Are You Experienced?

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Over the storm, I didn’t hear the smack, but I saw my father’s head rock backward, and I braced myself to catch him if he tumbled into me. In the next lightning flash, I saw that Michael had grabbed the front of David’s shirt with his other hand before slapping him across the face.

  Even in that moment of awful fury, Michael had thought of his little brother’s safety.

  Michael lowered David down slowly until he was lying, curled in a ball, on the wood. Then he turned to me and said, “I’ve never hit him before. I just—I don’t know what to do anymore.” It’s pretty hard to tell whether someone is crying in the middle of a massive thunderstorm, but there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that my uncle was. He took off his own shirt, balled it up, and tried to push it against David’s nose, which had started to bleed in great spattering gushes. David pushed his brother’s hand away.

  I took the shirt in my own hands as Michael began to mutter over and over, “I’m sorry, Davey. I’m so sorry.” I wrung the water out of the fabric as best I could, and then held it out to David, who took it and pressed it against his face.

  We sat there for a while, nobody making eye contact with anybody else, as the tower rocked and swayed. Then I noticed that my father was shivering so violently I could see his shoulder bouncing off the platform. “David,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, “are you all right?”

  “C-cold,” he grunted through clenched teeth. His whole body was bucking, and his teeth were chattering.

  “Michael, we have to get David down from here now,” I said. “I think he might be going into shock.”

  Michael nodded and took one of David’s hands. I grabbed David’s belt from the other side, and we gradually coaxed him backward to the edge of the wooden platform. At that point, the rain was so heavy that I didn’t think David could hear me, but I urged him along the way you’d keep a horse or a little kid moving. I was going, “Come on, buddy! You can do it, pal!” every couple of inches.

  Michael’s eyes met mine as he slid his own legs over the side onto the rungs of the tower, and he mouthed, “One … two … THREE!” I twisted myself around so that my legs were dangling for a moment, until my feet found that first rung, and then I tugged at David’s waist until his body swung around and over.

  The first step was the most horrifying, because for a second or two, Michael and I each had to let go of the platform with one arm and lean back to allow David’s body to swing into the space between us. It felt for a second like I was going to tumble backward, but then David’s feet hit the first metal ledge. I threw my weight forward again and just leaned there for a moment, my weight half on my father’s waist and half on the platform.

  I couldn’t stay still for long, though. First of all, as soon as I stopped moving, I could feel my father’s body shaking all over again. Second of all, a huge flash of lightning startled me so much I almost flinched—and in our situation, flinching was an extremely bad idea. Michael reached his arm across David’s back and tapped my wrist. I nodded. We locked arms around David’s waist and started the long climb down.

  I have never been so frightened in my entire life. David was in bad shape, and his feet kept slipping. Between the stitched-up cuts, the rain, his drugged-up state, and the constant tremors, it was going to take a near-miracle for him to get down without falling off.

  And if David died, I would never be born.

  After about ten feet, he stopped moving his legs completely and just clung on to one of the metal beams with both arms.

  A bolt of lightning came so close that I actually felt a zing! run through me. “Come on!” I yelled, an inch from David’s ear. I’m sure Michael was shouting in his other ear, too, but I couldn’t hear it. David leaned his forehead against the tower, closed his eyes, and started saying, “No! No! No!” over and over. I couldn’t exactly hear him, but I’d known my dad long enough to lip-read that particular word.

  Now he sounded like the father I had grown up with. I started shouting at the top of my lungs, “YES! YES! YES!”

  He never stopped saying no, and it made me madder and madder for some crazy reason. After all the times he wouldn’t let me do things my whole life—after all the times he wouldn’t pay attention to me, or tell me anything about his past, or let me see my friends, or even hug me—was I really going to actually and literally get KILLED because my father finally said no to me one time too many?

