Are You Experienced?

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  “Shh, Mikey,” Willow whispered.

  “No, I’m going to say something. This isn’t right.”

  “Come on, Mike. Let it go. We don’t need some big hassle before we even get to the concert. You promised you were going to make this trip perfect for your brother, right?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  She put her packages down on the floor and hugged him from behind. “No buts. You said you wanted David to remember this trip forever.”

  From behind, I could see Michael’s entire frame tense up, then relax. “You’re right,” he said. “This whole scene isn’t worth getting wigged out over.”

  Michael stepped up to the counter and paid for everything. When the lady said, “Have a nice day,” he looked like he was choking on a lemon, but he didn’t say a word.

  I thanked my hosts profusely as we walked to the car and packed all of our groceries into the backpacks they had brought. They loaded me down with a sleeping bag and a folded-up camping tent, and we set out along the edge of the road, following the thousands of excited teen pilgrims whose ranks extended as far as I could see into the distance. My hip ached, but I distracted myself by checking out the fashion show that was going on around me. I was actually surprised by how normal a lot of people’s clothing looked to me. I mean, the majority of the kids around us were sporting jeans and T-shirts. If I had seen one of them alone back in the 2010s, I wouldn’t have noticed anything astounding about the outfit. But seeing a horde of them all walking at once, several things struck me. First, in my time, an army of teens heading to a summer concert would all have been wearing shorts. Second, the T-shirts didn’t all have corporate logos on them—I was so used to advertising slogans and trademarks everywhere that it was sort of a shock to see nothing but plain old solid colors and stripes.

  Then there were the occasional bikers roaring by every few minutes, plus the serious hippie kids like Willow, who were wearing fringed vests, love beads, tie-dyes, bandanas on their heads, and a wide variety of other eye-popping outfits. And, speaking of eye-popping, I couldn’t help but notice a remarkable lack of bra-wearing among a large percentage of the female population.

  Two other things shocked me. One was that almost everybody was skinny. I know my parents are always complaining about the obesity epidemic in modern America, but wow—seeing how thin everybody was in 1969 really made me understand what they have been talking about my whole life. The other was the parade of freaky hair. You might expect long hair on guys, and that parted-in-the-middle-with-two-braids style on girls.… I had seen enough old Brady Bunch episodes to expect a certain basic 1960s look. But everywhere I turned, I was seeing white kids with four-inch Afros. Nothing had prepared me for the shock of that.

  After only a few minutes of walking in the hot morning sun, I broke into a pretty good sweat that loosened me up and made my hip feel better. Right after that, Dad started in on his brother:

  “How much farther do we have to go? We’re not going to miss the first act, are we? Is anyone else thirsty? I’m thirsty. Hey, Michael, can we drink some Cokes? That way we won’t have to carry ’em. I bet Gabriel would like a Coke. Mike, Gabriel looks thirsty. I think we learned in Boy Scouts that you’re supposed to give lots of fluids to people after they get hit by a car.”

  Wow, and I thought he was annoying when he was sixty.

  On the other hand, the Coke tasted amazing. I wasn’t sure if I was just super-duper hot, but it honestly seemed to me like it was better than twenty-first-century Coke. Plus, I was on my way to Woodstock! I was going to see Jimi freaking Hendrix play! Additionally, walking behind Willow was a whole other level of 1960s amazingness. I took a moment to apologize in my mind to Courtney for the thoughts I was having about another woman. In my defense, though, I didn’t think it counted as cheating, because Courtney wasn’t even going to be born for another thirty years.

  Even with the sweet, sweet soda and the sweet sweetness of my uncle’s girlfriend to keep me moving, I was starting to feel kind of draggy after a couple of miles, but then, out of nowhere, something beautiful happened. Somebody off in the distance in front of us started singing a song:

  Just what makes that little old ant

  Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant

  Anyone knows an ant, can’t

  Move a rubber tree plant

  But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes

  He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes

  I didn’t know the song, but apparently every single other person for miles in either direction did, because suddenly I was part of the world’s lengthiest singalong. Each person in the huge human chain turned to the person behind and grinned.

