Craig Kurtz: “Whatever Turns You On...”

I got to know Tweed pretty well around my sixth year at Twin Oaks. After his closest friend Cordouroy left and he stopped canoeing with Mollusk, I remained just about the only guy (outside his remaining chronological peers) sharing his age range, and certain common cultural characteristics. That meant he knew me well enough to confide his less-than-evolved social positions (when outside of community eavesdropping) but didn’t know me well enough to anticipate every single utterance I might make. We liked sharing reminiscences of our former wives in our lives led previous to joining Twin Oaks, for example, but, once in a while, he was willing to dust off some tantalizing anecdote about earlier events at Twin Oaks, and the entertaining folly of some of its more illustrious personages.

It was a magnanimous autumn Saturday morning and we were stationed by ourselves in the Hammock Shop, me macraméing hammock harnesses and Tweed, across the room, weaving a hammock bed. We arrived at musical consensus with a classic Pat Methany LP. Since this particular Saturday inaugurated the beginning of a new visitor period, we anticipated two inexorable events in the socially bereft life of Twin Oaks: (1) the usual (monthly) ‘Saturday Visitor Tour’ going through the Hammock Shop as the new round of communitarian applicants were paraded through the ‘town’ getting acquainted with their potential new home, and, about an hour later, (2) the traditional 3-hour weekly ‘Saturday Tour’ provided, $5 a head, for regional curiosity seekers and potential visitors. Both tours were ideologically-charged indoctrination showstoppers given by the more upstanding — and theatrically-disposed — community members. Of course, a patriotic love of speechifying the virtues of communitarian life was one appeal of these honored positions; another appeal was to gain earliest acquaintance with and access to any impressionable young ladies who may later enter into community membership. Early bird gets the worm. Therefore these two plum positions were almost invariably manned by senior members Wortley — the resident ‘hammock guru’ and pagan enthusiast — for the former, and Barnum — the Recruitment Officer and ‘polyamorous Ph.D.’ — for the latter.

It merits mentioning that Tweed and myself, unavailing old rakes, were adventitiously stationed where we vicariously expected to gain an eyeful of the latest talent ourselves. This presented a dubious and compromised enjoyment nevertheless since the anticipated eyeful would inevitably be accompanied by the scripted monologuing of those two insufferably pompous fops Wortley and Barnum. At this point Wortley — with his unaltering costume of white colonial hair, hand-embroidered alpaca vest, Birkenstocks and denim bell-bottoms practically petrified since 1976 (when he first joined Twin Oaks) — was the sole granite physiognomy of Mount Rushmore still enslaved by a teenager’s sense of romantic love-making; his courtship rituals of full moon perambulations and Beltane pole genuflections — not to mention Fleetwood Mac long-players simmering on low volume — were, if not charming, charmingly formalized. Barnum, by strong contrast, was a speedier, louder, worldly radical; eternally dressed in retrograde (and slept-in) pastel Polo shirts which belied his trust fund origins, he was a ‘famous anarchist’ according to his (putatively self-penned) Wikipedia page. This weed-puffing huckster made his pitch with hyperlink alacrity — opting instead to whip out one of his multitudinous self-penned Fingerbook How-To Guides on polyamory (‘translated in 10 languages’) by way of introduction. What a swell. Some 10 years’ Wortley’s junior, Barnum had joined Twin Oaks only in 1998 (a mere few months before Kat bitterly repudiated Twin Oaks in the Washington Post Magazine).

