Are You Experienced? (11 page)

“And take a look at your clothing. Do you remember what Tina did to your shirt last night?”

He looked down and his face squinched up. He remembered.

“So, all I'm saying is we have to take off all these clothes and scrub them with whatever you've got, and we've got to do it fast, before a ton of other people come wandering down here with the same idea. What do you say?”

David didn't answer. He just shucked off his sneakers, and grabbed the bar of soap in one hand. I took off my sneakers, pants, and underwear, bundled all of my clothes under one arm, and picked up the shampoo bottle. Then I walked into the shallows of the pond. David followed.

Skinny-dipping is pretty darn awkward, especially with just one other guy, because honestly, there is no good place to look. We both stared very intently at our clothes as we scrubbed at top speed, which worked pretty well except when we had to pass the soap. At those moments, we just sort of laughed sheepishly.

Still, it felt amazing to get clean.

Just as the sun started hitting the tips of the trees, I got a good look at my bruised hip. It was pretty crazy: I had a perfect imprint of the Cadillac ornament branded into my skin. It occurred to me that I might have that mark forever.

Swell. There's nothing like a big old tattoo of an old-people car symbol to drive the babes wild.

When David and I had gotten both ourselves and our clothes clean, I forgot about the bruise for one glorious moment of pure, radiant joy. My plan had worked. We had gotten cleaned up, and had the whole pond to ourselves. The warm sun struck me full in the face as I strode forth from the water. I dropped my clothing in the reeds onshore and stood with my eyes closed for a while, enjoying the feeling of being all alone with the brand-new day. I even spread my arms to enjoy the rays.

That was when a female voice shouted, from about three feet in front of me, “Far out! Skinny-diiiiipppp!!!!!!!”

I opened my eyes, and saw first tens, then hundreds of teenagers swarming past me, ripping off their clothes as they went. At first, I wanted to die of embarrassment, but then I burst out laughing as a realization swept over me.

Yes, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now you know my place in history. I, Richard Gabriel Barber, started the skinny-dipping at Woodstock.

David and I walked back up the hill past the stage and found that Willow and Michael hadn't emerged from the tent yet. Tina was sitting up, hugging her knees and staring off into space. Debbie was standing next to her, scanning the horizon in all directions. She laughed when she saw us.

“Hey,” she said, “we just got back from brushing our teeth at the pumps. What happened to you? You're soaked!” she said.

“We went for a little morning clean-up swim,” I said. “I didn't want to wake you.”

“You swam in your clothes?” she asked, grinning mischievously.

“Nope,” I said, grinning back.

“In that case,” she said, “you definitely should have woken me up. We could have had fun.”

Ahhh,
I thought,
I love the sixties
. “Are you hungry?” I asked her.

“Starved. Why?”

David said, “Well, some girls by the water told us about a place over the hill that's serving breakfast to anyone who wants some.”

“Wait,” Debbie said, “there were other girls swimming naked down there?”

“Ummm…” I said. “Not exactly. We got out, and then they got in.”

“So they just saw you naked.”

I nodded.

“And then you saw them naked.”

I stayed very, very still.

“And you talked to them?”

“He didn't,” David said. “I did.”

Hey,
I thought.
That's the first time my father has ever stuck up for me
. It felt good.

Debbie, David, and I stood and stared at each other awkwardly for a moment, until Tina piped up. “Hey,” she asked my dad, “aren't you that guy that kept laughing last night?”

He nodded.

She reached over and smacked him on the leg. “Well, thanks for keeping me grounded. You really helped. Now, did someone say something about breakfast? For some reason, I have the weirdest craving for orange juice!”

 

TWO WORLDS

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1969

 

The forest was amazing, like a whole alternate universe. There were trails everywhere, with signs like
Groovy Way
and
High Way
. People had set up booths, some of which were selling arts and crafts, and some of which were selling a mind-blowing variety of drugs right out in the open. I was so used to life in the 2010s that I kept waiting for a zillion federal agents to come rappelling down out of the trees, Taser everyone in sight, and throw us all into the back of a bunch of black vans. Of course, I had also been arrested the day before, which might have added to my paranoia, but still … times had definitely changed.