  When that song ended, there was a moment of silence, but then another song came rippling down the line:

  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea.…

  The singing went on for miles. After a while, we made a sharp left turn and started heading downhill on a farm road. I could smell cow manure and wet hay. Then we came over a rise and I saw a shallow valley full of people sitting around on blankets or standing in little groups talking. At the far edge of the valley I saw a line of what looked like concession stands. It was weird, because there was no stage, and most of the crowd was still walking down the road. There was also a partially built chain-link fence that looked like it was supposed to be some sort of official entrance. I knew that, at the beginning, tickets had been sold for the Woodstock festival, but then at some point, the huge crowd had just trampled the fences, and the concert had eventually been declared free for everyone. But when had that happened? My companions had tickets, but I didn’t. If I got hassled, we might get separated.

  When we reached the fence line, we didn’t see anybody in any kind of uniform, or any turnstiles, or any other sign of officialdom, so we just did what the rest of the crowd was doing. We kept walking.

  Then we came over the far edge of that valley, and saw a sight I knew would be burned into my mind forever. I was looking downhill into a natural bowl the size of several football fields in every direction. At the bottom was a big wooden stage, flanked by several super-tall lighting towers. There were also more concession stands, a line of pay phones, and a few rows of portable toilets. But what stood out—what blew my mind—was the sheer volume of humanity on display. The entire area was totally blanketed with people.

  We were at Woodstock. And my uncle Mike had sixty-three days to live.

  PIECE OF MY HEART

  EARLY MORNING, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2014

  After my mother had finished telling me her story, I asked whether I could go down to my father’s den and apologize. She nodded at me ever so slightly over the lip of her teacup, and I got up and tiptoed downstairs. If I had known how many years I’d have to cross before seeing her again, I might have looked back. As it was, I just concentrated on not letting the cellar door squeak. One thing about older parents: They really hate it when doors squeak. From long years of practice, I could move around my house in the manner of a teen ninja.

  I paused outside the den’s door, which was closed. I put my ear right up to the wood, and when I really, really strained, I was pretty sure I could hear the faint sound of music seeping through. This was scary. First of all, my dad and I didn’t do heart-to-heart talks; music was the only thing we shared. Second, we also didn’t apologize to each other. Third, I had no idea what Dad was doing in there. What if he was crying or something? The idea of comforting my father was pretty ghastly.

  I took a deep breath and knocked.

  Nothing.

  I knocked again, and this time I heard shuffling footsteps. The music stopped. Then the door opened, and there was Dad, in his dark red flannel old-guy pajamas and slippers. Behind him on the floor was a nest of stuff I hadn’t seen before: photo frames, papers, old magazines and books, and even a banged-up electric guitar case. Dad sighed. “What is it, Michael?” he said. Then he caught himself, realizing he had just called me Michael. “I mean—”

&
nbsp; “I know what you mean, Dad. I just came down to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lied to you and Mom, and I’m sorry I got you into a stupid situation.”

  Dad ran one hand through the messy gray remains of his hair. “We’ll talk about this in the morning, Richard. All right?” He started to step back and swing the door shut.

  “Dad, wait,” I said. My heart lurched. This was not safe territory. “Mom told me what tonight was. To you, I mean. And I want to say … I’m sorry about that, too.”

  Dad stopped moving and our eyes locked.

  “Dad, I can’t sleep anyway. Can you … I mean, would you like to tell me about Uncle Michael? I’m not talking about how he died. I’m talking about who he was when he was alive.”

  “Rich, this isn’t the time.”

  “There’s never going to be a time. In my whole life, you’ve mentioned his name maybe five times. I’ve never seen a picture of him, even though people have told me I have his looks. He was one of my closest relatives, and I don’t even know who he was. Tonight is the anniversary of his death, and my parents have brought him up twice. You yelled at me about him, and so did Mom. So I figure I might as well ask now, while everybody already hates me.”

