Dreamcatcher

By Cassandra Barnes

This is not a book for those looking to escape from today's politics.
Sure, this is a steamy lesbian teen romance and a view of lesbian teens in the
Sixties. There are vast similarities between the demonstrations of 2020-2021
and the protest marches of the Sixties. The author's life has been a deep politic,
and she was very active in demonstrating for civil rights.
Dreamcatcher is a personal and fictionalized memoir from that era.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act freed Black Americans from
the tyranny of the violent white racist American south under Jim Crow
and set off many liberation movements in which the author was delighted to join
including the anti-war movement that rid the United States of the military
conscription known as "the draft" in 1973. She also worked for Gay Liberation
and Women's Liberation. The author has met Gloria Steinem personally,
and went to a live anti-war event featuring Jane Fonda.
She supported the abortion-on-demand movement, a woman's right to choose
and marched in the first Gay Pride parade in Chicago.

She was a super hippie with feathers in her hair just like Julietta Bonaventura,
our main character. The intimate love between Julie and Shainah and their struggles with family
and community are the same today. In the Sixties, no lesbian was normally
allowed to keep her children. No matter how abusive the father was -
or how long and violent a felony record he had, he was always awarded custody.
Homosexuality was considered a crime against nature. It was not seen as natural
to love someone of the same gender. Despite Julie, Reese and Shainah's struggles
to be free and the spitefulness of their rural community, Julie's dad and his
girlfriend Chun-hua always supported the girls. Their lives should ring true
today loud and clear.
Peace, Love and Happiness...

Know Justice, Know Peace!

Stay Safe, Stay Strong!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cassandra Barnes
• Release date: Feb 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005255169

Cassandra Barnes

Cass Barnes lives in northern Maine overlooking the Canadian border deep in the forests of Aroostook County. She writes novels, poetry and is an amateur photographer and jazz musician. She contributes to several Third World animal rescues and lives with a gray striped cat named Oscar. Cass is a lesbian who marched in the very first Gay Pride parade in Chicago. She graduated from Boston University magna cum laude in Sociology and attended Harvard for graduate school. She has been writing since childhood.  Cass is also an avid computer hardware and software hobbyist. She loves to create epic scenery and plots with lesbian characters that build in her mind over time. Like a good sauce, she would like her writing to add flavor to a brighter future for all lesbians. And, of course, some understanding. Welcome to my world!

Book preview

Chapter One: Sweet Sixteen

(F lash Back to 1966 )

A HUGE MULTI-COLORED strobe candle (a two-foot-long wax torch with a large hollow cardboard tube in the middle) held in place by the akimbo arms of a three-foot-tall, life-like, nude female plaster statue set high up on a dresser, flashed beautifully against the artfully painted dayglo mural on the bedroom wall. The room was filled with the intense smoke of three different kinds of incense.

Julietta Bonaventura delicately placed a peacock feather in the bottom rubber band of her long, single braid and put her shiny, silver four-tiered Indian earrings in each pierced ear. She pulled on her large, red, yellow, blue and green sunburst-patterned, tie-dyed cotton baggies and picked out a fine white lace sleeveless top and matching tie-dyed chiffon scarf. She had spent some time that morning struggling to braid her very curly hair.

She topped it all off with a straw Panama sun hat that had a seagull feather stuck in the hatband. Thinking twice she also chose a wooden beaded necklace interspersed with turquoise beads and tiny silver bells. She dabbed her wrists and neck with Patchouli oil which intensified the cloud of smoke from the huge stick of Patchouli incense in her room absorbing the scent into her clothing and long black hair.

Satisfied that she was seriously hippie chic, Julie packed her backpack with a tape recorder, a variety of incense, a cotton coverlet from India, several handmade tie-dyed blouses, T-shirts, floor length skirts and cotton bags. She added some of the marijuana from her garden neatly rolled inside sandwich bags and weighed to the ounce. She put on a jean jacket with a peace symbol sewn on the back underneath a rainbow. She flashed a two-fingered peace sign to herself in the mirror, smiling at the result.

She left her house and walked underneath a line of huge Elm trees towards the Burlington Northern commuter train two blocks away. Every day of the summer, Julie went downtown to Grant Park, a central meeting place of the hippie nation in the Chicago area. At fifteen, selling her handicrafts in the park was one of the few jobs she could get and make some real money. She would sit cross-legged on her Indian coverlet on the grass in the cool shade of a big maple tree, burn incense and play her favorite tapes, attracting folks interested in her tie-dyed clothing and subtly finding out if they would also like some smoke.