The Wortley-Barnum dynamic publically projected itself as a brotherly union of two generations of aging hippie roués exchanging and observing cooperative harmony, negotiating tricky psychosexual territorial claims with respect and honor, although legend had it their initial introduction proved (within the bounds of communitarian propriety) somewhat uncertain, at least on Wortley’s side. He was known to have made the (now legendary) comment to Barnum — during Barnum’s visitor period (in which he auditioned for his place at the community table) — that “Guys like you usually don’t get in at Twin Oaks.” That didn’t sound especially brotherly — but it explained certain indelicacies of covert competitive behavior occasionally witnessed between these two sensitive New Age alpha-males. As Tweed and I often observed, Wortley, with his tea candles and Tusk deep cuts, usually lost out to the less refined love moves (and ubiquitous bag of grass) employed by Barnum. Scarce social resources don’t always produce the cooperative behavior lauded in the ‘brochures.’ “What was it like when Barnum was a visitor and Wortley was a senior member?” I inquired of Tweed, knowing, from conversations past, that back then Tweed was a hands-on community administrator, and power (since retired). “Well, it was a trip,” he replied, adding: “but their story, and relationship, doesn’t add up unless you add the other visitor Barnum came with. And that was Cleopatra.”

Wow. Cleopatra as a visitor. Considering that she practically runs the entire tiny kingdom — often saving Barnum’s precipitous ass (from the ‘principled’ machinations of court rival Soy) — it boggles the imagination to envision Cleopatra in any position resembling the extended subordination expected of and required from a visitor applying for new member peasanthood at Twin Oaks. “Well, she wasn’t Cleopatra back then. Whatever her real name, she came in as Venus.” And naked as the namesake Venus was, this Venus was born without the fear-inducing clipboard she now wields.

“Oh Tweed, do be a good fellow and tell me all about it.”

As Tweed told the tale, it was the June 1998 visitor period, the most beauteous month at the rural hippie farm — and, with the recently-launched Women’s Gathering ($100 for 3 days and 2 nights campground accessibility, meals and entertainment), one of the most communally festive. He was the senior Planner, and he was one of the three members of the CMT (Community Membership Team), the group of Twin Oakers most responsible for greeting, and superintending the interviews of, the new applicants for membership. His other auditors in this office were Mary-Shelley — an aggressive, fun-loving lady — and, coming near the end of her time at (and patience for) Twin Oaks, the sole extant founder, Kat (Kinkade). This was not an office Kat especially relished but, having served out her two Planner terms (unhappily at that), it was one of few areas of authority still open to her. It was thought, or hoped anyway, by some members at large, that Kat’s status as an intentionally single (determinedly asexual) communard would help repair previous confidence lapses of psychosexual etiquette in this sensitive office — as well as temper the reputations of her two coadjutors for taking advantage of the tender new arrivals (as scuttlebutt asserted). ‘Power imbalances’ was the term recently popularized into radical consciousness.

In fine, Tweed and Mary-Shelley both were known as community wolves in an era (post-Lewinsky) where Twin Oaks was beginning to take ‘Wolfing’ (attempting to seduce visitors) more seriously than in the past; in fact, there was a groundswell of community support — led by veteran feminist members Soy and Echinacea and promulgated passionately on O&I (Opinions and Information) Papers by ‘Third Wave’ new members Vinegar and Salsa — to disbar proven offenders from any positions of authority, such as Managerships. Right on! (There had also been a whole weirdness regarding the contested ‘consensual relations’ between Yippie, a 30-something man, already of poor community standing, and Dandelion, a 14-year old girl born and raised at Twin Oaks prompting community divisiveness 6 months prior.) According to Tweed, ‘the problem’ was primarily a personal issue of Vinegar’s own well-documented oversensitivities and insecurities, having nothing to do with Tweed’s proclivities for ‘meeting new people’ or Mary-Shelley’s healthy premenopausal libido. Salsa, the sensitive artist responsible for cranking out the dozens of ‘therapeutic’ clay masks that still inhabit public spaces around the community to this day, generally acquiesced to Vinegar’s dominating personality. New, younger additions to the communitarian sisterhood, the (recently) lesbian lovers Nutmeg and Belladonna — backed up staunchly by Soy — also begged to differ. Indeed, at this point in time (as the famous New York Times Magazine article about Twin Oaks emphasized), most of Twin Oaks’ members were in their 40s, prompting generalized concerns about the continued relevance of the egalitarian movement’s future success; if revolutionary Xers were to be attracted to communitarian life, then communitarian life — with its entrenched seniority system — perhaps needed, if not some revolutionizing, then at least some updating.