  I flipped out. Right in the middle of the storm, however many feet up, with death flashing and flaring all around me, I dug my hand into my dad’s shoulder and unloaded:

  “Move it! Who the hell do you think you are? You want to get yourself fried up here? You want Michael to die? You want me to die? And what about your wife? What about your kid? You fucking quitter! You coward! You loser! Boo hoo! ‘My brother said he might leave me! I’m just going to curl up and die now!’ Well, I don’t give a shit! You can’t give up your whole damn life because of what happens to someone else. Now move! Just move! I said MOVE YOUR FUCKING FEET!”

  David looked at me, then down, then at Michael, then back at me. Finally, he took a step downward.

  In the end, I was the one who slipped.

  THE WEIGHT

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 1969

  Woodstock saved me. I guess somebody must have looked up and seen us struggling to get down from the tower, and that somebody must have poked somebody else. Somehow, those first two somebodies turned into a human pyramid that reached high enough to grab me when I fell. They got my father and my uncle, too.

  Think about that. You won’t see it in the official movie. There’s no way cameras would have worked through all that rain and lightning anyway. But how many people must it have taken to get us down safely? Twenty-five? Fifty? And they all got together without any orders, or badges, or bullhorns, in the face of real danger. Plenty of people I know would have just burrowed down in the mud and waited it out. Nobody could have blamed them if they had, right?

  But instead, this crowd of random teenagers locked arms, stood shoulder to shoulder, leaned against the cold metal, prayed away the lightning, and piled on, level after level. I figure it probably took three layers to reach high enough.

  Then somebody got to us. Fifteen feet up? Twenty? And just when my bones and muscles had had it, when I couldn’t shout any longer, when my whole self skipped a beat—the spirit of the festival itself reached out through outstretched arms and lifted us up and away.

  I was handed down from person to person. It occurs to me now that maybe David, Michael, and I were the first crowd-surfers. Who knows? At the time, my heart was beating so hard, and the rain was pounding into my upturned face so viciously, that all I could think about was not gagging. But before I knew it, the three of us were being carried to one of the medical tents.

  With my amazing luck, it was the same tent we had visited the night before. At first, the three of us were placed on three adjacent cots, but Michael popped up to explain that he wasn’t injured or anything. I sat on the edge of my cot, but felt kind of dizzy, so I didn’t stand right away. I looked around and saw that we were almost the only three patients, aside from one guy a few cots away, who appeared to be sleeping with his back to us. The same nurse was there, and she recognized David and me instantly. She shooed away the kids who had carried us in before we could even thank them, and then asked David, “What happened this time?”

  David was shivering too hard to talk, so the nurse immediately pulled his shirt off and started drying him with a towel. Then she wrapped him up in a brownish army blanket and asked me, “Listen, Betty Crocker, what did your friend take now?”

  “Umm…” I said.

  “The same brownies?”

  I nodded. It sounded pretty stupid when she said it out loud like that.

  “You have got to be freaking kidding me! All right, is he physically injured?”

  Michael said, “Uh, he got hit in the nose. And I think he’s really cold.”

  She turned to me and said, “Who’s t
he detective?”

  “This is his older brother, Michael.”

  “Well, older brother Michael, let’s have a look. I’m warning you, I’m about five seconds away from getting your brother choppered out of here. In fact, I should have done that last night when I stitched him up, but—”

  “Stitched him up?” Michael barked. Apparently, he hadn’t been listening so well when David had come back to the blanket and told him about our adventure the previous night.

  “Umm, long story?” I said.

  “Anyway, nothing’s flying right now, so it’s irrelevant. Let me take a quick look at your brother. His name’s David, right? If he looks physically okay, and he’s responsive, he can sleep this off here. If he’s physically okay, but freaking out, then I’ll have to send him over to the bad trips tent. If there’s a real medical issue going on here, then we’ll have to call your parents and start looking into either an ambulance or a helicopter for when the weather clears.”

  She leaned over David with a bag of instruments and started examining him. I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. She couldn’t call David’s parents. That would ruin everything. Even though we were rapidly running out of time to meet Jimi Hendrix, it still could happen. I knew the weather had to clear, and the rest of the bands had to play. Then the announcer might call us up to the stage. Jimi could meet us.

