And the meal tasted delicious.
Next, Willow brought out a tinfoil-wrapped square with a candle lying sideways on top of it. Smiling mischievously, she said, “If you kids are ready for some special dessert, I brought something from home for Davey. His sixteenth birthday is in two weeks, and Mike and I talked about taking him on a birthday trip after we get back home, but I’ll probably have a new job by then, so … well … I decided it would be cool to celebrate now.”
Michael said, “But before you open this up, Willow, I need the kids to promise me something. Guys, I need you all to swear you’ll stay right here on these blankets and stick together for the rest of the night, all right?”
We all looked around at each other. I didn’t know what everybody else was thinking, but I was like, Uh, what’s the big deal? It’s a cake, not a suicide mission.
“Seriously, do you swear you’ll hang out right here?”
David said, “I swear.”
Tina and Debbie made eye contact with each other, shrugged in unison, and mumbled together, “I swear.”
I wasn’t going anywhere without my father and uncle anyway, so I swore, too. Willow opened up the foil to reveal a huge, uncut sheet of brownies. Michael stuck the candle in the middle and lit it. Willow said, “Make a wish, Davey!”
My father stood up, closed his eyes, and blew with all his might. Willow and Michael enveloped him in a hug, and I heard Michael’s muffled voice say, “Be good this year, Davey. Be safe.”
Then Willow elbowed Michael out of the way and kissed David right on the lips. “That’s one to grow on,” she said. David blushed, and Michael laughed.
As soon as Willow put the brownies down in the middle of the blankets, David started tearing off a big chunk. Michael said, “Not so much, Davey. Go slow.” I thought that was strange too, but by then I was getting used to Michael being a bit of a mother hen when it came to David. David broke off some of his massive slab for me, and then distributed pieces for the girls, too. He held out a hunk to his brother, but Michael held up a hand and said, “Save me some. The original plan was for us to eat these with you, but now that you have friends your age here … Willow and I are going to go to the forest for a little while, but we’ll be back for the Grateful Dead. Remember: Stay here.”
They walked off together, and we ate our dessert. I had to say, the brownies tasted a little stale. They almost seemed moldy or something, but I didn’t want to ruin David’s birthday fest by mentioning it, so I just swallowed mine as fast as I could and tried not to think too hard about the aftertaste. Willow was still the hottest human female on the entire planet, but baking did not appear to be her strong suit.
The strange thing was that Debbie, Tina, and David just munched down those brownies like they didn’t notice the funkiness. Maybe Betty Crocker hadn’t gotten her technology quite right yet by 1969?
Whatever. I forgot all about the primitive state of 1960s dessert technology when the next band took the stage, because Debbie suddenly started kissing me. You know how different girls have different kissing styles? Well, Debbie’s was “Ambush!”
It was kind of fun.
We kissed our way through the Incredible String Band, who truthfully were much less incredible than Debbie’s lips. At first, the kissing was making me crazy to go farther. If my dad hadn’t been sitting five feet away, I don’t know what might have happened. As it was, a heated argument broke out between my inner lust demon and my conscience anyway:
Now put one hand behind her head and lie down. Come on, boy—do it in one smooth motion. You know you want to!
Unnngghhhh! I doooooo. But I can’t! What … about … Courtney?
There is no Courtney … yet. In this time, there is only pleasure.
But … we’ll never see each other again. That’s … that’s …
I believe the word you seek is “perfect”!
I tried to concentrate on the music, but I didn’t know any of this band’s songs, and they were just too mellow to be a strong distraction from Debbie. Who was now licking my left ear. My eyes rolled up into my head, and Debbie guided me backward onto the blanket. When my eyes came back down, I was looking straight up into the pre-sunset sky.
Which appeared to be on fire. Now this was a distraction!
“Debbie!”
“Mmmmm … what?” she said throatily.
“Fire!”
“You feel it, too?” she whispered in my ear.
Despite myself, I shivered. Debbie was an awesome whisperer. “No, I mean fire. Like, a firey fire. The kind with flames.”