This is where Barnum and Venus came blazing in. With a timing that truly earned him his ‘ironic’ moniker, Barnum arrived right as the current issue of Time magazine featured a photograph of him getting hauled away — limp as Christ on the cross — by a platoon of riot police at an anti-nuke action in Denmark the week before. Indeed, he had been arrested at demonstrations all over the globe for a variety of right on causes — sponsored by Greenpeace, Amnesty International and other worthy leftist organizations — and, with a media baron’s savvy, released on (eternally availing) bail just as readily. Abbie Hoffman with frequent flyer miles. Ever alert to self-promotional opportunities, he quickly located the community ‘Grabs Table’ at the main dining hall (and community center) Zhankoye and colonized it with several copies of his Fingerbook How-To Guide on polyamory (‘translated in 10 languages’). Meanwhile, Venus — with her golden tresses, Norwegian accent and otherworldly bosom — was self-possessedly regal, exuding a hypertrophied elegance right out of Balzac’s The Duchesse de Langeais. Only hippiefied. Barnum, between exchanging esoteric leers with her, was always on, ever up, absolutely down with it and, upon his arrival at Twin Oaks, launched into one of his interminable spiels about anarchism, ‘Authentic Relating’ and polyamory: “Anarchism is the ultimate intellectual and ethical high wire act without a net. It starts with rejecting the principle political institutions and dominant paradigms — but to get very far you need to build something. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the extant political models is the idea that you do not have to possess things exclusively. Now, feminism is about sharing power, training people to listen, helping the quiet find voice, flattening hierarchy and finding consensus — this is the beginning of building justice.” And on and on, all delivered with the smiling wattage of Tom Cruise, much to the palpable edification of most of the spellbound communards gathered around the tree-sheltered picnic table outside the main dining hall, Zhankoye. Perhaps Wortley, stroking his stiff white goatee, looked a tiny bit unsupportive. Venus, for her part, was all abuzz about the Annual Women’s Gathering that Twin Oaks hosted on the periphery of its main campus every summer and was ‘excited’ to bring to its participants her excitement for the Vagina Monologues. Then as now, she spoke about 10 words for every 100 Barnum broadcasted, receiving 10 times the attention.

Then, there were the other visitors. They definitely lacked the glamour of Barnum and Venus. There was Dude who should have been an item of interest — and was, initially — because he was African-American (a traditionally treasured acquisition for hippie communities) but, alas, his low-energy schizophrenia — manifesting itself primarily in improbably-escalating virtue-signaling fibs; usually regarding his coincidence-upending familiarity with superstar radicals — quickly became tedious and pathetic. He was a drag. Not much better was Shaman, of Indian descent, whose over the top projection of masculine entitlement — and his gleaming groovy attire, all acquired within the last week (from Benetton most likely) — and inability to be actually understood while endlessly discoursing upon his expectations and requirements for a “worthwhile visit” made him instantaneously persona non grata, however much that frazzled the consciences of all the post-colonial white guilt liberals sheepishly avoiding him at the community ‘fun table.’ A total buzz-kill. Even worse was Mildred, some little old lady out of the benighted Midwest (a ‘Reagan Democrat’ no doubt), who required mobility assistance with her manual wheelchair utterly unsuited for this very handicapped inaccessible ‘ecovillage’ in the forest. Not only did she raise the major inconvenience of making guilty liberals feel directly guilty, but she also exhibited Not OK habits such as concealing warm Budweisers under her wheelchair covering, from which she would take little public sips mid-conversation without ever deigning to share her conspicuous consumption with communards too impoverished to sip such establishment beverages. Then, of course, someone (usually Mary-Shelley) delegating the task to a new member (usually Salsa) had to be inveigled into helping her to the awkwardly open unisex bathrooms. In a word, uncomfortable.

