahoo photo album.

Once again the universe provided and my appreciation is endless. I can’t wait until the next chance to be there!

Not quite sure of where to place this tale of mine: I spontaneously decided to park my words here with an understandable curiosity as to who will eventually read them. I want to tell an abbreviated tale of my life as a hippie. Since I don’t consider being in my 50’s “old” then I cannot consider myself what many refer to as an “old hippie”. Hence my avoidance of that category. I don’t mind categories as long as I have the key to get out.

I am a renaissance man because I am currently undergoing a major souvenir period that has left me with stunning flashbacks of experiences long sequestered to the deepest hard drive of my mind: remembering friends and lovers “some who have long passed away“ reoccurring images of black light posters that once draped my walls, artwork buried in cartons for over 30 years, typing and uploading over 30 years of hand-written poetry and prose; And indeed the internet has played a huge role in my personal renaissance. I am constantly amazed at the memories that I can summon to my monitor, waves of nostalgia with only a mouse click. That’s me: embracing the future.

I grew up mostly in what is now Silicon Valley, in California’s suburban tract home divisions of the Eisenhower 1950’s until 1964 when my family moved about 90 minutes away to the Boulder Creek, California forests for three glorious years. We had a large 3-story swiss chalet on a hill with a view of the Santa Cruz Mountains. For my father, the daily, round-trip work commute to the valley was a killer (which eventually resulted in our move to Arkansas in 1967 for a better job and to get “back to his roots”), but for us kids the California coastline community of Boulder Creek was heaven: creeks, swimming holes, abandoned mountain cabins and the hip, boardwalk surf-city of Santa Cruz down the highway west to the sea. School was the only detrimental factor for me: I was different and I knew it. In 1966 a huge, dilapidated, refurbished old van drove up to the empty house next to ours and our new hippie neighbors moved in. The van even had a sticker on the back that said “Mary Jane Was Right”. I was captivated. I actually would spy on them with my dime store telescope through the blinds of my bedroom window that faced the side of their den of decadence. As expected, the neighborhood was in no mood to tolerate subversives and within a month they were gone. At the next available chance I secretly rushed to get into the now emptied house. Among the trash were two important things for me: a hash pipe that I kept until the mid-70’s and my first copy of EYE magazine. It was a lush eye-opener, in every sense of the term. I read a W.H. Auden poem for the first time. Subsequent issues brought me to the conclusion that art represented for me much more than I had learned in school. Do you remember EYE magazine? Type it into a search engine. An alternative world was waiting for me!

In 1967 Dad announced the plans to move to Batesville, Arkansas. I played “California Girls” over and over and cried for weeks. I had even learned to surf at the beach in Santa Cruz and at 16 would sit in the now legendary Catalyst Café and stare at the beautiful glass ceiling, listen to Jefferson Airplane and observe the exotic life the hippies were embracing. My destiny was set but alas, on hold. Weeks before the move I had nightmares about Arkansas: southern bigotry, racism and school comrades with pants too short - only to arrive in the deep south to find it all true. I was devastated. I somehow made it through high school and after my request to go to the University of California Santa Cruz was rejected by my parents who couldn’t afford it anyway, I ended up at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. Probably my favorite memory of Batesville, Arkansas was seeing the Poultry Festival Queen selection live!

I met Linda and Linda (L & L) at an ASU Jonesboro campus moratorium (demonstration) against Vietnam in 1969. These unique and important anti-war demonstrations were becoming more frequent all over the country but this was a first for the ASU campus. We were about 25 protesters encircled by about 500 onlookers. It was strange. L & L invited me out to their abandoned house where they were squatting with 2 other hippies and I was filled with excitement. Real hippies! My hair was getting long already and this had disqualified me from further participation in the required first-year ROTC (Reserved Officers Training Corps), so I had a bit of resistance pride to share. L & L had previously been staying a day’s drive to the north in Columbia, Missouri and were now visiting a local friend for awhile before setting out to California. In those days, hippies roamed around the USA and the world, having learned travel-networking from the Beats. L & L gave me my first mescaline. I listened to Crosby, Stills and Nash and was reborn. They were my new mothers. Teach your children well. The shell of my suburban upbringing was breaking away rapidly enough. My hidden inner strength and unique identity was now clawing to the surface. We would drive to Memphis, buy some acid and stand in lines filled with multi-colored hippies just as high as us to see Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, CS&N, Pacific Gas & Electric, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Chicago Transit Authority, Cream, Procol Harem, The Moody Blues, Grand Funk Railroad, Santana, Mountain, Pink Floyd… Does anyone remember windowpane or orange sunshine?