Debbie giggled. “God, I’m better at this than I thought,” she murmured.
It took all the willpower I had, but I pulled away from her lips. “Debbie,” I said, “look up!”
She lay back next to me and looked straight up. “Wow, man,” she said.
“Do you see the fire?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s groovy!” she said.
She certainly didn’t seem too alarmed by the flaming apocalypse overhead. “Hey, David,” I said, “look up! The sky is on fire!”
I turned to look at David and Tina. Thankfully, they were not engaged in the throes of passion. Instead, they were already staring at the sky. “Yeah,” Tina muttered dreamily. “It’s a-may-zingggg.”
I turned to Debbie, who had started playing with my hair and had a look of wonderment on her face. “Gabriel,” she said, “you’re on fire! Your white, white hair of light is on fire! It’s beautiful!”
I felt my hair and was relieved to note that it was not, in fact, aflame. I looked deep into Debbie’s eyes. Her pupils were huge! I checked out her hair, which did not appear to be burning at all, but then when I looked at the sky and back, it looked as though little sparks were flitting from the sky down to her and then back up again. I touched her head and laughed. Debbie was very pretty when she was sparking.
I tried to catch some of the sparks as they flew, but my hands seemed to be moving in slow motion. Debbie said, “You know what? I don’t think those brownies were really brownies!”
Tina reached out and smacked her arm, which appeared to give off a shower of multicolored sparkles. “Yes, they were, silly! They must have been real brownies, because they were so brown and easy!”
This conversation was getting very hard for me to follow. “What-are-you-talking-about?” I asked.
Tina burst out laughing. “What-are-you-talking-about?” she said back to me. “I-am-talking-about-brown-easies!”
“But—- but—” I stammered.
“Easy, brownie!” David said.
Debbie asked, “What was in these brown, brown brownies? David, do you know?” She broke off a chunk of the brownies and started poking through it. After what seemed like a million years, she held up a shriveled thing that might have been either a deformed, giant raisin or a dried-up slice of somebody’s ear. “Aha!” she shouted. “What’s this?”
David laughed. “Wow, happy birthday to me! I know what that is. I’ll give you a hinty, minty hint: It’s not chocolate.…”
Tina said, “That’s a mushroom! We’re all tripping on mushy, mushy mushrooms, aren’t we?”
Holy cow, I thought. I tried really hard to concentrate on what this might mean. Stay on the blanket, I told myself. Stay on the blanket. Michael wouldn’t feed David anything he thought was dangerous, right? We just have to stay on the blanket and everything will be fine.
Debbie’s blissful face from moments before had been erased by a mask of near-panic. I attempted to conjure up the calmest voice I could, but when I spoke, the strangest thing happened: My words seemed to float out of me in a talk bubble, as though my life had been transformed into a comic book. I said, “Debbie, don’t worry! We’re together on this blanket of safety. Hold my hand. Okay? You are pretty. I like your sparky face and I am holding your hand.”
She said, “You talk like the moon!”
Oddly, I felt at that moment like I knew exactly what she meant.
Time
stretched and compacted; colors swirled and swooped everywhere I looked. I started to freak out several times, but whenever I did, I squeezed Debbie’s hand and she squeezed back. Meanwhile, the next two bands, Canned Heat and Mountain, played their entire sets without me once looking in the direction of the stage.
I experienced the music, though. At certain moments, the whole universe seemed to be made of Jell-O, and each note rippled through the gelatinous worlds around me. At others, the notes were water, or electricity, or pure, frozen light. I tried to think about the chords, or the guitar fingerings I was hearing, but everything kept speeding up or slowing down so much that analysis was impossible. Trying to capture any kind of coherent thought was like trying to catch sand in a spaghetti strainer.
I didn’t even notice when one band stopped and the next started.