Barnum immediately mounted a hearts and mind campaign truly worthy of his namesake. Over in Compost Café (a piteous little shack behind the compost vat which provided the sole authorized spot for cigarette smoking), he held court with his indefatigable bag of grass and equally indefatigable supply of revolutionary blather: “Radical spirituality is all about sharing the planet with all of its life forms and respecting their rights. As pagans, we seek to build relevant rituals. We explore how to move symbols and create meaning. This is the reclaiming of magic from the scientists and spirituality from the church. These are the critical extensions of our language and culture we need to evolve.” Right on! Like all experienced leftists, he always spoke in some indistinct but inspiring plural. Nutmeg and Belladonna, nodding their green and pink dreadlocks rapturously, sure were impressed. Even Vinegar, a cynically intellectual community-college dropout ‘fed up with the patriarchy,’ was warming up to his rakish charms, Salsa unhesitantly following suit. Not that Barnum didn’t do the work (required of all visitors to be eligible for membership) — smilingly, 36 hours a week (the minimum labor quota expected of visitors) he chopped vegetables, washed dishes, scrubbed tofu tanks and learned to weave hammocks. This latter activity — then the single-biggest income area at Twin Oaks — placed him in direct contact with the resident ‘hammock guru,’ enjoying his recent promotion to Hammock Shop Manager, who, to an initiated observer such as Tweed, noticed Wortley became more solemn and exacting in his hammock-weaving tutelage than usual. Nevertheless, Barnum was a pro in the fine art of community ingratiation — whipping out a top-of-the-line portable Sony, model TC-D5, industry-standard for bootleg recordings, and presenting for the maestro’s approval, a super-rare boot of Dylan and the Dead in Oakland performing “Visions of Johanna” in its solitary only-known public performance. “Hey, whatever turns you on … turns me on, too,” Wortley said (exhaling peanut-butter and granola breath), one of his stock feel-good phrases. Instant solidarity!

Or so it would seem. Wortley, during this particular era of Twin Oaks — the ideologically and economically fragile interstice between Kat’s dissipating sovereignty and the attempted replacement of the previously-sustaining Pier One annual production contract (for cheap, polypropylene lawn hammocks), along with it its laid-back Boomer labor force, with an independent hammock business model and the subsequent hegemony of Cleopatra and Barnum’s internet recruitment tactics with its new order of tofu mass manufacture for Whole Foods during its Amazon acquisition (necessitating a young, buff surplus labor army) — was at the undisputed apotheosis of his (then) 22-year membership. Initially Wortley was every bit the awkward, bashful, soft-skinned innocent that he appeared to be — another aimless middle-class pot-smoking longhair of the Me Decade, too young to have been galvanized by Vietnam and too old for the street theatrics of anti-nuke actions. He grew into his entire persona at, and through, Twin Oaks. Somewhere after mastering hammock-making to an extent never before exhibited at Twin Oaks, he started to scale the tallest trees in the kingdom (using all the proper safety equipment of course) like no one had ever witnessed before and, lastly, he grew into mastering love-making like one of the exalted yoni-tappers of the Kama Sutra. Far out! But the impertinent, fast-talking, no-nuking, polyamorous Time magazine celebrity injected into this slow-moving insular little society, mystical witch at his side, seemingly threatened the entire mythological edifice Wortley had labored so long and so hard to earn.

