On Hippies
By John Thursday • Mar 4th, 2009 • Category: Erotic Philosophy by John Thursday, FeaturesHarbin Hot Springs is one of the most wonderful places in the world. You jump from the really hot pool to the really cold pool and back again until your body turns to rubber and slides into the warm pool and its like the earth is giving you a hug.
And of course there are all the naked people. How I love naked people, pooching out here, bulging out there, everything swinging and dangling and hanging and flopping. I love how someone you wouldn’t find sexy in clothes can become terribly sexy when naked.
Not simply because they’re not wearing clothes, but rather because they are naked. A curve, a swoosh, a subtle turn of the hip usually amplified by a poor fitting pair of jeans when naked becomes inviting.
But there is a problem with Harbin. It’s a problem that could be solved if no one but your friends were allowed in. It’s a problem that could be solved if, upon passing through the gate, everyone were rendered mute.
To be blunt, and in one word, the problem is hippies: dirty, smelly hippies with their self-righteous food habits and their untended, organic pubic gardens.
Alas there are hippies everywhere at Harbin Hot Springs, hanging from the rafters, frozen on porticoes like gargoyles, lurking in every freakin’ spring fed pool.
It’s not hippies I dislike per se.
It’s copper jewelry, copper bangles and bracelets and wide copper necklaces. It’s as though every hippie knows the secret location of Conan the Barbarian’s Jewelry outlet; and probably Captain Ahab’s Accessory Emporium, judging from all the rope bracelets.
I also dislike long, stringy grey hair, most especially when it’s pulled back in a ponytail. And I don’t believe in sacred stones; the kind hippies buy from other hippies.
But these are superficial things. The problems really begin when hippies begin to speak. Often it begins with humming.
The last time I was at Harbin I threw off my clothes and ran for the sauna. I had been on the grounds a total of 15 minutes when a woman, a hippie by the look of her, entered the sauna humming. She stopped when she saw me. In the spirit of openness I said, “You can keep going.”
I admit that was my mistake.
The humming soon became singing. Others entered the sauna and bowed to the singing naked hippie doing yoga against the wall. She went over to one boy and said, “Would you like me to sing to your sweat glands? Would you like me to sing the sweat from your glands?”
And the boy actually answered, “Yes.” And so she sang a song to his sweat glands. And then came the classic Harbin Hippie Overshare. “My first time here I cried my heart out for a week.”
Up I went and fled for the steam room. I was asking what could be worse than the singing hippie? And god answered, “ How about a hippie shaman named Uuu Ahh Ahh.” That was her name, three seed syllables as she called them, the Uuu for her sex shakra and the Ahh Ahh for her heart shakra.
“That’s what tantra is all about,” she said. “Marrying your sex with your spirit, Uuu into the Ahh. Uuu Ahh, Uuu Ahh.” And as she sounded out Uuu she placed her hands on either side of her bajingo and rubbed herself, “Uuu, Uuu, Uuu.”
Correction, hippies don’t have bajingos. Uuu Ahh Ahh had a yoni. A very well shaved yoni I might add; a paradox.
And why was she living at Harbin? She was engaged in the venerable hippie occupation of synthesizing ayahuasca practices.
“The time of enlightenment is coming,” she explained while rubbing her yoni. “Some will be ready for it and receive enlightenment and others will not. The Mayan Calendar tells us; the ice caps are melting and the shape of the land will change and the energy will shift and the stars will align and… Uuu, Uuu, Uuu, Uuu.”
I ran for it. I decided to sit in the warm heart shaped pool, the one where you can talk. But there I encountered the Bay Area phenomenon of the beautiful hippie man dating the ugly hippie girl with psychotic eyes. They were wrapped up together in the pool moaning loudly to each other. “Uuu, Ahh, Uuu, Ahh.”
So I got dressed and went to the kitchen to heat up some soup when a man with long, stringy grey hair in a ponytail wearing full tie dye and a copper bracelet came up to me and asked, “Why are you cooking your food?”
He pulled a plastic bottle from his bag and unscrewed the top, a thick green liquid inside. “This is raw pine needles and kiwi skins with a dash of dirt. You should try it. It unlocks your chi and helps the Uuu Ahh shakras.”
Back by the pools I saw the hippie from the sauna, the sweat gland serenader go by. She had to be 68 if she was a day. And she was hot. Seriously. Doing yoga all day everyday will do some remarkable things for you. Like give you stand up breasts and a round bum and the ability to lift your old leg over your head to give a young man the inside view of your 68-year-old yoni.
I do love Harbin. I left there feeling refreshed and younger. I loved seeing all the naked people. And while it is true I don’t much care for copper jewelry or sacred stones or the overshare or public yoni rubbing or raw food in the end I don’t think it’s those things that I dislike so much.
I really dislike hippies.
John Thursday >> John Thursday was born and raised at Harbin Hot Springs, unaware there was such a thing as clothing until he was 15. He has since renounced all things Hippie. He earned a doctorate in Erotic Philosophy by defending Kant's lesser known The Critique of Pure Fellatio as a seminal work. he was hit on by Allen Ginsburg twice but not even once by Sami Beinstein, a non-hippie jewess. He currently beds a shiksa named Misty.
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Hi Judah, open for some critical feedback??? stop here if not
well I will have to say that this is the first article I have read of yours that I didn’t like. it seemed to lack you usual wry and insightful look at things. Its not that i don’t share some of your observations about hippies, but you sounded just whiny and irritable in a way I have not experience in your writing before (did some hippie really hurt you at some point?); and then ending kind of apologetically by saying your really had a good experience…felt like a nonsequetuer (spelling!) Usually if you are ascorbic (which I actually enjoy), its with a wit and interesting or new perspective that was missing here.
That’s my two cents….look forward to further writings; its a skill I am a bit in awe of.
take care
eleanor (from RS)
Ha! This reminds me of spending xmas at Harbin with my mother one year, and one lady telling me how much she was into Unicorning lately. I enjoyed imagining it as some kind of kinky sex thing before it was explained to be deep tissue massage mixed with psychotherapy. My other favorite Harbin quote: “Would you like a Watsu, Kind Sister?”
Your article is frightening…it gave me gas for a full week….end. You desecrated everything sacred about the Chakras…and even the Heart Shaped Pool…
Enjoyable article, creative plundering and critique of oosynewageyness. It will makes most people laugh but I have to agree with the first reader. The ending is off. You state its not the hippies you dislike, its just all the shiny stuff they wear. Then you say its not the shiny stuff they wear its the hippies…..Something to ponder next time spending hours in the warm pool.
How delightful!!! Not confusing at all. The ending merelly showed the culmination of your thought process. Indeed, it is the hippies we dislike. It just seems more palatable to others when we say we dislike their shiny bobbles.