And, Yana added, "Those people I was with in L. A. were the ones who got me into a whole new world of love-making."

THE FIRST ride we got was in a GTO which only took us a few blocks further in Albuquerque. When Yana and I got into the car the first thing we each did was reach for our cigarettes. I offered one to the driver who declined, saying that he smoked too much and was trying to quit.

"I smoke too much," I said.

"So do I," said Yana. "We ought to quit."

"Okay," I said. "I quit." And I threw my cigarettes out the window.

"So do I," said Yana, and she did the same.

The driver let us out at the highway that would take us to Santa Fe and Taos. Before getting on the highway, however, we walked over to a Denny's Drive-In. A sign at the door said shoes were required, so Yana wore my size 11 sneakers. She remarked that society was backwards; the waitress served her first, but Man was supposed to go before Woman.

Yana had grown up in New Hampshire and had dropped out of high school early. I'm not sure when she got married, but it was sometime before she moved to the commune. She had lived in a commune outside Taos with the Hog Farm for about nine months, and had left it about nine months before I met her. Until that time, I had never heard of the Hog Farm. It wasn't until a week later when I saw a newspaper that I learned that the Hog Farm had been in Woodstock while I was with Yana.

About nine or ten months before I met her, several things happened to Yana. Her husband ran off with his homosexual lover; Yana's first child was born; and she left the commune and went to L. A. It was after she went to L. A. that she fell in with the Devil and his gang.

At the time I was with her, she was looking for her husband or the Hog Farm. Ouite unnecessarily, she justified the love shared by her husband and his lover. And she was still looking for him.

We got several rides on the way to Taos. One was with a construction worker who gave us beer and offered to take us all the way to the commune if Yana would ride nude. I declined the offer and Yana said that that wasn't really what the man wanted and it wouldn't do anybody any good.

In between rides, Yana would stand on her sleeping bag to hitch and we'd describe to each other how beautiful the commune would be.

Yana was frequently referring to changes people go through. "That's just a change people go through," she would say. "People go through such funny changes."

When she was pregnant with her first child, her husband started making love to another girl in the commune. "And I'd look at them in bed together." she said, "And I'd just get mad. For a long time I hated Susan and when they were making love, I'd just go away until they were through. They'd say come join us but I wouldn't.

"Finally I realized that if you've got love, it don't matter, and I'd get in bed with them, and I loved Susan. Like, I called her Sister. I was only sorry I didn't realize that sooner. I felt so stupid for acting the way I had, but those were just the changes I was going through."