On the other hand, Wortley’s initial impressions of the golden-tressed, Norwegian-accented, otherworldly bosomed Venus were considerably more sanguine, and he patiently taught her the ‘finer points’ of hammock-making, of which she proved to be a ‘natural.’ Rumours at low volume. He then gallantly offered to escort her around Twin Oaks’ more sacred vistas in the magic forest where he knew every single tree by its sacred name. He was enchanted with Venus’ passion — including her passion for the Vagina Monologues. She was committed to bringing that exercise in female empowerment to the annual Women’s Gathering, happening concurrently with the June visitor period, to which she donated tirelessly her organizational genius (a preview of the clipboard-brandishing Cleopatra of the future). As she breathlessly uttered, “My favorite monologue is ‘Because He Liked to Look at It,’ the one that starts with ‘This is how I came to love my vagina.’ I know some uptight dykes criticize that one because, supposedly, the agency of acceptance comes from a man, but, as I see it, it’s crucial to emphasize the community of vagina-love and that’s where a man can play an important supporting role in venerating the goddess power. Men can never truly understand the vagina but they can become vagina allies.” Of course, Wortley lost little time in declaring, “Whatever turns you on … turns me on, too.” It was at this tender moment Venus assured Wortley that, due to her polyamorous pagan ‘agreements’ with Barnum that, however ‘open’ she was to ‘exploring’ new polyamorous pagan ‘agreements,’ she could never consider joining Twin Oaks without Barnum.

Therefore Barnum was an act of nature in Wortley’s world at this moment. One minute they were the best of buds, grooving together to Jerry’s existential solo on “Visions of Johanna” and, the next, tersely eyeball-to-eyeball whenever Wortley pontificated intensely on the fine-tuning necessary to perform an acceptable hammock weave. Up and down, back and forth. Around the 2-week mark of the visitor period, over dinner at one of the outside Zhankoye picnic tables — sequestered under a majestic pair of elms united in New Age matrimony by a hand-crafted artisan double hammock of Wortley’s ingenious design — communards gathered to hear Barnum explicating, “Before that, I taught a class on revolution. I have been arrested, demonstrating, in 12 countries on 3 continents. I worked with anti-nuclear groups against the most powerful corporations, and I was constantly reminding them that it was groups exactly like ours which had stopped reactors around the world. As papa Chomsky so well put it: I am in the hope business.” Papa Chomsky. Suddenly Wortley slacked his tree-climbing line from above everyone’s heads and gracefully descended to earth, not unlike Batman in the second Tim Burton movie, and (exhaling his peanut-butter and granola breath like a superpower) announced to everyone’s amazement, “You know, Barnum, its guys like you who usually don’t get accepted at Twin Oaks.” Crickets thereupon became audible.

The membership process (and Twin Oaks ‘Process’ involves a convoluted maze of mirrors hippie-rigged from a million community compromises over the decades) was the most idiosyncratic manifestation of direct democracy implemented at Twin Oaks. Unlike every other decision-making protocol — an autocratic model of centralized, proprietary democracy limned from B.F. Skinner’s 1948 utopian novel Walden Two — ‘community input’ on visitor bids of membership permitted the tiniest minority to veto membership acceptance; even if 25 members ‘voted’ yes, a scant dissenting 3 could reject the applicant outright. The rationale was: “We have to be careful about who we’re going to be living with because what a hassle it is to get rid of a full member.” Barnum’s onboarding margin was razor-thin and the transparent implication that Wortley held at least one reject firmly in hand imperiled Barnum’s ability to “be the change he wanted to see at Twin Oaks” (as he advertised his intention). And what did Mary-Shelley and Tweed make of the brash upstart? According to Tweed’s recollection, they were ambivalent towards both Barnum and Cleopatra’s combined charisma and sensuality shtick — perhaps even psychically prehending their combined ability to seize the unmentionable but perceptible throne of power at Twin Oaks. Kat seemed transparently negative, especially after Barnum, ever conjuring self-promotional stunts, proposed (presumably monogamous) marriage to her, reasoning (with cheeky éclat) that their nuptials would provoke from combined family, friends and ex-members an outpouring of practical household appliances sorely needed at the threadbare commune subsisting under the state poverty line. Regarding Venus, Kat muttered confidentially, “Does she ever stop talking about her vagina, or what?”

