Are You Experienced?

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Jimi gestured me over to his cot. I handed the guitar to Michael and walked over. Jimi said, “All right, little brother. Tell me about the song.”

  I tried to say something, but no sound came from my throat.

  “Please?” he whispered, licking his lips. “It’s important to me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I know where you came from,” he said.

  I felt sick. Who knew how badly this was going to mess everything up? “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I heard you, Gabriel. When you were talking to David. I heard the whole thing. You talked about the future. And how you might not get to be born. And how you needed to get back to your own time. Then when you played ‘Angel,’ I knew—you’re a time traveler! I’ve been waiting for you to come, you know.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right, brother—I’ve been waiting. Have you ever listened to my song lyrics?”

  “Sure. I’m a huge fan. But—”

  “But nothing. Why do you think I’m always singing about flying saucers and aliens and angels? And mermaids? And traveling through time? You were the only one I was still waiting on, man!”

  “You mean…?”

  He grinned. “Everybody else already showed up, man.”

  My mouth dropped open. He had to be joking. But then again, I was a kid from the future, so why couldn’t there be flying saucers and aliens? Aliens? Angels? “Really? Seriously?”

  He nodded, an extremely serious look on his face. “Mermaids?” I asked.

  Jimi raised an eyebrow and giggled. “All right, I’m kidding you,” he said. “No, I’m not. Yes, I am. No, I’m not. Yes, I am.”

  “Wait, which is it?”

  “Really,” he said, “if you want to know God’s honest truth, I’m a little bit high.” He giggled one more time, and it dawned on me that Jimi Hendrix—an incredibly famous rock star—sounded nervous. “And, well, an old fortune-teller lady over in Europe gave me a guitar, and told me I was going to meet a boy from the future. So, Gabriel, are you the one?”

  I inhaled deeply, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Wow,” he said. “I always thought you’d have some kind of, I don’t know, silver clothes or something. Your hair is pretty cool, though. Does everybody have hair like that where you’re from?”

  “No, my hair was black until two days ago. Then I played your white guitar, and, well, it zapped me back here. Somehow, the time change bleached my hair.”

  “You played my white guitar, huh? Well, that makes sense. The gypsy lady laid a whole big trip on me. She said I would play a song this year that would change everything for my country, and the guitar I played it on would become—what did she say?—the symbol and center of these three days. That guitar was the one she gave to me.”

  I nodded. I knew exactly what song she meant. After all, it was the most famous scene in the Woodstock movie.

  “So, I just got my new band together for this festival, Gabriel, and we’re still not really tight, you know? What song am I supposed to play that’s so important? I hope it’s not ‘Angel,’ because these boys don’t even know that one!”

  I licked my lips. Holy cow, I could completely change the future by not mentioning “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When Jimi Hendrix had played that song early on Monday morning as Woodstock drew to a close, he reclaimed America and its anthem for a new generation. It was huge. I mean, I wasn’t sure I fully understood it, but my mom had once said that that moment showed the world for once and for all that you could be patriotic and still hate the Vietnam War. She even thought it had helped make the war end sooner.

  “‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.”

  “Oh, really? I’ve played that one before, and it hasn’t been some huge deal or anything.”

  “Well, tomorrow it will be.”

  “Tomorrow? I’m playing tonight.”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re kidding me now.”

  “Nope.” Hey, this was kind of fun.

  “Because of the rain?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow, far out. So, I just, like, give you my white Strat, huh? And how does it become a, you know, time machine? Does everyone in the distant future have a special time cube in their flying saucer that lets them triangulate back from an object to its source, or whatever you want to call it?”

  No, I thought, but that would be really freaking cool. “I don’t know about the distant future. My time is only forty-five years from now. That kid lying on the cot over there? The one that’s not moving or anything? He’s going to be my dad. Michael’s my uncle. I, uh, I came back to save Michael.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jimi said. “You have to tell me about the guitar.”

  “Okay, you have to give it to Michael after you come offstage tomorrow morning, with a note that tells me what to do. And what I have to do is play your chord.”

  “My chord?”

  “You know, the E seventh chord with the sharp ninth in it, like in ‘Purple Haze’? Or ‘Foxy Lady’? You’re going to give Michael the guitar, with a note that tells me to play the chord for a three-day pass.”

  “What happens at the end of three days?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Wait a minute, you’re saying that fifty years in the future, people are still going to know my songs?”