On a good day, she could bring home 100 tax-free dollars or more, which was not bad for a fifteen-year-old in 1966. Not bad at all, and she expected that she could save quite a bit by the end of the summer. If her generous father did not buy her a car by the time she was sixteen, she could purchase her own. Even though her dad disapproved of hallucinogenics, she frequently procured LSD, Psilocybin and Mescaline for herself and to sell in the park. These drugs were popular semi-natural and legal street drugs at the time. Julie felt, from experience and street gossip, that these drugs were harmless when used in a friendly atmosphere. And they were non-addictive. They were usually ten dollars a hit. Her homegrown marijuana was $10 an ounce, as loose leaf. An ounce of dope could last a conservative smoker all month. A hit of acid lasted about 12 hours. Julie grew her own weed, but sometimes filched some of her dad's stash when she ran low. He did the same to her.

VINCENTE BONAVENTURA was Julietta's very hip and friendly dad. He owned his own men's tailoring business downtown and was a former employee of the Sears Roebuck catalog division located on the south side across from the University of Chicago, in Hyde Park. He drove an MG sportscar and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. And, of course, being a tailor, he was a very flashy, fancy dresser, not usually seen without a gold or red satin vest – unless he was repairing his vehicles, gardening or the like.

Originally, Vincente had brought his infant daughter up from the steamy, dark cypress bayous of Louisiana, his family being farmers in the area, selling their goods in places such as Mooringsport and Shreveport. Shreveport, even though located in the deep south, had small Slavic, Italian and Jewish communities. Mooringsport was the home of Huddie Ledbetter (aka Lead Belly), the famous African American blues musician. The entire, enormous bi-racial Bonaventura family were liberal Democratic Italians from the deep south. The south during segregation was a pit of horrendous violence. It not only affected the black population but also those who were sympathetic or a bit dark themselves like Vincente. That was why Vince had taken his baby and left to go up north to find a better life away from the sad racial situation in the south.

Julie boarded her train to downtown, heading towards Union Station on Canal Street. She climbed up to the upper deck of the double decker train car where there were single seats next to the windows. She stuck her ticket in the holder at her feet. The conductor would be around to take and punch her ticket. All the conductors on this branch of the Burlington Northern were rather friendly efficient black men belonging to the famous Porter’s Union. The station near her house was also in a hundred-year-old, suburban Chicago black neighborhood first populated by the families of early black railroad workers who laid the first tracks for the Burlington line. It was an unusual neighborhood in that it had huge Victorian houses surrounded by large grassy yards. The residents of all neighborhoods also had access to the local suburban schools which were excellent. Julie's house was in the much newer tract home area with smaller ranch houses.

SHE DROPPED A HIT OF acid and began to watch the sunlight break into rainbows, swirling and dipping inside the train car. She hummed her favorite Joni Mitchell song. Bending her long braid over her shoulder, she played with the colors on her peacock feather. Her dad would worry about her love of hallucinogens, but she never had any adverse reactions and he barely noticed when she was tripping, other than the fact that she tended to giggle a lot at almost nothing.

She could walk from Union Station to Grant Park easily. And tripping, the walk would produce some spectacular fun in the sun, especially when she reached the shoreline of Lake Michigan and could play with the images coming up from the sparkling water. When she had extra time, she could run into the Art Institute and saunter into the Impressionists room and watch the colors move on her favorite Van Gogh or Monet.

Within an hour, the train pulled into Union Station and Julie disembarked. As she exited the huge, echoing train station, the scent from her Patchouli oil was intensified and seemed to billow up around her, making her smile to herself in the bright summer sunlight. When she reached the sidewalk, she started to skip, bouncing her backpack with each step and making other pedestrians either smile or frown at her hippiness. She felt exhilarated and flashed a two-fingered peace sign at either reaction.

It was way too hot to wear her jacket, so she stopped and took it off, stuffing it into her backpack. The cooler breezes found the patterns of holes in her lace top and blew through them, cooling her overheated body. She thought of stopping at the Art Institute and just walking around in the lobby to cool off even more in their air conditioning. She totally loved the huge bronze statue of Rodin's Thinker that was on loan to the Institute and positioned in the lobby. But today she wanted to get to her spot under her favorite Maple tree and get set up early so she could start selling. She took another hit of acid to make sure she was tripping for most of the day.