At the 3-week point in the visitor period, there was a community weirdness. Barnum posted a 3x5 notice on the ‘Today Board’ asking if “anybody saw” his top-of-the-line portable Sony, the industry-standard for bootleg recordings, model TC-D5, gifted to him by his brother, the drummer in Devo. This proved tricky business for Tweed in particular, as he was, in addition to his Planner ship and CMT duties, the senior-most member of the judicial arm of Twin Oaks’ bylaws and norms, the Process Team. (Bundled offices, the overlapping of key positions of authority and decision-making monopolies by an elite corps of administrative civic leaders, is the primary reason the ostensively ‘non-hierarchal, egalitarian’ community operates like an aristocratic bureaucracy.) A considerable source of communitarian honor and patriotic pride, thefts were (publically) reputed to (almost) never happen at Twin Oaks; they merited one of the few instances in which, proven conclusively, the proven offender could be peremptorily expelled. Additionally, this particular accusation carried undesirable ideological freight due to the unanimous community consensus that, in all probability, since the scene of the crime was the visitor cabin Aurora, the most likely suspects were the other visitors — all of whom represented demographics of marginalized minorities romanticized and beloved by good liberals and leftists.

Tweed and Mary-Shelley dutifully approached each of the other visitors, individually and discreetly. Game theory time. Dude went off on a tangent about how he once had lunch at the Watergate Hotel with Anita Hill; the only thing he knew about expensive tape recorders were that “They’re everywhere, man.” Shaman, on the other hand, was gratified to finally get the opportunity to “speak up” about his “reasonable demands” for (1) a larger accommodation, because he had “spiritual needs” that were “oppressed” by having to stay in a “shitty little room like this” and also wondering (2) where were “all the attractive single women” being “denied” him? Wow. And Mildred, obdurately brushing aside that irrelevant subject, requested either Tweed or Mary-Shelley give her wheelchair a push up to Zhankoye so she could see if “dinner was gonna be decent, or whether I gotta make other plans.” Domino’s delivery to an Appalachian backwater such as Louisa, Virginia didn’t faze her budget one iota. It was pretty well decided on the spot that all 3 of these losers wouldn’t even need to receive ‘community input’ for their membership applications — by summary executive fiat, they were out. For her part, Kat scrupulously shunned them throughout their visitor period and, once being approached by Dude who wished to convey a personal message from Angela Davis, even feigned not being a Twin Oaks member.

As it turned out, Barnum’s expensive play toy appeared, right back in Aurora’s living room where it disappeared, the day of the visitor period’s farewell party. Visitor parties are a time-honored tradition at Twin Oaks — the deal being, the CMT, representing the collective consensus of the community, suggests to the visitors that, in appreciation for being hosted at Twin Oaks (and performing much of the low-skill manual labor the community eschews doing itself), the visitors will pony up the party supplies to make a memorable sendoff. Barnum to the rescue! Although it is (formally) requested of all visitors to avoid conspicuous consumption, such as spending more than the average member has in a 3-week period (a paltry $50), take note Mildred, latitude was permitted for Barnum to credit-card up a gigantic silo of Jack Daniels to accompany his indefatigable bag of weed. Mildred was gifted her own personal six pack of warm Budweisers tucked into her lap. Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream was purchased in consideration for the sober members of Twin Oaks (such as the unpledged delegates Soy, Echinacea and Kat). Some of the best Dead shows ever bootlegged in Amsterdam regaled the party-goers with good vibrations (although Vinegar, as she became increasingly inebriated, demanded Little Plastic Castle instead).

