Are You Experienced? (7 page)

Hadn't my mom said my uncle had started using heroin about two months before he died on October 17? And my father had said his brother had died because of Woodstock. That was my mission, then. I would stick with Michael and Dad, and make sure Michael didn't get his hands on any heroin. In the process, we would meet Jimi Hendrix, who would give us the guitar so that I could come back in time and do all this.

But that didn't make sense. Because if Michael didn't die, I would never get the guitar and I couldn't come back here to save him in the first place. But then I wouldn't need to. But, but, but.

This kind of crap happened all the time in Harry Potter movies and stuff like that, but then there was always some super-wise old warlock dude to explain how everything worked. And if things got messed up, they always got fixed by the time the credits rolled. But I didn't have a wise old mentor, or two more showings at 7:15 and 9:30. I had real life, or at least this crazy, time-hopping version of it. What if I screwed this up, and got stuck back in this time for the rest of my existence? What would happen forty-five years from now, when I was born? Would both of me explode?

Or what if I saved my uncle's life, but changed things enough for my dad so that he never met and married my mom? I pondered that for an extremely long time, and what I kept coming back to was this: What if I did? Selfishly, I had to admit I liked being alive, but I also had to admit my father had been amazingly and consistently miserable for the decades since October 18, 1969. Sure, Dad had flipped out when I said he'd been acting dead for forty-five years, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. Maybe he and my mother would both have been better off if my uncle had survived. Then my dad could have grown up to be an older version of the bouncing-off-the-walls kid who had sung along with the Beatles in the car, and my mom could have met some other, happier man. And okay, I wouldn't be me, but maybe there might be two happy kids somewhere who were each half me and knew their parents were actually joyful people.

Well, maybe I didn't know how this movie was going to end after all—or even whether I was going to be around for the last reel.

 

YOUNGER GENERATION

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1969

 

I fell asleep in the sun for a while, and woke up to the sound of the first Led Zeppelin album playing over the PA system. Drowsily, I realized that these ancient songs were basically brand-new to everyone at the festival except me. Looking around, I saw that Willow and Michael had gone off somewhere. My father was sitting next to me with his arms wrapped around his knees. I decided at that moment I would start thinking of him as “David,” especially because there was a chance I might change the past and he would never grow up to become my dad. Plus, if I slipped and called him “Dad,” it would be pretty much the definition of awkward.

“You're awake,” he said.
You're a genius,
I thought. In the future, I would have said it and caused a huge argument about my attitude that wouldn't end until my mother sent us both to separate corners of the house. I bit my lip.

When I didn't reply, he asked, “Are you feeling better? I know you said you just needed sleep, but you really went flying when the car hit you.” He hurried to add, “Not that it was my brother's fault or anything. You just appeared, like, out of nowhere. What happened, anyway? How did you get here? And where did all your clothes go? Were you tripping? Did someone steal all your stuff and dump you by the side of the road?”

Incredible. My dad never asked this many questions in a row. I had once gone with him to Take Your Kid to Work Day, and what struck me most about his teaching style was that when he put a history question up on the board, he would just say, “Talk to me about this.” Then he would lean on the edge of his desk and wait. But at fifteen, Dad was a motormouth.

“Um, I can't tell you what happened. All I can say is that my hip hurts, but nothing's broken, and I don't need a doctor or anything.”

“Why can't you tell me? Are you in trouble? Can we help you, man?”

My dad—David—was incredibly hyper, but he had given me his spare clothes, and he looked completely sincere about helping, even though I was a total stranger who refused to tell him anything about myself. I know it sounds odd that I found this surprising, but my father was nice.

“You are helping me. You gave me food, and clothes, and a ride. You're letting me share your blanket.” I sighed. “So I guess I owe you some kind of explanation, huh? Listen: I can't exactly tell you how I ended up naked in front of your car, but please believe that I wasn't doing anything wrong, and nobody did anything bad to me.”

David nodded, and I continued.

“But I guess you could say I'm sort of on the run. Nobody knows exactly where I am. My parents are really strict. They barely let me cross the street by myself, so I'm pretty sure they would have three heart attacks and die if they could see me right now. I had to come here, though. I just feel like it's something I would regret forever if I didn't.”

David frowned for the first time that day, and spit, “You don't know how lucky you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My parents don't care if I'm dead or alive. Michael and Willow care about me more than they do. You know what Mom and Pop are going to spend this weekend doing? Drinking themselves under the table without worrying about whether I'm around to annoy them by trying to get them to eat, or go to their beds when they pass out in front of the TV.”

I didn't know what to say, so I just sat there until things felt really uncomfortable. Then David said, “It's even worse for Michael. Dad notices everything Michael does, but he says it's all crap. Michael practically raised me, but Dad constantly tells him he's useless around the house. Plus, Michael's, like, the most talented musician I've ever seen in my life, and Dad's always telling him he'll never be anything but a noisemaker. And if anything's broken around the house, it's automatically Michael's fault. He smacks Michael around all the time, too. I figure any day now, Michael's going to decide he's had enough and move out. Would you rather live at home and be a punching bag, or move in with Willow? Wait, don't even bother to answer that.

“So anyway, when I have kids of my own, I'm going to be like your parents. I'm going to watch my kids like a hawk. At least that way, they'll know I care about them.”

Hmm, I definitely hadn't thought about it that way. It was astounding to think that my dad had been tormenting me all these years in order to show me love.

“That is, if I have kids at all. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I would just automatically be a monster like my dad, no matter what I say now.”

“No!” I said, louder than I should have. David jumped a little. “I mean, you won't automatically be a monster. Wouldn't. You wouldn't be. Because you're thinking about it, right? So, right there, it seems to me like you're showing more effort than your dad does.”