When Julie reached Grant Park, she put her paisley, multi-colored Indian cotton coverlet underneath the big, shady Maple, fast-forwarded her tape deck to Tuesday Afternoon from her Days of Future Passed cassette of the Moody Blues and lit a stick of musk incense, sticking the end into the ground. She carefully displayed her colorful tie-dyed clothing to exhibit a variety of styles. She put out her hand-sewn shoulder bags that had dozens of embroidered tiny mirrors, arranging them face up so that the silvered glass reflected in the sunlight. She rested her back against the tree trunk and lit a joint. This was heaven, she thought as she surveyed the colorful crowd of hippies walking around and looking at all the vendors, having their own picnics, playing guitars and flutes, singing, peacefully smoking weed and laughing. There was an anti-war demonstration planned for later, so their protest signs were set next to some of the groups of people sitting in the grass, resting in the shade like she was.

Within a half hour, she had scored over a dozen customers – including one couple that also bought two ounces of weed. She was flying. She thought, Oh, happy day....

Next to her, still under the shade of the same big tree, were old Grant Park friends of hers that sold their own handcrafted pottery and jewelry – an overweight, white girl with long, beautiful, shining, black hair and a demur, brown-skinned baby named Bruno. Her boyfriend, and the baby's father, was a very ebullient black man that sometimes sang along sweetly and loudly to Julie's music. Their names were Sherrie and Bud. They had known Julie since she had been coming to the park ages ago.

BETWEEN CUSTOMERS, Julie listened to her music and tatted lace. Bud wrote in his diary and Sherrie nursed and took care of the genial Bruno who smiled at everything and everybody. A smiling, curly-haired, pretty brown baby sold, or way helped to sell all their wares. They all felt the tiny Bruno was their best salesman and frequently made jokes about it.

On the other side of Julie were two gay men who lived close by on the the near North side along the shore of Lake Michigan. They sold huarache sandals, Japanese Bonsai trees and handcrafted terrariums – all popular upwardly mobile hippie items.

They never wore color-matched clothing, and both tended towards stripes, super-wide bell bottoms, scarves, polka dots and pink – very gauche hippie stuff. They also wore too much jewelry, including earrings in both ears. Julie loved her neighbors to pieces. They were all kind and helpful – and never stopped being interesting and funny. Especially funny.

The two gay sandal and plant salesmen, Theo and Mason, always bought cold drinks for everyone around them later in the afternoon, whenever they took a break. A hug and a cold drink were just what Julie needed on a slow day – which this wasn't, by far. She rolled joints for all, except the baby...who acted stoned anyway and didn't need anything special to put on his show. Bruno usually got a contact high from all the weed around him, which didn’t damper his already giddy little spirit.

Bruno giggled loudly when Julie put on Puff (The Magic Dragon) by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Sherrie said, He really digs that song. He'll even clap his hands when he hears it sometimes.

The rest of the day rolled along slowly and pleasantly like a wide river, as if it was closely related to the nearby DesPlaines and its tributaries, one of which ran through the Bonaventura's suburban township. The lace shawl Julie was tatting was almost finished by five o'clock. She had plans on tie-dying it. Tie-dyed cotton lace was super cool and would look seriously fine with her silver four-tiered earrings that hung low – from her ears to her shoulders, but not close enough to catch on her clothes. Or maybe she would sell the shawl. It could bring over twenty dollars.

It was past six o’clock and the sun was starting to traverse downward and send its shadows around her, so Julie packed up what was left of her wares and folded the coverlet, putting everything in her backpack. She hugged her friends and kissed little Bruno on his fat brown cheek. She put on her shades and sun hat and started on her way home. 

JULIETTA WALKED SLOWLY towards Union Station. This was one of the longest and hottest days she could ever remember. The way to the train station was, at this hour, still a sizzling hotplate made of concrete – flat and unrelenting. Julie was still tripping, which was fine underneath the sweet, cool shade of her favorite hundred-year-old Maple where she had hidden, obscured from the vicious waves of heat surrounding her.

She had made a record amount of money today and enjoyed the company of a fine crowd of musicians, fellow vendors and customers.

But now, she had several, fiery, unshaded blocks of high-rise office buildings to walk past before she got to the train station. She felt like she was crawling on her hands and knees. It seemed as if these blocks were miles long. She knew, somehow, the devil sun would burn her up and evaporate her entire being, soul and all. She began to run.

That felt better. The breezes generated from running relieved her admittedly hallucinogenically enhanced discomfort. The sensation was everything short of a bad trip. Something she had never had and did not ever want.

Julie became a bird. Her sweat evaporated in the rush of the wind. Tripping made her feel like she really was a bird, like she could hear her wings moving behind each shoulder.