At some point, though, Debbie suddenly crushed my hand super-hard. I sat upright and noticed three things:
1. The music had completely stopped.
2. It was pitch dark and raining.
3. Tina and David were gone.
SEA OF MADNESS
AFTER MIDNIGHT, SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 1969
I missed the Grateful Dead completely. I could have been the only guitar fan of my entire generation who got to see Jerry Garcia play live, but instead, I spent the next few hours running around in the dark, frantically screaming my father’s name. Oh, I also met a couple of other rock stars, but ended my adventure in a hospital tent.
Kids, just say no to drugs. And/or brownies.
Debbie and I sat in the rain and looked around for what felt like a long time. Then she let go of my hand, stood up, and paced around the blankets. She even peeked into the tent—twice—before she straightened up and said, “Gabriel, I’m not sure, but I think Tina and David might be gone.”
Duh.
Somehow, despite my wasted mental state, I remembered seeing a flashlight in one of the backpacks. I stood up and rummaged through two of the bags before finding it. I switched it on to make sure it worked, and Debbie said, “Wow, man, you brought a little sun! That’s going to be really useful! We can just hold it up and then Tina and David can … What was I saying again? Hey, that light is really pretty!”
From the next blanket over, someone shouted, “Turn that thing off, man! You’re ruining my trip!”
I issued the first of maybe a thousand apologies I would have to make during my hunt for my brother. Then I grabbed Debbie’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” I said, “we have to find Tina and David!”
“Where are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know! That’s why we have to look for them.”
“Oh, groovy!”
I took one step off the blanket and immediately stumbled over something on the ground. Pointing the flashlight straight down, I saw two pairs of incredibly muddy sneakers lined up side by side. Debbie bent way down and peered at the smaller pair. “Those are Tina’s shoes,” she said. “I was there when she got them. But she’s not in them now.”
You might notice that the mushrooms were doing wonders for our detection abilities.
“That’s true,” I said.
“I bet those are David’s sneakers right … next … to … hers!”
“I bet you’re right.”
“And he’s not in his, either!”
“That’s also true.”
“This … is … actually … good news,” Debbie said. “Now all we have to do is follow their footprints!”
It seemed like a good idea, for about three seconds. We walked, and ran, and stumbled, and slipped all over the festival grounds, staring at the mud, each with one arm around the other’s waist and one hand on our “little sun.” Sometimes, I would forget what we were looking for and Debbie would remember. Other times she would be the one to forget. I even seem to remember a period in there where we both forgot what we were supposed to be doing, and sat down in a puddle for a while to watch people use the pay phones.
It probably doesn’t sound that fascinating, but first of all, I’ve never used a pay phone. There are barely any left in the 2010s, but there were dozens of them all lined up in a row at Woodstock, and even in the middle of the rainy night, they were all getting used. Also, I imagined I could see the people’s voices turning into multicolored lines of electricity, and then flying through the lines all over America. I asked Debbie whether she could see the voices too, and she answered with a hushed and awestruck “Yeeaaahhh…”
For a second, I wished I had my cell phone so I could make colors fly straight through the air without a wire, but then I thought, No, you wouldn’t have anyone to call, anyway. Because nobody else even has a cell phone. That struck me as so hilarious that I started banging my head against Debbie’s shoulder, laughing. She didn’t even know what I was laughing about, but it didn’t matter—she burst out, too.
When we finally got back under control, she said, “We should go to the stage and tell them we lost our friends. They can, like, announce it. That would be so groovy. We could even say it was David’s birthday, and they could announce that, too!”
I sort of wanted to watch some more hot nonstop pay-phone action, but Debbie got me moving, and we made our way to the side of the stage. Some parts of what happened next are a blur, but I know we just kept marching up to people in Woodstock staff shirts and saying we really needed to see David and Tina. Of course, none of them paid any attention to two tripping fifteen-year-olds at first, but then I started telling everybody that I was friends with Jimi Hendrix.
That made them pay attention, because it made them think we were at least marginally psycho.
We got escorted, very gently, from the edge of the stage to a medical tent. A lady in a Woodstock security jacket handed us off to a tired-looking nurse. I think the security woman said something like, “We’ve got two more. This one here thinks he knows Hendrix!”
