The whole scene was like standing apart and watching ourselves in a fast-action film, yet being involved at the same time. Colors became very vibrant. The sun was like a golden ball dangling above our heads, and the sea was like blue Jell-O oozing to shore and out again. We ran into the hills and made love with a background of palm trees threaded by a sandy road that we must have come along, which appeared to lead into a small village.

As we were freaking out and jumping around, a maroon car passed on the road, looking as if it were from a different world, but somehow very close, and inside was a Negro who looked out, waved, and drove on.

You don’t entirely lose your head on mescaline, and even though you’re stoned, you still know what’s happening. Pretty soon the same maroon car was back again, this time carrying three Negroes, all waving, and it went away again.

Five minutes later, or an hour – we cannot judge time anymore – the same car came along followed by a sightseeing bus full of Negroes all staring at those nude people jumping around out there.

The bus slowed, stopped, then took off again, but the three Negroes parked the maroon car near the palm trees and started wading through the water to us. As they got closer, I got this obsession that I wanted to see them jerking off. I had never made love with a black man, but I had heard the story that they are all huge. So I started indicating my desire by making the manual gesture, up and down, and indeed one of them took out his cock and started jerking off! Then the others started doing it, too.

Just then a bunch of schoolkids with their satchels on their backs appeared. The Negroes retreated into the bushes, so we began sucking and fucking again, and the children were walking backward looking at us with eyes like saucers.

From beneath the palm trees the Negroes started trying to hit us with coconuts, and this was the point we started to realize we should split. But by now we were so freaked out we could not control anything anymore.

“Xaviera, get dressed, put your clothes on,” one of the boys said. So I grabbed my bikini underpants and tied them around my neck, which was my way of covering up in front of the kids and the Negroes.

We tried to gather up our belongings from the sand, but for some reason our fingers were insensitive, and we could not hold them, and combs, lipsticks, wallets, and suntan oil dropped from our hands. We left them in the sand and ran to the VW.

Nobody was really capable of driving, but Ricky took the wheel, and we zigzagged back to San Juan, almost hitting a tree and a boy on a bicycle, and came to a stop inside the garden of the El San Juan Hotel.

It was the cocktail hour, nearly dusk, and as we jumped from the car all the Jewish American Princesses started moving away from us with the look of, “Oh, boy, look at those animals.” I took one look at myself in a car mirror, with my eyes like red frisbees, made a dash to the water, and paddled out to sea on David’s raft.

By around nine that night the pill had almost worn off, but we hadn’t been home to change, so I went to work just as I was, wearing pigtails and my bikini bottoms and a little beachdress, slightly high, and giggling.

I looked more like a crazy little beach virgin than a hooker, and I turned on quite a few older men, who paid a fortune, and it was my biggest night apart from the Mafia blow-jobs.

As Easter approached, three months after I arrived for three days in Puerto Rico, I started getting bored. Among other things, all the boys had gone home, except David, who was down on his luck and depended on me for ten- and twenty-dollar handouts every now and again. I even let him live in my room, as I had more or less moved into a gorgeous penthouse with a gambler named Norris, who wasn’t a john and would not pay me, but let me have anything 1 needed in the way of clothes or food.

Two days before Easter David said he was going to Miami on a dope deal to make a lot of money and would be away for a week, leaving at six o’clock that evening.

After the other boys left David and I had an intense kind of platonic friendship, so I wanted to get back from the beach early and say good-bye and perhaps go with him to the airport. But as I returned from the beach around four o’clock I could sense something was wrong. All was quiet in my room, and as I walked in the door I was horrified to find it looked like a tornado had hit it.

Drawers and dressers were inside out, clothes were all over the place, my luggage was lying open in the room, and the lining had been ripped open and the money stolen.

I ran to my closet and plunged my hand into every pocket on every dress I had, and they, were all empty. Even my pocketbook had been cleaned out, and the notes stuffed into my passport were also missing.

Whoever did it really cleaned me out. There was enough to make one phone call, two nickels.

I had to find David. He was due to leave in a couple of hours, but if I could get to him first, he might be able to help me out, because he knew every thief in Puerto Rico.

I ran down to the beach where Beegee, his little hippie girl friend, hung around pushing grass. “Have you seen David around?” I asked her.

“I sure did,” she said. “About an hour ago, on his way to the airport.”

“On his way to the airport?” I said. “Are you sure? He’s not leaving for two hours.”

“That’s not what he told me,” Beegee said. “He was dashing to the airport carrying his bag, and he asked me to mind it and his suede coat while he went into the hotel to make a phone call.

“Come to think of it, he was very nervous about the coat and said don’t let anybody get their hands on it, and the pockets and lining seemed to be stuffed with paper.”

I got the message loud and clear. My friend David, whom I had almost supported for the last few weeks, had done the robbery. So much for honor among thieves.

1 ran to the roadway and flagged down a cruising police car and in my European Spanish managed to talk them into taking me to San Juan airport to try to catch him.

I knew he had hot tickets under the name of L. Lieberman, and as far as I knew, takeoff time was an hour away.

At the airport I went straight to the departure counter to check out the flight. There was no Lieberman on the six-P.M. flight, the clerk told me, but Mr. L. Lieberman was on board the plane just taking off. There was no way of stopping him, so I was wiped out, ripped off, $2,000 gone. I could only take a philosophical look at the situation and say easy come, easy go, and just as well. I still had my round-trip ticket.

9. CALL ME MADAM

For two months after returning from Puerto Rico I operated as an independent call girl, or loner, as they are known, until it struck me that this was an unsatisfactory way to earn a living.

Loners make a maximum of $200 from an average of four customers a night, and their income depends on pleasing a loyal but limited clientele which does not demand too much in the way of variety.

However, in order to give a client an occasional change of face, they form into tight little groups and exchange dates among themselves. For example, Gloria will send a customer to Sandy, who will send one back to her. But if Sandy cannot reciprocate, she must pay Gloria a madam’s fee of usually 40 percent of what the client paid her.

Working this way, the girls protect themselves to a certain extent from the competition, but it’s only a matter of time before some pretty young newcomer squeezes in to the circle and seduces away their business.

I recognized this john-swapping activity as bringing in a lot of new faces but no extra money, and that in the end, loners could only be losers. More to the point, I believed I had the qualities it takes to be a successful madam: aggressive leadership, a head for figures, and a matchless stamina. I can get by on four or five hours’ sleep a night for an entire year if necessary.