Additionally, Twin Oaks had the pleasure of hearing Venus extrapolate on a topic other than her vagina. As she said at the party, “I like to say that there is nowhere I feel as free to be me than at the Women’s Gathering. Part of what inspires this is my memory of the last summer before my boobs came in: I was going topless at any possible opportunity. I mourned the huge loss of freedom coming my way, knowing it was going to be the last time ever in my life I would be able to walk around without a shirt on. I was so mad. And sad. And determined to do it all the time while I still could. The Women’s Gathering has given me that going topless freedom again. I found myself walking around shirtless as much as I could, but this time with joy, not with sadness. For me the true freedom doesn’t lie in being able to go topless, even though that is very powerfully sacred to me. The deeper truer freedom lies in being able to forget about it.” Can you relate? As Dude interjected, that was more or less what Maya Angelou once said to him at Columbia University.

So, I asked Tweed, what were the results of the ‘community input’ on visitors Barnum and Venus? Did anyone veto them? I mean, there’s nothing really ‘top secret’ about it anymore, or is there? Did Soy veto them? That would figure, I reasoned, since Soy, ever since I lived at Twin Oaks, attempted to block, sabotage or at least ‘have concerns about’ every and any entitled power play attempted by Cleopatra and Barnum, then vociferously seconded by their various assorted proxies (usually recipients of Barnum’s marijuana largesse). “No,” Tweed recalled, “Soy stayed out of it and, with her, all the other official feminists. There was only one veto — and that was Kat.” Oh really? I wondered. “Well, Kat was always opposed to the Women’s Gathering. She was offended by all that ‘bra-burning crap’ as she put it. The Vagina Monologues really did it for her, regarding Venus.” And what about Barnum? Did she veto him, too? I mean, Barnum has made such a major hype about his supposed ‘crush on Kat’ in all of his indefatigable blog postings, (especially after Kat died and couldn’t contradict whatever story he might spin). “Oh, Kat vetoed Barnum, alright,” he said. “Her thinking was, ‘What sort of polyamorous expert proposes straight marriage to a middle-aged lady? He’s obviously phony as a three-dollar bill.’”

And what about the (temporary) theft of the top-of-the-line portable Sony, the industry-standard for bootleg recordings, model TC-D5, gifted to him by his brother, the drummer in Devo? “Oh, that wasn’t the real issue there; how could the Process Team prosecute a theft when the stolen object got returned soon after, safely in one piece? It wasn’t until much later it was discovered what constituted the actual robbery — that would be the super-rare boot of Dylan and Dead in Oakland performing ‘Visions of Johanna’ in its solitary only-known performance. It was the soundboard master tape of that performance inside the recording deck that was missing when the recording deck reappeared in Aurora. Barnum only mentioned that about a year later, when he and Venus were already installed at Twin Oaks and swiftly moving up the royal hierarchy. Of course he didn’t give a damn about the tape — he actually couldn’t stand the Dead — but I was fairly interested in discovering who was the culprit.”

“Ah, Jesus Christ, Tweed” I said, “if you know what happened, please stop torturing me and get to the climax.”

“The climax,” he grinned complacently. “Yes, I’ll get to it. As it turned out, Aesop was a major Deadhead — still is, I suppose — so he was totally stoked to see on the community ‘Grabs Table’ one day a Maxell cassette that said ‘d&d oakland.’ He knew that wasn’t Dungeons and Dragons, which was actually pretty popular at Twin Oaks around that time. Anyway — he had a K shift that night, cleaning up after dinner, so he popped the tape into the Zhankoye sound system and cued it up. It was, indeed, the super-rare boot of Dylan and Dead in Oakland. Very groovy. Amazing sonic clarity. And right as Dylan started singing ‘Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet,’ suddenly the sound switches and there’s a bunch of lo-fi muffled moaning and groaning instead of music. What follows is the voice of Venus saying ‘Yes yes, bite my clitoris, put it between your teeth’ and then there’s some shuffling around noises and right before Aesop was about to pull the tape out of the sound system, all bummed out, everybody in the kitchen hears ‘Mghrm … whatever turns you on … turns me on, too.’ Yeah, the fuckin’ tape was ruined.”