She reached the revolving brass-framed glass doors of the train station and could feel the heaven-sent air conditioning whooshing in between each revolution of the multiple doors in the rotation as she entered. The station was at least twenty degrees cooler than the suffocating Chicago summer sun that had tried to smother her outside. She sat down on a wooden bench in the echoing enormous waiting room. She stretched and got up to get a sip of water from the blessedly cold watercooler, which Julie knew was the answer to her prayers made directly to any God that would listen. Her breath had reached past the scattered and thin clouds, importuning any Higher Being interested in listening to her petition for some relief from the heat.

Let it rain, she had pleaded, knowing full well she was inconsequential in her influence upon any Olympus where the Gods probably still dwelt ... for all her hallucinating mind knew. And, as anyone who ever did LSD knows, one could well feel that one was in direct contact with the Almighty.

Just then, Julie heard a crack of thunder as she dug into her backpack to get the Tupperware container of melty stuffed shells and garlic bread she had packed for lunch. She bought a cold Coke in wonder at the fresh smell and sound of the heavy rain bursting from a series of open train docks at the end of the station waiting room where the soda machines were. She ate her garlic bread sitting at the right hand of God. The instant storm was not unusual for the Chicago lakefront.

Union Station was not Mt. Olympus, she knew that. Her imagination was a watercolor kaleidoscope of dreams, but no hallucination could make her lose her grip on where she actually was, where she was actually going or the real, physical things she had to do. But, despite the extremely melted cheese in her pasta shells, they tasted divine. That was hallucinatory, but wonderful. The Coke was a spritz from heaven.

In between all that, her dreams painted her senses in wide LSD-induced swaths of auditory and visual waves of rather pleasant pastel inspiration and unusual movement. All this deep thinking aside, Julie frequently sampled her own wares (in terms of the drugs she sold). She felt one needed to stay on top of the quality and purity of said wares. Her own wholesale dealer was a saint and an old high school friend, but she still felt the need to keep checking up on her.

Besides, she liked tripping. Her dad never caught her except once. She just reassured him that hallucinogens would not cause genetic damage and thought it best to let it go at that. She also told him that high THC content in marijuana (like in Vietnamese natural) could cause similar hallucinations. That assured him that she wouldn’t hurt herself, since he was such a pothead himself.

All Power to the people! Julie jumped, then laughed. It was just the zillionth small protest march she had seen in the heart of the city. Her train was due in twenty minutes, so she had time to go outside and take a look. Another shout went up from the front of the station. It sounded like maybe a hundred people or slightly less. There was an echo resounding around the cathedral-like ceiling of the train station. The rain had lessened to a drizzle. The storm had stopped as quickly as it had started, a Chicago area phenomenon.

Maybe the echo was just the acid she had dropped. Julietta liked demonstrations, they were like parties with a higher purpose. As intense as New Year's Eve. Most of them were peaceful with no arrests or altercations. It usually did not hurt to check them out and even yell a loud, enthusiastic, Right on! It felt good. This freedom felt good. Julie liked most of the protest movements. Being a young lesbian, she looked forward to the Chicago’s first Gay Pride parade planned for later that summer. Her dad didn’t know she was gay yet, but she assumed he would not be too surprised. She avoided the more violent protests, though. She and her dad, Vincente, were natural southern pacifists. Vincente knew she had the usual high school crushes and that all of them were girls.

They had both experienced Jim Crow, being southerners originally. Julie remembered vividly being confused as to what bathroom she could use while continuing to chat with newly found black friends at an amusement park. Both Vince and Julie hated racial segregation. Double for her dad who was slightly brown-skinned and proud of being both Italian and dark.

She would have to hide her tripping from her father, who worried about it. That was not that hard to do. She and her dad got along really well, and she could joke with him and put him in a good mood. She had to be more careful about her drug usage than her lesbianism. Papa was her best friend always and forever, so no worries about who she might love.

They were the only family the two of them had here in Chicago. She had a large, extended family down south in Shreveport and Miami but that was far from Chicago. She went easy on him and his fears about hallucinogens.

AFTER HER WALK HOME from the train, her dad met her at the door rubbing his hands together with a broad, white-toothed smile. Not something he normally did. Julie knew what it was immediately without asking. Tomorrow was her sixteenth birthday. Her birthdays were always a big celebration for the two of them. The delight that spread over her father's face belied the surprises he had in store for her. Julie laughed and ran to him, giving him a bear hug.

What is it, Pop? she asked, as if she didn't know. She thought, must be a big one this year!