True Stories of Sailors on Alameda Island, California

Alameda Island, which is in the San Francisco Bay, off of Oakland, California, was until very recently the home of a major Naval Base. Someone was telling me recent stories about the antics of sailors there and I started remembering the sailors of 1966.

In the Spring semester, 1966, I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley majoring in math and criminology. I had come back from a semester at the National University of Mexico because of an article I saw in Time Magazine on the Sexual Freedom League in Berkeley. When I returned to Berkeley, I started going to meetings of the League. My first League function was an outing led by Richard Thorne to San Gregorio Beach, south of San Francisco. There, I met a girl, 19, named Claire Laxson, and her boyfriend, Garth Huddleston, who was stationed in the Navy on Alameda Island.

San Gregorio Beach was a nude beach. I do not remember whether Garth fucked Claire there on the beach, but I do remember that Art Aaron fucked a girl on that beach while his wife, Katy, watched, and that Katy became upset about that.

Either then or on the way back or possibly a day or two later, Garth Huddleston mentioned that his girlfriend Claire was having trouble making the rent for her apartment on Fulton Street in Berkeley and she had a small child, Michael, who was three months old, so Garth suggested that I move in and share the rent with his girlfriend, Claire, who was on welfare.

I did so. The first night I lived with Claire, I got into her bed and fucked her. However, that was also the last time she let me do that.

Garth would come by every weekend and spend the night with Claire, while I slept on the living room couch. Claire would scream "Fuck me! Fuck me!" while he was doing that, but she later told me that he had told her to say that.

After a few months, Garth broke up with Claire. That night, Richard Thorne came by to see Claire, having heard that they had broken up. He said that he had come to console her, but it was obvious that he had come to fuck her to take advantage of the fact that her boyfriend had left her. I believe that she did let Richard Thorne fuck her that night, but I cannot remember for sure.

Obviously, I thought that this would open the door to me to fuck Claire Laxson as much as I wanted, but that was not to be. Almost every night, she brought home a man and took him to her bed. Often she would meet these guys at the Laundromat where she went to wash the diapers of her son, Michael.

I became frustrated and upset about the fact that I was living with an attractive girl who was fucking almost everybody except for me.

After another month or so, Claire brought home two girls she knew. They were sisters aged 19 and 15. I believe that they had just arrived from Seattle, Washington, but that Claire knew them from before. The girls made money shoplifting. The elder girl described how she would go into a clothing store try on a new dress and put it on under her original dress, walking out the door and stealing the dress.

I never fucked those two girls either, although I did try the elder one.

I was living there and I had the key to the apartment. One night I came home, probably at 10:00 or 11:00 at night. The 15-year-old girl was in the living room on the couch fucking a guy who turned out to be in the Navy, stationed on Alameda Island. The other two girls were back in the bedroom, obviously getting fucked as well. I sat down in the arm chair facing the couch and watched the 15-year-old girl getting fucked. This was a boring experience and I fell half asleep.

After a while, the Navy guy finished fucking the 15-yerar-old girl and got up. Then, the two other Navy guys, one of whom had been fucking Claire and the other of whom had been fucking her shoplifter friend, came out from the bed room. They seemed surprised to see me sitting in the chair where I had obviously been watching the 15-year-old getting fucked. They asked their Navy friend about me. "Don't worry about him. He's OK", said their Navy friend.

One of the Navy guys said, "Let's go back to Alameda."

One of them turned to me and said, "Hold down the fort!". They then left.

Those final words to me, "Hold down the fort!", have stuck into my mind ever since.

Later, Claire and her 19-year-old friend came out of the bedroom. They talked about how the Navy guys, after fucking them, had both wanted to swap and fuck the other one, but the girls had not been enthusiastic about that.

When the 15-year-old was not around, their first question was, "Did she fuck?"

"Yes", I replied.

"How do you know?", they said.

"Because I sat here and watched them", I said, still sitting in the same chair. "Why do you ask?"

"Because she doesn't do that. She never fucks", they said derisively about the 15-year-old.

In reality, I did not hold down the fort. This was now June, 1966. I was 21 years old. Only a day or two later at a party, I met an Austrian girl named Annalies Rainer who lived in Reno. I became infatuated with her and the next day ran off to Reno in pursuit of her. I spent the summer in Reno and never returned to Claire Laxson's apartment on Fulton Street in Berkeley. Why I did this I do not know. Before long, Claire lost her apartment and was living on the street with her baby boy, Michael. The last time I ever saw her she was sitting on the curb on Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street in Berkeley with her baby and her new boyfriend, a wimpy guy from Canada. She asked me to give her the rent I owed her for the last month in the apartment, since I had moved out without telling her. I did not have the money.

How differently my life could have gone, I often think. I was living in an apartment with three beautiful girls in Berkeley, a city known as "The Garden Spot of the Universe". True, I had only fucked one of the girls and that one only once, but the possibility was always there. Why did I ever leave that place?

I have often searched for these people through the Internet. I can find no trace of Claire Laxson or of her son, Michael Laxson, or of Claire's mother, who lived in Richmond, California. I can find no trace of Garth Huddleson either.

Garth I would especially like to find because he was handsome and good looking and always seemed to have a beautiful girl on his arm, whom he was quite willing to share. In the Fall of 1966, I became the president of the campus version Sexual Freedom League after Mike Stubblefield, who had been the president, decided that he was gay and came out. Jefferson Poland convinced Stubblefield to hand over the small bank account at Bank of America on Telegraph Avenue and Durant to me. I never saw Mike Stubblefield again, either.

When I started holding Sexual Freedom League parties, Garth Huddleston started to come. The last party I ever held was on December 24, 1967 in Emeryville near the Oaks Club. I believe that the building has been torn down to make room for a office complex which houses Reel.com which sells the videos I advertise.

At that last party in Emeryville, Garth Huddleston brought a really beautiful girl about 19, skinny with long blond hair. She fucked everybody. After all the guys present had fucked her once and she was still not satisfied, I fucked her again and again. I also fucked two other girls at that party. Then, at about 5:00 AM, my ride came. It was a drive-away car and I was driving with two other students, who were from Stanford University, to the US Intercollegiate Chess Championship in Hoboken, New Jersey. My team, which was the University of California at Berkeley team, won first prize by a margin of two points.

For the next 14 years, I never went to California again. The next time I entered the state of California was in February, 1981, when I brought my wife Honzagool to Berkeley, Riverside and Las Vegas. Honzagool became pregnant with our daughter, Shamema on that trip.

Every name in this story is correct. Richard Thorne, who uses several other names, including especially Om, I still often see at Krishna Copies on University Avenue and Shattuck in Berkeley. Analeis Reiner I went to see in Innsbrook, Austria where she was a medical student in 1986. None of the other people I have mentioned I have ever seen or heard from again, except for Jefferson Poland who has occasionally been in the news. If anybody can find any of these people, please let me know.

Sam Sloan

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Contact address - please send e-mail to the following address: Sloan@ishipress.com