  And then … what? What could possibly happen in less than a day that would change the entire history of my family?

  The nurse stood up after a few minutes and said, “The good news is that, aside from a black eye, I think David’s body is going to be as good as new once he’s had a chance to get warmed up for a while. The bad news is that he won’t talk to me. In fact, he won’t look at me.

  “When a patient who’s taken a hallucinogenic drug is unresponsive like this, my instructions are to go down to the big med tent and get a doctor.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s the doctor going to do?”

  “Son, if the doctor can’t get your friend to respond, we’re going to have to shoot him up with Thorazine and fly him out to the hospital. This doesn’t usually happen from mushrooms, but once in a while, a kid uses one of these drugs and just doesn’t come back. Now wait here, all right? The big tent is a little ways from here, and the docs are pretty busy, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Until then, keep David warm, and whatever you do—don’t let him go anywhere.”

  The nurse jogged out into the storm, and Michael ran a hand through his hair. “What are we going to do?” he said. “They can’t call our parents, man. Dad will kill David. He’ll kill me, too, but he’s crazy about drugs. He’ll just kill David. We have to wake David up. Goddamn, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I just wanted my little brother to come hear some groovy music, and now—”

  “Music! That’s it!” I said. “Michael, you have to go get your guitar!”

  “What?”

  “John Sebastian told me last night. He spent the whole day playing his guitar for people in the bad trips tent, and the music mellowed them out. If we do that for David, he won’t need the drugs or the helicopter or anything, right? But we have to do it before the doctor gets here!”

  Michael stared at me for a second, then bolted out of the tent. I sat there alone with my father and the sleeping guy, both of whom were turned away from me. Aside from the occasional whistling gust of wind, the storm seemed to be getting quieter, which was probably a bad thing. Now all it meant was that they’d be able to chopper David out sooner.

  “David?” I called quietly. My father didn’t even twitch. “David, can you hear me?” Nothing. I tiptoed over and peeked at his face. His eyes were closed, but not in the relaxed way that people’s eyes close for sleep. David’s eyelids were clenched shut. I didn’t know if he was awake and lost in a terrifying trip, or if he was too angry to deal with the world, or what—but I knew things were going disastrously wrong. I felt like I was watching the friendly, bouncing David of Friday morning enter a cocoon, and I knew if I let this happen, he would emerge as the closed-up dad I had always known.

  “Come on, David,” I said. “You have to wake up. I need you.” That won’t make any sense to him, I thought. Why would some kid he met two days ago need him? On the other hand, you just had a screaming breakdown at him on the tower, and he’s not responding anyway, so what’s the point of holding back now?

  I could feel myself hyperventilating. It almost felt like the air was being sucked out of the tent. “You have to come back. I need you. Your brother needs you. I know you don’t think he does, but he’s in danger. And you need to wake up, or you’re going to get sent home from the festival right now. And if you get sent home from the festival, everything’s going to get all messed up. The whole future’s going to change. I might not even be born! And I won’t meet Jimi Hendrix. And we won’t get his guitar. So I won’t save Michael. And I won’t ever get back to my own time, and—”

  The flap door of the tent burst open. David didn’t respond to the sound, but I jumped straight up in the air. It was Michael, with the guitar. He was gasping so hard that he handed the case to me and said, “Play. I … can’t … breathe.” Then he collapsed onto the edge of David’s cot.

  I picked up the towel the nurse had used on David, and dried off Michael’s guitar case as quickly as I could. Then Michael said, “Forget the case—no time!”

  Wow, I thought. His brother truly is worth more to him than his Martin.

  I took the guitar out, and strummed a few chords. Amazingly, it was in tune despite the humidity, so I started playing songs right away. I sang the most soothing old songs I could think of. David didn’t miraculously sit up and recover or anything, so I kept on playing song after song.