  Dad’s face contorted like he was attempting to fight off a case of demonic possession. Either that, or he was battling an incredibly strong urge to slam my head through the basement wall. He didn’t battle quite hard enough. “Please just leave me alone. Go to bed.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Dad, can’t you just talk to me, for once?”

  “This isn’t about you,” he snarled.

  Well, Dad, I thought, I can snarl, too. “You’re right. Nothing’s ever about me in this family. It’s always about you and Mom and whatever ghosts are waltzing around in your heads. I swear to God, it’s like I’m growing up in a haunted house!”

  “Ghosts? Ghosts? How dare you, Richard? How dare you talk about ghosts, when my brother died forty-five years ago today?”

  “Yeah, Dad. Your brother died forty-five years ago—but you didn’t! You just act like you’re dead already!”

  My father didn’t answer; he just lunged toward me and raised his hand like he was going to smack me across the face. I braced myself, and felt my heart skip. But the blow never came. Instead, Dad slammed the door in my face. My eyes burned; I told myself it was just from being awake for so many hours straight. “Nothing like a little late-night male bonding,” I muttered, trudging away across the basement, into my dank little guitar practice room in the corner behind the boiler. I had spent half of the summer before freshman year soundproofing the walls with foam spray and egg cartons. I kept my classical guitar down there. The sound baffling wasn’t super-effective, but it was good enough that I could do some quiet fingerpicking until I calmed down without my parents smashing in the door.

  It took a lot of songs, but eventually my hands stopped shaking and I felt the anger ebbing out of me. By then, it had to be something like four in the morning, and I figured my father had to have gone upstairs to bed. No matter how temporarily relaxed I might have been feeling, I absolutely didn’t want to run into him again.

  I packed up my guitar, eased my practice room door open, and peeked around the edge across the open floor of the cellar. The coast appeared to be clear. I had to go directly past Dad’s den to get to the stairs, though, and the door was ajar, which was extremely unusual. Light poured from the doorway, but no shadows were moving around in there. I tiptoed across the floor until I could see in.

  I realized I was holding my breath. Yes, my father was that scary. He may never have hit me, but coldness and distance can be pretty hard in their own way. I forced myself to exhale slowly, and inhale as quietly as I had ever done anything, and then look all around the den.

  No Dad.

  But I did see something I had never seen before. In the far left corner of the room, a closet door that had always been closed and locked was wide open. Obviously, I should have just kept walking. I know that. I’ve downloaded enough horror movies after my parents were asleep to know that nothing good could possibly come of this scene.

  On the other hand, I wanted to know about that guitar case … which was still right there in the middle of the floor, surrounded by Dad’s piles of mementoes … all the buried treasures he had never shown me in my fifteen years of living with him. Plus, I was mad enough at my father that consequences weren’t way up at the forefront of my mind. AND—speaking of hidden treasures—I was dying to see that amplifier my mom had mentioned.

  There was one other factor at work: Dad never, ever stayed up this late. He hadn’t even made it until midnight on New Year’s Eve for as long as I could remember, so it seemed to me he had to be down for the count. So I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to check out Dad’s secrets.

  I was too right.

  The piled-up stuff was set in a semicircle, so that a person sitting on the floor could reach out and grab all of it without having to move much. I set myself down carefully in the middle, and reached for a photo album. It was dated SUMMER 1969 in stick-on DayGlo letters.

  The pictures inside were all captioned in my father’s handwriting, and mostly showed him and my uncle mowing lawns together, goofing around by a pool, and playing onstage in a band. There was one picture that really struck me: Dad was standing between his brother and an amazing-looking teenage girl, both of whom had their arms around his shoulders. The caption read, “With ‘Mom’ Willow and ‘Daddy’ Mike.” That made me realize that the only photo of my actual grandparents in the entire book was one slightly out-of-focus snapshot of them sitting in ugly chairs, watching TV and holding cans of beer.