It was clear that I couldn’t let my new maternal friends depart to California without me. My parents didn’t take it so well but with a heaping dose of guilt I left anyway. L & L & I took several weeks to drive in my little Corvair across the country, always finding hippies along the way who would help us find a place to sleep. I had a 4-track audio cassette player in the car that roared the psychedelic classics of our day as we wound through the plains, valleys, canyons, deserts and mountains while fleeing westwards. Several times we took side roads in the Nebraska plains in the moonlight, letting the car creep along while we gazed with electric eyes onto the flat fields bathed in the shimmer. “and it stoned me to my soul…” After several times getting completely lost, we regained the route, spent a cool time in Las Vegas and consequently set out seriously westwards. Berkeley, California (on the eastern edge of the San Franciso Bay) was our goal but immediately upon arrival I first drove passed it, directly across the Bay Bridge, through S.F. and out to the sea where I turned off the engine and ran out to greet the Pacific after three long years away. My Corvair never started up again. Dead as a doornail. It was spooky.

Our first goal was to score some Owsley acid (remember Stanley Augustus?) or Sandoz acid (can’t remember anymore which sort we ended up with) and then drive to Mt. Tamalpais (across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco) in Marin County. During the whole journey west L & L had promised me this unique and magical experience. After a successful visit to S.F. and the dealers, we headed the next day up the mountain. We spent a good 15 hours on the west side of Tamalpais, facing the sea, laying on our backs with a magnificent view of the Pacific, feeling the fog’s thick hands sweep over and around us. I was home. It was a religious experience for me. This mountain has provided a profound and spiritual effect for peoples since the dawn of time, towering over the Bay Area fog, inspiring countless songwriters and painters and now it was my turn. The rush of being back ended just a few days later when L & L suddenly decided to depart yet again, this time to take over a Salvation Army from a sick friend in Minneapolis. Such were the restless days when one could just take off with a thumb and a pack “amazing. I was to see one Linda once again in New Orleans in 1971 but that was the end of my motherly tutoring in hippiedom. I was on my own. And the internet has yet to help me find these wonderful women whose last names I’ve forgotten and who systematically helped me break my thin, childhood shell. My Don Juan’s, if you may…

I was still only 18 and now alone. I had met a couple of other cool people in Berkley and camped out with them under bridges on the University of California Berkley campus for a few weeks, singing James Taylor songs at night and carrying our gear onto Telegraph Avenue during the day. This street was the Haight Street of Berkeley and full of head shops, hippies and cafés. We would hide our drugs behind selected posters on the street. I went to every protest, every free concert, and many concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore West venue (Spirit, The Grateful Dead, Steve Miller, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Youngbloods, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, The Jefferson Airplane!) until I ran out of money and had to look for work. I landed a job at the famous CO-OP supermarket on the corner of Telegraph and Shattuck avenues, met three Jewish girls from New York City and moved in with them. Nights and days with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds instead of TV, listening to Tommy over and over and over again, driving into the Berkley Hills during the dark, foggy nights, reaching to touch the Nuclear Center’s Cyclotron in the pre-dawn darkness and running in fear as all the lights around the research center promptly went off. Totally high on acid, this was pure fright. After we successfully made it home that early morning without being noticed by any authorities, I found out days later that the night lights at the Nuclear Center automatically go off at that precise time everyday! Nevertheless, I can definitely say that after what seems like hundreds of psychedelic experiences I never had a bad trip.

I eventually got my own apartment in Berkeley, met some other cool hippie Italians from New York and we all moved to the woody town of San Anselmo in Marin County (across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Franciso and at the foot of Mt. Tamalpais) where we set up our own little commune. It was like Boulder Creek all over again. I worked in a health food store, walked all over Mt. Tamalpais, went to concert after concert and learned how to cook from my culinary-skilled Italian roommates. I wrote a lot of poetry and created many graphic designs, calendars and paintings. Marin was just about the hippest place to be at that time. I listened to Seals & Crofts, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Steven Stills, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix. I had a poster of George Harrison next to those of Huey Newton, Desiderata, the constellations, Alice In Wonderland, The Furry Freak Brothers…