  Then I thought of the saddest and most beautiful song I know, Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel.” It’s also incredibly tough to play, but I thought maybe it would bring some kind of strange good luck. I mean, it’s all about an angel coming down from heaven to rescue the singer. Which was kind of what I was trying to be, but also what we all needed.

  I played and sang my heart out. At the end, my throat was raw, and my fingers ached from the stretches it took to reach all the notes. Jimi Hendrix had huge hands; I don’t. When I stopped, David rolled halfway over, so he was looking straight up at the ceiling. He didn’t say anything, though. Michael did. “Wow, what was that? It’s beautiful, man. Haunting.”

  “Oh, it’s a song called ‘Angel.’ It’s on a Jimi Hendrix album called—”

  A quiet, shaky voice rose up from the cot in the corner. “That song’s never been on any album. And, well, I think I would know if it had.”

  The form on the cot threw off its blanket, sat up, and spoke. “Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is James. But, you know, my friends call me Jimi.”

  MESSAGE TO LOVE

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 1969

  I nearly dropped Michael’s guitar. “Uh … uh…” I said.

  Michael was a little smoother. He managed to say actual words. “Hendrix. You’re Jimi Hendrix!”

  Jimi, who was wearing a fringed white leather jacket, and sporting an earring and a fluorescent pink bandana over his Afro, looked rather sheepish about our shock. “Yes, I am,” he said softly.

  “But … but … you were sleeping!” I exclaimed. Because, you know, rock stars don’t just sleep. Or because I’m an idiot.

  Jimi said, “Well, man, I was tired, you know. It’s crazy backstage, and everybody wants something from you all the time. And, well, I may have swallowed some, you know, recreational pharmaceuticals, so things were feeling a little tripped out. So I just kind of wandered in here and asked the nurse if I could crash for a while. Where is she?”

  “She went looking for a doctor and some Thorazine,” Michael said. “My brother, David, here ate some mushrooms, and now he’s having a bad trip. He won’t even open his eyes. She said if David doesn’t wake up, the doctor’s going to shoot him up with it, call our parents, and send him to the hospital. And our par
ents are going to kill us. Our father isn’t … Well, he’s not the kind of father you’d want to have. I mean, if you had a choice.”

  “Wow, that’s too bad, man. I know all about that scene.”

  “You do?” Michael asked. “But—”

  “But what?” Jimi asked, again in that gentle voice.

  “But you’re a rock star. You’re a hero of mine. You’re, um, I mean, this sounds stupid, but you’re the whole reason I wanted to come to this concert. Why would you have a bad trip? Everything in your life is a dream, right?”

  Jimi smiled, but he didn’t look happy. “Just because my life is your dream doesn’t mean it’s mine. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Michael and this is Gabriel.”

  “Michael, don’t mind me, all right? I’m just really tired, and too many people want me to be too many things, you know? Everybody wants something. Sometimes I wish I could just curl up and hide away for a year or so. But I can’t.

  “And your dad … I know all about fathers. Trust me. So, Gabriel?”

  “Uh, yes. Sir. Yes, sir.”

  Jimi laughed. “I left the army a couple of years ago, Gabriel. I don’t think anybody calls lead guitar players ‘sir.’ You know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded and gulped.

  “Anyway,” he said, “how did you know my song? It has not been on an album. Plus, you changed the lyrics around. I’ve recorded a couple of demos, and the lines are a little bit different from how you sang them. Tell me again where you heard it?”

  Oh, boy. I had really screwed up. This was probably the most awkward moment of my life. No, the most awkward moment of anyone’s life. Now that I had a moment to think, I was pretty sure the “Angel” song was on an album of previously unreleased material that had come out after Jimi Hendrix died.

  Try explaining that one. “I, well, uh … Michael, can I speak to Jimi alone for a minute?”

  Michael looked at me like I was crazy. So did Jimi. And maybe I was crazy. But somehow, thinking about the note Jimi was going to write me, I felt like I could tell him more of the truth than I could tell my uncle. After a long pause, Michael said, “Okay, I’ll just sit by my brother here.”