My first art opening was at age 24, in 1965, at a San Francisco gallery on lower Haight Street named, "The Unicorn Pottery Studio," --- fine enough I suppose, for bleating.

When the owners, Wanda and Sylvia, invited me, at first I was thrilled and told everyone I knew.

I even called my mother collect.

About a week later however, I decided my work was much too personal ever to show in a room full of strangers, period, to heck with that, forget it, never, not now, not later.

"I might be crazy, but I'm not that crazy," became my best argument.

Later then, after artist friends "made" me go through with it, at the opening --- a beautiful spring day, I might add, with kookoo birds singing outside --- frozen in the center of a roomful of people, I couldn't help but notice my pictures were getting as much attention as a mental patient flashing on a lock-ward.

None.

Nobody looked.

They chatted. They did not chat with me. I did not chat with them.

I chattered, which is quite different from chatting, freezing as I was into a block of blue Norwegian ice.

A Norwegicle.

My jaw couldn't "schmoove," so to speak.

I didn't know what to do, so, I left my body as usual, then followed along behind "it" watching, as "it" sort of slug-slide through the art lovers, then into the apartment in back of the gallery, and through the kitchen-combination-bedroom, back-porch, backdoor, no stopping I noticed, down a short flight, then, slipping into the storeroom, closing door behind itself, quite an accommodating place really, for an invertebrate, and there "we" stayed and would not leave.

After what seemed like four days (and nights), my friend Tom Hobson came down the stairs calling, "David ... David ..." and since it was good old Tom, I opened the basement door, and he came in.

"Shut the door Tom, I hate this, I can't stand it and I'll tell you one thing: I'm never going do THIS again, and I am never going back up there, TOO paranoid ..."

"Why!," he boomed ... "It's your show!"

"No no no no no-you're not getting it ... I'm TOO paranoid".

"Yea, well just in case you hadn't noticed, you're hiding in a basement in the dark, which I'd say is one hell of a lot more paranoid than actually being up there. At least you can drink up there".

"Ummm ..." I had to admit, Tom had a point.

My boho friend was also kind enough to continue "sly joking" while pushing me back upstairs and inside. I remember seeing my artist friends Rick Barton and Harold La Vigne, sitting in one room with their sketchbooks open, painting and drawing.

Oh, how I longed to join them, but Wanda and Sylvia wanted me to "mix and mingle" with "my possible new collectors," as they put it. I love those women to this day and if I saw them I would give them a big kiss, if they'd let me.

That day however, I would not call what I did, "mixing and mingling," with, "possible new collectors".

Loitering?

That's a misdemeanor.

Lurching?

Dragging the main room for bodies?

From house plant to house plant, pretending not to mind at all that nobody looked at my work or spoke to me.

Except for Tom's wife, Mickie Hobson, and a few other friends, only one person actually spoke to me about my paintings that entire, endless afternoon. With all due respect, a rather bovine woman wearing big red plastic jewelry.

One purse strap was over her arm, causing it to hang open like a feed bag, where instead of oats, a veritable fan of cash protruded, in full view of everyone, from a wallet sticking part way out of the purse. And, she simply had to know, although she certainly acted like she did not. It was funny. Other people saw it too, and laughed behind her back.

I was so thankful a "possible new collector," would speak to me at all, let alone while gesturing toward my art waving money, I simply swooned.

I mean, worse than Mr. Bean.

The woman lifted her purse until the cash was obviously in my face, then pointed toward a small drawing of mine on the wall, and mooed:

" ... ve-ry-in-ter-es-ting ... "

And I just started squealing like a pressure cooker going off.

"OOOOoueeeeeeeeetttttttttt".

And once I started, could not stop.

I told that poor woman every ugly little secret about the piece, as if confessing to a crime I hadn't committed: all about the pink Caddy trip through the Sonora desert, and keeping Jo Ann's pistol for her in my room that night, and Paco's generator cutting out, and no lights, not even a candle after twelve AM, and drawing the piece in pitch dark to keep from shooting myself.

Let's face it, nobody ever really wants to know what's in a sausage, especially a weenie.

I sensed a blur of racing images behind Mooga's mask, as if I'd yanked one of her horns, and wheels were spinning inside. Then her glasses lit up:

... cherries ... cherries ... cherries ...

Yes.

This was a three-eyed cow woman.

Stepping back a bit then, she sucked up her brisket and scowled at me hard, from beneath three gnarled brows.

It was a devastating moment.

Then she looked me up and down, inspecting me in a very creepy way, as if I were a soldier at attention and she, a General. So unnerving in fact, I could feel my kidneys attempt a strong bilateral migration across my lower back, as if reaching to grab onto my spine, and yank out a vertebrae or two.

My organs were more limber back then.

Obviously, this woman was a cow-witch, and I had a lot more to learn about life in the The City.

Then she moved in for the kill. Leaning toward me slightly, she seemed to "peer" down her long wide nose directly at my perfect boy chin, and kept peering at my perfect boy chin, squinting, then closer, tilting her head, a full 5 seconds. It was like an early Robert Mitchum movie. The room began to "carrousel" around my chin.

See, my jaw, even after it's been scattered at sea, will remain perhaps my finest feature. She must be horrified at some hongo-pimple the size of a conga drum there, and I wasn't about to reach up and check. Then she said, "Do you know the way to the restroom?"

The next thing I remember is being swept over with: Nearly Insane Artisté Rejection Syndrome --- NIARS --- I mean, worse than a psychic tsunami man, and talk about ugly, them PT's can take your life away, like that!

In plain Californesé:

Announcer / Scott Beach:

"cyclone suck-force winds vacuumed the Unicorn right there, swooooooooock!, until only starfish and seaweed covered the floor, a fish flopped here and there ..."

I wanted to help Mooga find the toilet with a cattle prod.

And Rick Barton and Harold LaVigne took me home on a bus and gave me several gulps of brandy, and I didn't recover from that awful show until just now.

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