Press play for some mood music
They didn’t give a flying rat's ass about poetry or jazz. They just wanted to maybe smoke and get drunk. Maybe score some of that good reefer from the new beatnik kid who wanted to be Kerouac.
They were young American girls who thought they knew it all.
They were runaways but would never admit it and, under normal circumstances, would probably be pretty were it not for the vigors of bohemian life like tobacco, booze and certain mild psychedelics.
Being from a big Northeastern city, the two girls were both children of hard-working immigrants and it's pretty safe to assume that the goatees, slang and hipster clothes were lost on their parents, a generation who left their own country to build ours.
Monica, the brunette, insisted everyone call her 'Monique' while the blonde, Yelena, of Russian descent, had to endure the nickname
'Sputnik I' from all of the resident Dobie Gillises around the way.
One night while she was out, Monique's father found books on Buddhism under her bed and when she came home, threatened to throw her out. When she explained that it opened her mind, he opened his wallet, handed his only daughter a fifty dollar bill and called her an evil gypsy. She snatched the money from his trembling hand and never looked back.
Yelena left home quite differently. She began dating a journalist whose scribbled a tad too much about certain 'isms,' which, quite frankly, hit a tad too close to home for Russian expatriates like her parents. When Yelena suggested at the supper table one night that Uncle Sam should start equalizing the playing field a bit more and that men like Henry Ford were the devil incarnate, her parents suggested she enter the world that she knew nothing about.
Sputnik I accepted, grabbed her beret, and embarked on a year-long couch hopping tour.
Yelena's tour ended when her journalist boyfriend's tour in the Vietnamese jungle began. Eventually, she snagged a job as a shopgirl where she would eventually meet her husband, a bank manager from two towns away. It's safe to assume that yes, she would endorse Capitalism.
And what of Monica -- err,
Monique? She would eventually migrate west and couldn't afford to get past Reno. She wasn't complaining, though. As a hat check girl, she paid her bills and met many fine young suitors.
Years passed ad it's funny how times ad those doors of perception change because these two mature women would eventually give those slobs at Woodstock the stink eye.
At this point in their life thousands of miles apart, the jazz of those bohemian nights never sounded better.
Music: 'Bohemian Nights' by Adam Wojtanek. It can be downloaded HERE.
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