And then I finally came out to the world as a gay man. This was definitely to the relief of my straight friends who I found out were counting the days! My sexual preference mode was no longer to be left under lock and key in the closet. It wasn’t the last step but rather the last big one in my awakening stage. I met Sam from Bolinas (on the coast in Marin County) and on weekends we would drive to San Francisco to hook up with another friend Mikal for fun-filled outings like I had never dreamed of. Some of the most outstanding memories were the last Cockettes shows, everyone in drag (including ourselves), everyone on Quaaludes (the designer drug of the èpoque) and then landing in an after-hours disco sweating the make-up off while dancing to Sylvester’s disco anthems. Within a matter of months Sam and I joined Mikal and moved to “The City”: the three of us transforming our Haight district flat into the now infamous “Ashbury Fastnessâ”, which later became the headquarters of the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence during the 1980’s. I worked the night shift in the Cala Foods market on California & Hyde, just above Polk Street, cut my hair off and became a familiar figure in the roaring S.F. gay scene. Party, party, party, Sex, sex, sex and zillions of quaaludes. I would regularly pass Peter Berlin on my way to work, and roamed the baths and bars south of Market Street. I fell in love, discovered the mystic jewel of Big Sur and the delicious perversion on the banks of the Russian River. But my future career reared its head and by the mid-70’s I was well on my way to becoming a classical ballet dancer: a 20+ year career I had to give up in the early 90’s when age dictated what my body could deliver.

My dance career brought me first to the East Coast via Connecticut Ballet in New Haven, two years studying in New York City, a year with the Saarbrücken Ballet in Germany and then to Paris where my self-expression again blossomed and I began lessons in becoming a European. With the ballet company there I was able to travel to exotic world destinations on tour and even spent long periods in French Guyana (in South America) teaching dance workshops. I had become an athlete and body consciousness/awareness filled my days. The new wave music of the 80’s also became my passion and its electronic fusion was amazing! Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard became for me the voice and musical prophet of the decade. I went to countless concerts and taped music like crazy. The 80’s represented a musical insurgence for me, as the wind is always blowing new ideas my way. The decade of warm Paris nights on the Seine, the romanticism and deep friendships seemed as if it would never end. But as perfect as Paris was - secreting its passion and beauty for my helplessly sentimental inclinations - the strain and stress of trying to survive in the overbearingly expensive French capital were wearing me down. It took only one visit to Berlin to convince me where I was to go next. The club scene, the gay scene, the Loveparade: it was tolerance like I hadn’t seen in years and I was delighted. Party, party, party. Sex, sex, sex and zillions of ecstasys. I shared a huge loft with Christoph and we spent the glorious 90’s in a cloud of parties and drugs: me working nights in the top clubs of Berlin and Christoph acting and directing for German TV and films. I embraced what have become very dear friends and treasure them for their support and belief in my mid-life directions. I fell in love and out again. As all things must pass, eventually the fast lane luckily threw me off to the side of the road, leaving the night scene behind and leading me to office jobs in the electronic music industry. Now I’m able to express myself through writing which has always been my passion, and combine this with music - another vibrant passion.

Now decades and two countries later, I realize that cutting my hair eons ago symbolized nothing other than a cosmetic change. Ten years in France and many more in Germany have only enhanced my cultural roots. 1983-2008: 25 years being a European. The creative ideals, the spirituality, the tolerance and the awareness that I reaped from my hippie experience are alive and well in my soul today. My mind-blowing experience at 18 of eating hashish and then being served tandoori chicken holds equal importance for me as that of seeing my brother’s first steps or the elation of my first home garage dance at 14. Maybe I feel proud to have spent my hippie internship soaking up new ideals and simply learning what could never have been given to me in schools, instead of just blindly following the “norm”. Learning the importance of grains. Learning recycling. Learning yoga breathing and meditation as a young man, and discovering what beauty really is. Learning that we are all one. And since my first class in 1970, I still practice yoga daily. Learning how to learn.

If you have made it this far, hats off. Musically, hippie Jerome has since then bashed through stages of soul, rock, punk, new wave, gothic, new romantic, electro pop, house and techno, where I currently find myself banging around. Some of my texts and voice even appear on a few techno tracks from Berlin where I live, in the form of a electronic music project with DJ Wimpy: the hottest adult electro dance pop around - Revolver Jesus. After having recently finished converting all of my taped music to MP3’s, my audio library bulges at over 100GB. Music is my life.

And then occasionally I still dream of Big Sur, a true mecca for me. I will always somehow return to that mystical, enchanting oasis on the California coast, sitting on a cliff with Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” between my ears. And sometimes now when closing my eyes while listening to the trance-rendering vibes of electronic dance music, I am carried back to the Fillmore West and tripping the light fantastic…