We asked a bunch of people we passed where we could find the food kitchen, and they directed us out into a clearing where long lines of sleepy-looking people were waiting. The lines moved pretty well, though, and soon we each had our very own paper cups of granola and juice. We sat down under some trees and munched away as we watched the strange woodland goings-on. Just in our little field of vision, a nude guy was leading a hundred or so people in a morning yoga class; some other dude was chasing a real live goat around and around a tree; and a bunch of dirty, naked toddlers were laughing and running through a playground.

“Check out those kids,” Tina said. “Imagine if your parents were cool enough to take you to something like this.”

“Yeah,” Debbie said, “then we could have told them the truth about where we are this weekend!”

“Oh, man,” David said. “My parents know where I am. They just don't care … as long as I'm not in the house bugging them! For them, this is a party weekend.”

We all just sat there for a while, munching loudly, until Tina looked at me and asked, “What about you, Gabriel?”

“Uh, it's kind of hard to explain, but … well, one of my parents knows where I am. Kind of. I mean, not entirely. Exactly. I— I guess I'm trying to say, my parents wouldn't exactly approve if they totally knew.”

“Thanks for clearing that up, Gabriel,” Debbie said. “Funny, I thought you were the honest type.”

“I am,” I said.
Usually,
I thought. “It's just … I really had to be here. Seriously, I felt like I had no choice. It was my destiny. I can deal with the consequences later. Haven't you ever just had to do something?”

“Yeah, this!” Debbie said. She crumpled her granola cup, threw it aside, and kissed me full on the mouth. David and Tina applauded.
Wow
, I thought.
This isn't the kind of thing that randomly happens to me. Blondes really do have more fun!
I couldn't decide whether to get really into it and ask for seconds, die of embarrassment, or propose a nice late-morning swim.

Ultimately, I went with the swim. Debbie had been right. Skinny-dipping was a lot more interesting with her along.

The whole middle of the day alternated between rain and shine, but we all had a great time anyway. Eventually, Michael and Willow woke up, just in time to serve us a late lunch and watch the afternoon's bands.

At some point Willow, Tina, and Debbie all went off to wait in line for the bathrooms, which left me with my dad and uncle to watch a guy named Country Joe McDonald. Country Joe got the crowd's attention with a rowdy cheer that started with “Gimme an ‘F'.… Gimme a ‘U'…” and then burst into the strongest anti-Vietnam song of the whole weekend. It was called the “I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag” and featured the line “Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.”

People went crazy for him. It made me feel kind of sad for my generation, because it seems to me that we don't really have a cause or spokespeople in the same way my dad's did. Then again, I wondered whether I was making too much of one song, because at that moment, Michael went into the tent, fished around in his bags, and came out with another lit joint. “Too much heavy politics, man,” he said. “We're here to give my brother a good time. Right, Davey?”

I kept refusing the pot when it got to me, but it didn't take David and Michael long to polish it off. This time David didn't get all giggly. Instead, he got mellow and started reminiscing with Michael about their childhood. “Hey, Mikey,” he said, “do you remember that time in kindergarten when you caught that frog for me? And I asked you if it would live forever?”

Michael smiled. “And I promised you it would.”

“Yeah. And then it died. So you caught me another one and didn't tell me.”

“Yup.”

“And that kept happening for, like, a year?”

“Yup.”

“You know what, Mikey? I never told you this, but really, even then, I kind of knew. 'Cause the spots on those frogs were in all different places. And Mrs. Gross read my class a story about how leopards never change their spots, right? So one day I went up to her desk at recess time and I asked her whether frogs ever change their spots, and she said no, not as far as she knew. And then I thought, ‘Wow, I discovered a new species of frog!'”

