Perv--a Love Story

Jerry Stahl

Set in 1970--the last, dark days of hippiedom--Perv is the story of Bobby Stark, a 16-year-old batch of angst and hormones who loses his virginity in a drug-addled tryst with a one-armed barber's daughter. Bobby's best friend, Tennie Toad, rats him out, and he is kicked out of prep school and shipped to Pittsburgh to live with his Mom, a sozzled electroshock aficionado who still can't get over the inslut of Bobby's father's suicide-by-streetcar. After myriad weird encounters with his mother's "dates," Bobby flees the horrors of condo-land and hooks up with Michelle, the girl of his dreams, a lapsed Hare-Krishna-ette he's loved since kindergarten. The couple decide, in the spirit of the times, to hitch to San Francisco. But before they make mile one, they're picked up by a pair of Bad Hippies--Meat and Varnish--spiritual cousins to Charlie Manson. From there the adventure gets harrowing, as the duo narrowly escape rape, vanquish their assailants, and stagger from Meat's hell-fueled Lincoln Continental transformed, traumatized, and ready, of all things, to fall in love.