I Could’ve Been a Nun

As told by Nikki Lastreto.

I come from a fourth generation Italian American family in San Francisco and went to an old-fashioned, all-girls private Catholic school. The nuns were my heroines. I went to mass five times a week and collected statues of saints. The nuns were convinced I was going to be one of them. The head nun had favored me since I was a baby. They were ready for me.

But I couldn’t avoid what was going on in the ‘60s. We got the San Francisco Chronicle with stories and pictures about the hippie revolution. One day, in 1967, I was in the car with my father driving through Golden Gate Park. There was a free concert and thousands of hippies. We stopped at the light, and they walked in front of us in the crosswalk. Wow. I thought they looked pretty cool.

In my freshman year of high school a teacher had us start journals. Every night we'd write in it. December 1968, I wrote, “I don't know if I want to be a nun or a hippie. I was 13. Eight days later my girlfriend said, “Hey, I know these cool guys. They have a band.” We stopped at their garage while they were smoking marijuana. I took a few hits. I thought, this is not what a nun would do. I got home and realized, okay, I guess this is the path I'm taking. I think this feels right. I had made my decision.

I made friends with a different group of girls. One girl would get us marijuana. Within two weeks I got into psychedelics, LSD. I never had a bad trip. I saw it as raising my consciousness. There was a little bit of that nun in me because LSD always had a spiritual angle to it. 

About a month after my first high, my friend brought me a lid, what we called an ounce of weed. With this thing in my book bag I am thinking, I am a criminal now.  What has happened to me? But I was determined. One of the main things about the hippies was how free they were. I really wanted that freedom. 

I asked my friend, Agnes, “How are we going to meet hippies?” She asked her brother. “The good ones aren't in Haight-Ashbury anymore. The cool hippies, the artists, moved to North Beach.” I was surprised, “North Beach? You mean where my mother gets her veal scallopini?” 

So, one Saturday afternoon, ages 14 and 15, we went to North Beach dressed in bell bottoms. We picked up some grapes, cookies and focaccia and went over to Washington Square. It was packed with hippies. Sitting on the grass. Playing Frisbee. Some with guitars. The artists were drawing. Picture perfect hippies with beads, striped pants, and long hair.

Here we go. 

We walked up to different groups, “Hi, would you like some grapes? Would you like some bread? Would you like some cookies?” Then we'd say, “You want to smoke a joint with us?” And that's where I learned to be a hippie.

We regularly hitchhiked there, getting to know the whole hippie crowd of North Beach. Hanging out. Getting high. Going back to their communes. I saw the spiritual side.  At one commune, a girl, 17, explained about the Hindu god, a poster in her room.  Often conversations would be about higher consciousness, more than I was hearing at Convent of the Sacred Heart. It was a beautiful time.

My parents noticed I wasn’t acting like a nun. Here I was wearing my grandmother's old clothes from the early 1900s. And then they learned I was smoking marijuana. My mother had an Italian temper. "Stupidella. What are you doing?” My father, instead, would get into spiritual discussions with me. “What happened to your Catholicism?”

At this point I was not interested in high school boys.  Too dull. A year after my change, I met a 23 year old man, a student at the Art Institute. He's the guy I lost my virginity to. So I was very young. But the pill was just coming in. I got it at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. 

Things got wilder and crazier. For the free concerts on Sunday afternoons in the park, I'd go hang out. Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Quicksilver Messenger Service. All the best. I was hanging out with the artists who made the rock and roll posters. That was really my scene. I have a huge collection of those posters and am still friends with the artists. I was going to parties held in giant flats in the Haight and the Panhandle. In one room there'd be a bunch of Hell's Angels. Another room, a bunch of hippies dancing. And another there'd be an orgy. 

Fast forward, I was the school valedictorian when I graduated in 1972. I gave my speech high on acid. I could have been a nun, but instead I had started over as a hippie.

www.swamiselect.com