John likes living in the cave.
He started bunking with Starshine, but one night snuggled up with a runaway from New Jersey named Comet (presumably after the celestial phenomenon, not the household cleaner) and, as they were virtually indistinguishable, he didn’t care.
It’s just better than home.
The commune is a family in its own way, something John doesn’t have a lot of experience with. They sit down to meals together, they talk together, they do common chores.
John’s parents barely know that he no longer lives at home. He comes back every two or three days and leaves little traces of his existence, says hello to whichever parent is there at the moment, grabs a few clothes, maybe some food, and then goes back to the cave. His father is mostly living up in L.A. now, anyway, his mother is consumed with the details of the impending divorce, and it’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy.
John smokes grass, partakes in a little hash, but the LSD trips scare him.
“You lose control,” he tells Doc.
“You lose it to find it,” Doc says cryptically.
No thanks, John thinks, because he’s had to talk people down from their trips, or sit there during tedious acid sessions while people freak out and Doc reads from The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Other than that, there’s nothing for a fourteen-year-old boy not to love living in the cave that summer. He goes down to the beach, Doc lends him a board to take out. He hangs out with the surfers and the hippies and gets high. He goes back to the cave and one of the hippie girls cuts him in on the free love buffet.
“It was like summer camp,” John would say later, “with blow jobs.”
Then summer ends and it’s time for school.