“Maybe,” David said. “But my mom is a mess, too. What if I marry a monster, and ruin my kids' lives that way? Don't you ever worry about this stuff?”

“Not usually, but I'm worrying about it now.”

“Seriously. How would you even know you're marrying a monster? Obviously, she wouldn't act like one while you were dating, or nobody would ever get divorced, because they'd know not to get married in the first place. When I decide on whatever woman I'm going to marry, I think I'll have to date her for, like, years before we make it official. Then maybe we'll wait another bunch of years before we have a kid, so we really know what the hell we're doing before we take a chance on ruining some innocent kid's life.”

Wow, my dad had deliberately mapped out every single thing about his life that had annoyed me for fifteen years. On the other hand, if I told him not to follow his vision, it would mean I would never be born.

“I've thought about this a lot, and I'm pretty sure it's how I want my life to go. What do you think?” he asked.

“Uh, sounds like a plan,” I said.

Willow and Michael came back, all pumped up with news. “This place is far out,” Willow said. She gestured off to the left as we looked downhill at the stage. “See that forest over there? It's got trails, and tents everywhere, and little craft shops. Then, if you keep walking a little more, you get to a whole commune. It's groovy! They have a big kitchen, and art sculptures, and a big psychedelic bus. There's even a playground for little kids.”

Michael took over without any signal, as though he and Willow didn't even need words to communicate.
Some people don't need to date for a million years to be sure they're right for each other,
I thought. I couldn't help wondering how amazing it would be to have parents who connected with each other that way. “Then we walked down the hill, and there's a helicopter pad. I bet that's where the bands are going to fly in, man!”

Willow continued, “We asked a man in a Woodstock uniform shirt when the concert was going to start, and he told us it wouldn't be too long now, so we decided we'd better head on back to our seats. Did you get a good rest, Gabriel? Are you all right now?”

“Yeah, I'm feeling much better, thanks.”

“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes, honest.”

“I can't wait for the first band,” Michael said. “Sweetwater! You've heard of Sweetwater, right? A friend of mine saw them open for the Doors, and he told me their live sound was wild!”

“They're not playing first,” I said. “Richie Havens is.”

“No, the man in the uniform just told us that Sweetwater was going to be the first act, Gabriel,” Willow said.

“He's wrong. Sweetwater gets stuck in traffic, but Richie Havens flies here in a helicopter and—” I stopped in horror. I had blurted out stuff that hadn't happened yet, just to look smart in front of my uncle's girlfriend. Brilliant move. “I mean, I heard some kid walking by say that,” I added, lamely.

David looked at me oddly, but didn't contradict me. Just then, the speakers roared to life, and the stage announcer said, “Let's welcome … Mister Richie Havens!” David's eyebrows shot up. Willow looked amused. Michael shrugged.

I have to tell you, the concert experience of 1969 was mind-blowingly different from what we are used to in our time. (I admit, I have only been allowed to go to one concert ever, and it was with my mother, but still, I have watched a million concert DVDs, and I know the drill.) There was no Jumbotron, so the performers were just teeny, tiny dots. Nobody around us in the audience was holding up a cell phone or a video camera to record what was going on or take a profile pic. Nobody was tweeting or posting a status. There were no huge corporate advertising banners in sight. As Richie Havens sang his first song, “Minstrel from Gault,” the anti-Vietnam War lyrics washed over the crowd and there was nothing to distract us from the moment. We were all just right there, listening together.

It might sound corny, but there it is. I could feel the tribal power of half a million people all concentrating at once on the same one thing. Also, Richie Havens ruled. I can't imagine how brave you'd have to be to go onstage in front of 500,000 people with nothing but an acoustic guitar and your two backing musicians, and kick off the largest concert in history. This guy absolutely killed, though. Not only did he play well, but in between songs, he spoke in a warm, calm voice, the way you would talk to friends who were just hanging out in his living room. Plus, he came back for encore after encore.

Here was the most incredible thing, which I knew from reading about it in the future. His last encore, a song called “Freedom,” was totally improvised. The promoters of the concert kept pushing him back onstage to play more because the next groups weren't ready yet, so when he ran out of songs, he made one up on the spot. It was probably the coolest song of his whole set, too.

Watching it happen in real time, I just kept thinking,
I don't know how anyone could possibly not understand that playing music is a mystical act
. I was going to feel that way several times during the weekend, but right then, seeing the entire crowd falling into a group trance for the first time, I knew that whatever else happened, I had to make sure I appreciated this once-outside-of-a-lifetime opportunity.

While attempting to meet Jimi Hendrix, save my uncle, and change my father's future—hopefully without ceasing to exist.

 

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1969

 

The next guy to come out onstage was equally amazing, in a completely different way. He was a holy man from Sri Lanka named Swami something, and he gave an invocation. He said two remarkable things. The first was this:

“Music is a celestial sound and it is the sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations. Sound energy, sound power, is much, much greater than any other power in this world.”

I was sitting there thinking,
Before today I would have thought that was just some kind of semi-random guru baloney. But one chord on an electric guitar actually teleported me, so I guess maybe this guy has a point. I wonder if he knows how right he is?

Then he told the crowd how historically important they were:

“The entire world is going to watch this. The entire world is going to know what the American youth can do to the humanity. So, every one of you should be responsible for the success of this festival.”

I turned to David to see what he thought of this, and almost passed out. He was casually holding a huge hand-rolled marijuana cigarette, and was about to take a massive drag on it. Because, you know, when the entire world is watching, it's definitely a good idea to show your responsibility by getting high in broad daylight. I wanted Michael to act like a big brother and yell at him, but all he said was, “Hurry up and take your hit, Davey. We all need to get mellow for Sweetwater!”