  My dad was incredibly skinny, and looked astonishingly young. My uncle looked almost exactly like an older version of me.

  After that picture came an entire page with nothing on it except for three tickets to Woodstock. My heart jumped. There were only a few more pages left in the book, and I was almost afraid to turn them. It felt like I was counting down to the end of my uncle’s life.

  Actually, there was only one photo left. The rest of the book was blank. That one picture was shocking enough, though. It featured Willow and my father standing slightly off to one side of the frame, while a man whose face I knew handed an electric guitar to Michael.

  This was absolutely impossible!

  The guitar case was right there on the floor next to me. Half of me was almost laughing at the other half for even thinking what I was thinking. There was just no way. But the night couldn’t get much weirder, so I popped the latches on the case and swung open the lid to reveal an electric guitar with a sheet of looseleaf paper threaded through the strings. I stood, unsteadily, and peered at the guitar. It was an off-white Fender Stratocaster with a white pickguard. A right-handed Fender Stratocaster, strung upside down so that it could be played by a lefty. There was a pick tucked in behind the top edge of the pickguard. My knees buckled.

  It couldn’t be. I had seen a guitar that looked exactly like this one on the covers of several guitar magazines, and in a bunch of books, too. I had watched close-ups of that guitar being played onstage. At Woodstock. By Jimi Hendrix, the greatest rock guitarist who ever lived. My musical idol. I had done a huge biography project on him for school. I had read tons of books and magazine articles about his career, watched video clips of practically every interview he had ever done, and of course, studied his music with a burning intensity. I knew everything about his life—well, except the part where apparently he gave my uncle his most famous instrument. Forget about digging up regular, ordinary buried treasure: this was like finding out I had spent my entire life in a house that held the Holy Grail in its basement.

  Except for one problem. This couldn’t be Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock guitar. I knew that guitar was supposed to be in a museum in Seattle. The owners only took it out for super-special occasions, because it was worth millions of dollars.

  I looked at the paper between the strings. It read,

>   Hold this for Gabriel. One day, he will come for it. Jimi said he will know what to do. DO NOT LET ANYBODY ELSE PLAY THIS GUITAR!

  ~M

  My head was spinning. I knelt down between the guitar and the photo album. I read the caption under the photo:

  “Jimi Hendrix walks off the stage at Woodstock on Monday, August 18, 1969, and gives this guitar to my brother, Michael Barber.”

  I guessed that Michael had written the note, but who in the world was Gabriel? Why was my father, of all people, holding what may very well have been the single most valuable electric guitar on the planet? I turned the note over and saw there was writing on the back, as well, in a different, spidery hand:

  Gabriel, play my chord for an electric three-day pass.

  ~ JMH

  What was an “electric three-day pass”? A three-day pass to what? And what was “my chord”? Had Jimi Hendrix written that? I knew his middle name was Marshall, so the initials were right. And if it had been written by Jimi, I had an idea what chord he might have meant. There’s this one special chord that guitarists call “The Hendrix Chord.” It’s called an “E-seven-sharp-nine” chord. He used it in his most famous song, “Purple Haze,” and in another one called “Foxy Lady.” That had to be what he was talking about.

  This is where I really went off the deep end. But honestly, once you’ve already gotten your dad beaten up and arrested, plus he’s refused your apology, and when your parents have never let you do anything even before that, how much more trouble can you possibly get in? What were they going to do—revoke my internal organs? Ground me from oxygen?

  Very carefully, I took the guitar out of the case, grabbed the pick, and started tuning. The strings were way, way out of whack after the instrument had sat in its case in a basement all this time. When everything sounded right in standard tuning, I played the chord, but it didn’t sound quite like the way it did when Jim Hendrix played “Purple Haze.” That was when it hit me: Jimi hadn’t tuned his guitar the standard way. He had always tuned all six of his strings down a half-step, so that every chord he played came out a half-step flat.