Mike laughed and rubbed his brother's hair. “You were always such a funny kid, Davey,” he said. “Stay funny, okay?”

I felt my eyes stinging.

The girls were gone for more than two hours, which meant they missed the entire next act, another solo guitar player named John Sebastian, whose music I really liked. Then a heavy blues-rock group called the Keef Hartley Band came on, and I saw another new side of my father: the drummer geek.

“Check this out, Gabriel,” he said. “Keef Hartley is supposed to be a really good drummer. He replaced Ringo Starr in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes when Ringo quit to join the Beatles! And then he played in John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers!”

I was like,
Hey, that's obscure. Dad talks about drummers like I talk about guitarists
.

Meanwhile, Michael and I bonded over the guitar sounds. “Hey, do you hear that lead tone?” he asked. “That's beautiful, man. It's gotta be a Telecaster neck pickup!”

Of course, we were too far away to see what guitar anybody was playing, which almost made me wish for the gigantic Jumbotrons of the 2010s. I was pretty good at telling apart the sounds of different guitars, but I wasn't sure. “How can you tell? I play guitar, too, and I can hear that it's a single coil, but why not a Strat?”

“With a Strat, you can hear the whammy bar springs in the sound. Trust me, it's a Tele. Wanna get closer and see?”

“Uh, sure.”

“David, do you want to come?”

“Nah,” David said. “I want to wait here for the girls.” Truthfully, David looked too blissed-out to move.

“All right,” Michael told him, “you can watch our stuff. Just don't go anywhere, okay?”

It got more and more crowded as we got closer to the stage, and I started to feel a bit too much like a sardine, but Michael was really determined to check out the lead guitarist's gear. With a lot of
excuse me
s, we eventually got close enough that if I really squinted, I could see that he had been right about the guitar, which was, indeed, a Fender Telecaster. I was impressed.

“Wow, you have golden ears,” I said. Actually, I half-shouted it, because the music was way louder this close to the stage. But this was my first chance to talk with my legendary uncle alone, so I didn't mind expending a little extra effort. “Hey, your brother told me you're in a band together.”

“Were,” he said. “The other guys don't know it yet, but I'm gone.”

“Gone? What happened? Are you going away to college?”

He snorted. “Me? College? I don't think so!”

I didn't know what to say. My dad was so big on education, I had just kind of assumed college would have been part of my uncle's plans if things hadn't gone off the rails somehow.

Michael ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, I don't even really know you, all right?” he said. “But Willow gets … feelings about people sometimes. She told me she thinks we met you for a reason. Crazy, right?”

What was I supposed to say to that? “Um, I don't think Willow's crazy. I think she's amazing.”
What the heck,
I figured.
Half-truths have been working great for me so far
.

“And you know something else? I didn't tell my brother or Willow this, but I wasn't looking down at the radio when we hit you. I was looking right at the road. I didn't just say you appeared in front of the car—I meant that you literally appeared in front of the car. I'm talking, like, BOOM! Flash of light—instant kid!”

I didn't say anything.

He ran that hand through his hair again. He looked like he was about to jump out of his own skin. “I don't know, maybe Willow's not the crazy one. Maybe I'm finally going insane. Between all the shit from my old man, and the letter, and what's going to happen to Davey when I'm—”

What letter? In all the piles of my uncle's stuff, I hadn't seen a letter, and nobody had mentioned anything about any drama with a letter before this.

“Wow, man, you must think I'm crazy. First, I run you over with a damn Caddy, then I tell you I didn't see you until you suddenly appeared in front of the car like some kind of crazy Captain Kirk. And now I'm laying this whole trip on you about my life, and you probably have no idea what I'm even talking about!”

I still just stood there. It felt like anything I said would be the wrong thing.

“Come on, kid. Say something!”

I flashed the dorky
Star Trek
hand signal. “Um, I come in peace?”

He smiled, but didn't laugh. “I'm serious.”