  I thought about this. Jimi was going to die at age twenty-seven in 1970, but obviously he didn’t know this. So in fifty years, he’d only be twenty-six plus fifty, or seventy-six. That wasn’t even so old. “Sure,” I said. “You’ll be playing concerts and stuff, and you’ll be on TV all the time. It’ll be really—”

  “Gabriel, I know I’m going to die soon,” Jimi said. “You don’t have to lie to me about it. The gypsy lady told me, but I’ve always known anyway. My mother died young, and she was the only person who ever really cared about me. That’s what the song ‘Angel’ is about, right? It’s about joining my mother again in the sky someday. So you don’t have to pretend for me. I’ve been waiting for you to come so I can find out whether my life has made a difference. I want to know people won’t just forget me right away, man.”

  “Forget you? Are you kidding me? You’re huge in fifty years. You know how you said, ‘When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace?’”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “That was, like, everybody’s favorite Facebook status in seventh grade.”

  “Everybody’s favorite what?”

  “It’s, uh … it means that … well, everybody is going to have little computers in their phones, okay? And they’re going to carry the phones around. And when seventh-grade girls are trying to sound smart and deep, they’re all going to type your quote into their little computer-phone things for everyone else to see.”

  “Far out.”

  “Yeah. And your music. Guitar players are going to study you in school the way classical players study Mozart and Bach. Please trust me: You don’t have to worry about your legacy.”

  “They’re going to study me? Really? I don’t even know how to read music, man.”

  “You know how to play it, though.”

  Jimi looked down at his feet. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure. We have to hurry, though. My father—”

  “I know. I really need to know this, though. When I die … Do you know … Will my family come?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean … listen, this hasn’t been in any magazine articles or anything, but my father didn’t let me or my brother, Leon, go to our mother’s funeral. I’ve had nightmares about it ever since. Nightmares about my mother trying to reach me and ask me why I didn’t come to her, and nightmares about my father and Leon not coming to stand by me.”

  Jimi swallowed before continuing. “So, uh, do they? When it’s my time, do they come and stand for me?”

  Oh, man. I knew the answer to this one. “Mr. Hendrix—Jimi—when the time comes
, your father and your brother will be there. They won’t leave you. I read a book about your life, and I know this. Your father will stand over your casket, and at the funeral, in front of everybody, he’s going to reach down and rub his knuckles over your head again and again. He’s going to say, ‘My boy, my boy, my boy,’ until someone leads him away and they close the coffin. Your father won’t leave your side until you’re in the ground. And then he’s going to spend the rest of his life running a museum dedicated to you.”

  Tears ran down Jimi’s face. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been so worried I’d be alone when my time comes. But for the first time now, I’m not afraid. It won’t be so bad, going, if I know my father will be there for me. That’s true, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You promise?”

  I nodded again.

  Jimi Hendrix leaned back and smiled. I looked over at my own father, who still hadn’t moved an inch. Michael was rubbing his shoulders and whispering to him, but it didn’t appear to be working. I felt a lump in my throat. Jimi Hendrix had been abused and neglected by his father his entire life, and his greatest relief was that once he was dead, his dad would mourn him. My dad was alive and breathing across the room, and I was alive and breathing right here.

  Maybe, if things went right, I wouldn’t have to settle for cold comfort.

  “Thank you,” Jimi said.

  “No problem. But, listen. If you stop taking so many pills … or if you don’t drink any red wine … maybe you could—”

  Jimi turned so we were facing each other head on. “Gabriel,” he said, “my future is already done. You read about it, right?”

  I nodded a third time.

  “But yours isn’t,” he continued. “You came back here for a reason, right? I’ve been waiting so long for your message to me that I forgot you must be on your own mission. You said you have to save your uncle?”

  I nodded yet again. But my heart was suddenly pounding. Because Jimi had just said, “My future is already done. You already read about it, right?” If that was how things worked, Uncle Mike’s future was already done, too. If Jimi Hendrix was right, I wasn’t at Woodstock to save anybody’s life.

  I DON’T NEED NO DOCTOR

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 1969

  “Heroin, huh?” Jimi asked, very quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Eight weeks?”

  “From Friday. I’m pretty sure he used it for the first time last night. He has this plan to get out of going to Vietnam. He’s supposed to report for his physical in October, so he’s going to shoot up a bunch of times between now and then. He thinks the army doctors will see the track marks in his arm, and he’ll be all high and messed up, so they’ll reject him, and he won’t have to go.”

  “Man, doesn’t he know people die behind that stuff?”

  “Yeah, but he’s desperate.” Lowering my voice even more, I laid out the whole scenario about my grandfather, the stuff my uncle had heard him say, and the reasons why my uncle couldn’t stand to leave my brother alone in my grandparents’ house.

  “So he’s going to overdose right around the time of the physical?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you haven’t told him yet?”

  “I haven’t come right out and said it, no. Do you think I should?”