The nurse sat us down on the edge of a cot and started asking us questions about what we had taken. There was no way I was going to ‘fess up to anything, so the conversation didn’t go very smoothly:
Nurse: Son, can you tell me what you’re on?
Me: A cot.
Nurse (sighing): Can you tell me what you ingested?
Me: Brownies.
Nurse: What was in the brownies?
Me: Chocolate, flour, sugar … I don’t know.
Nurse: You don’t know?
Me: What do I look like, Betty Crocker?
Debbie interrupted with a squeal: “Oh my gosh! That’s John Sebastian from the Lovin’ Spoonful!”
I turned away from the nurse, and saw that a couple of cots away, a guy was standing with an acoustic guitar, strumming and singing quietly to whomever was lying there. He was wearing glasses and a wildly tie-dyed jean jacket. I said, “THE John Sebastian? Who played onstage today?”
The nurse said, “No, the other John Sebastian that’s walking around the festival with a guitar singing John Sebastian songs.” Ouch. I guess I probably deserved that, but still …
Debbie said, “Wow, whoever’s in that bed must be really important! Is it somebody famous, too?”
The nurse laughed. “No, honey, just two kids your age who came in about an hour ago. They were walking around in the dark barefoot—said they wanted to have ‘an encounter with the Earth Goddess.’ Instead, they had an encounter with some soda can tops. The doc just got done stitching ’em up, and now we’re waiting to make sure they aren’t having a reaction to the tetanus shots so they can get back to—hey, come back here!”
We ran over to the cot and had quite a joyous reunion. I know, I know: What are the chances that in a crowd of half a million people, we would all find each other in the dark, and then get a private concert from a rock star? All I can tell you is that in this case, the odds were 100 percent. My dad’s left foot and Tina’s right one were hugely bandaged, but they both had gigantic smiles on their faces as they listened to their new friend John singing a song he had done onstage that day called
“Rainbows All Over Your Blues.” After the first chorus, David and I even burst into three-part harmony, which I guess was pretty gutsy.
At the time, though, it felt perfect. It also looked awe inspiring. I could see a stream of golden notes fluttering forth from David’s mouth, intertwining with a river of reddish ones flowing from mine, and then mingling with a beautiful blue sea of words and chords coming from John and his guitar.
At the end of the song, John said, “Are you two friends with these two?” We all nodded in eerie unison, like trained seals. He grinned. “And I’m guessing you all shared dessert not too long ago?” We all nodded again, although I felt kind of sheepish, like I was getting busted. But he just grinned even wider and said, “Welcome to Woodstock, friends!”
Debbie said, “Um, Mr. Sebastian? Sir? Uh, your rock-star-ship?”
“Call me John.”
“Your Johnship? How come you’re playing here? I mean, it’s really far out and all, but…”
“I’ve been playing here on and off all day, sweetheart. Mostly, I’ve been singing songs for kids who’ve been trying to come down off bad trips, you know? It really helps ’em to mellow out. You should have been here a few hours ago. Rick Danko from the Band was here jamming, too. It was a real sweet scene.”
“That’s amazing!” I said. I know you always hear about famous people stopping in at hospitals, hitting home runs for little Timmy with cancer and stuff like that, but when you’re actually right there with the rock star, it’s still kind of crazy.
David reached out and touched John’s knee. “Hey, man. I just want to say thanks. The stitches kind of hurt, but it didn’t bother me so much or anything with you here.”
John smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
Just then, a mousy-looking short woman with long, frizzy hair came rushing in, wearing a flowing, tie-dyed outfit and a million beads and bracelets. She was holding a lit cigarette and waving a bottle of Southern Comfort whiskey at John with the same hand. “Sebastian,” she rasped, “I knew I’d find you here. Why isn’t your scrawny Yankee ass backstage? Sly Stone is going crazy! He said you promised you’d check out his hair before he goes onstage, and he ain’t leaving the trailer until you do!”