Home, I appropriate our slide projector. We’ve abandoned the slide shows of masterpieces anyway, and I experiment with methods of creating light shows of my own. How can I get those pulsing organic shapes? Watercolors, crayons, Jell-O, and Saran Wrap? I make stabs at synchronization with my new records (the Mamas and the Papas, the Association)—and considerable messes.

Tom sleeps over at my house one night, and when it’s time for bed he strips to his underpants, which look especially white beside his tanned belly. He sleeps with the sheet pulled across his midriff, so that his nipples are exposed. When my eyes are accustomed to the darkness, when I think he’s sleeping, I watch him. But then I see his eyes open a little, he knows I’m watching, so I quickly force myself to close my eyes. Soon our friendship cools.

On a trip to Los Angeles, given some money and time on my own at the Topanga Canyon Mall, I return to rendezvous with my parents with purchases which startle even myself: a pair of brown plaid pants with flared bottoms, a cream-colored turtleneck, and a thick brown belt of notable width. The remarkable thing is that I have not only purchased these items for myself, but am wearing them. I’ve even combed my hair down from the imprisonment of its rigid wave into bangs. One moment I’m my regular, buttoned-up self, and then I emerge from the dressing room in the department store and say, “I’ll take these; I’m going to wear them.” Suddenly I’m aware that no one around me knows what I used to look like; they can only see me as I am now, this kid in his new outfit, with an obvious flair for style. So that I must entirely startle my parents, appearing as I do beside the shopping mall’s tropic waterfall at the appointed time, incarnation of the new.

I love Petula Clark singing “Downtown.” Pet, they call her on the radio, but I prefer Petula, with its aura of another country, another life. She sounds both young and wise at once, but when she appears on The Ed Sullivan Show—in a short black dress with a lace collar, standing perfectly still but sometimes swinging her arms from side to side in a carefully planned movement, tilting her head just so at the right passage in the lyric—you can see she’s been around enough to earn the right to give advice.

The tune is cheerful, but marked by the recognition of struggle, as the very first words explain:

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely

You can always go—Downtown.

When you’ve got worries all the noise and the hurry

Seems to help I know—Downtown.