  Jimi ran a hand through his hair, sat forward on the edge of the cot, leaned his elbows on his knees, and sighed. “Naw, man, you can’t tell him. Either he’ll think you’re crazy, or he’ll go crazy himself. But you aren’t going to save his life. It’s like with me, Gabriel: As far as you’re concerned, your uncle is already dead.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me, now. I wish all the time that old lady hadn’t told me I was going to die. I can’t stop it. I can’t change anything. All she did was make sure I never had another night of peaceful dreams for whatever nights I have left. I’m twenty-six years old, Gabriel, and I already feel ancient inside. Whatever dreams your uncle has left—at least let some of them be good ones, all right?”

  What do you say when a doomed genius of rock lays all that on you? I never had to figure out a reply, because just then, my father groaned. Michael said, “Gabriel, come here!” I jumped up, and so did Jimi Hendrix.

  “David, can you hear me?” Michael asked.

  David, who had been curled up in a tight ball, rolled onto his back and replied, “If I say yes, are you going to hit me again?”

  “Oh, Davey, I’m so sorry,” my uncle said, dropping to his knees next to the cot and throwing his arms around my father’s head and shoulders.

  After a moment, David freed his arms from the blankets and hugged his brother back. Then he said, “Please don’t leave me with Mom and Dad. Please.”

  I couldn’t see Michael’s face, but his voice sounded like he was all choked up as he answered, “I’m trying, David.”

  Jimi and I stood around awkwardly for a few minutes while the two brothers made up. Eventually, David looked past Michael and noticed that there was a full-fledged rock god standing over his cot. “Holy cow!” he shouted. “You’re—”

  “Don’t say it, man,” Jimi said, laughing. “You’ll make me blush. But yeah, I am. How’re you feeling? Your friend Gabriel was pretty freaked out about you.”

  “I’m all right. But wait, how did I get here? All I remember is being up on that platform thing. And it was pouring. And there was thunder. And I was really cold. And then Michael hit me—”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “I know, I’m just saying what happened. Anyway, then we were climbing down the tower, and I didn’t want to go any farther. So then someone started shouting in my ear.”

  My heart skipped. Oh, geez, I thought. What if he remembers all the crazy stuff I was yelling at him? “Listen, David, I didn’t know what I was saying up there. I was just shouting any nutty thing that came into my head to get you to, uh, you know—”

  David cut me off. “It wasn’t you. I remember now. It was Michael. But what he was saying didn’t make any sense.” He turned and stared right into his brother’s eyes as though Jimi and I weren’t even there. “We need to talk later. Do you promise?”

  Michael said, “I promise.”

  The flap of the tent flew open, and a gust of wind blasted in. “Hey, it’s a party!” a female voice exclaimed. “And this time I brought the drugs!”

  The nurse shouldered her way past me, holding an alarmingly large syringe. “Wait,” Michael said, “my brother doesn’t need the shot. He’s awake now, see? He’s not even confused or anything. Right, David?”

  David was staring at the needle like it was a king cobra swaying over him. “Yeah, I’m fine! I swear. I was just, um, really tired before. But now that I’ve had a little nap, I’m all better. So I can just grab my clothes and be on my way if that’s okay with—”

  “Not so fast, buddy! I have children your age, and I wouldn’t want them running around in some godforsaken muddy field, all stitched up, dosing themselves with Lord knows what—TWICE—and then getting sent out to do it all over again a third time. What would your mother say if she were here?”

  “Well, what time is it?”

  The nurse looked at her highly efficient-looking watch. “Around five thirty. Why?”

  “Because on weekends, my mother is pretty drunk by five thirty. So she probably wouldn’t say much.”

  The nurse didn’t know how to respond to this, so we all just stood around for a moment as the syringe wavered in the air. It seemed obvious to me that she wasn’t going to give David the shot if he wasn’t catatonic or raving insanely, but the likelihood of her shipping him out on a helicopter still seemed pretty darn high.

  Then Jimi swung into action. He flashed a brilliant, toothy grin and said, “Ma’am, you said you have children as old as David? Really?”

  “Yes, I do. Why?”

  “Well, I just found it hard to believe that such a young-looking lady could possibly be the
mother of teenagers, that’s all.”

  This had to be the oldest line in the book, even back in 1969, but the nurse actually batted her eyes and blushed. “Oh, come on, now. Quit teasing an old lady and let me figure out what to do with your friend here.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what. Do you happen to know who I am, by any chance?”

  “What do you mean? All I know is that you’re a young man who needed a place to rest for a while. A flirtatious young man.”

  Jimi laughed. “That’s all true. But I’m also a musician. In fact, I’m scheduled to play at this concert later on tonight. If you’d like, I’d be glad to sign autographs for your kids if you’ll just let my friend come with me now. I’ll take him to one of the management trailers backstage, and he can rest in bed there. We have security and everything, so I can assure you he’ll be quite comfortable.”

  The nurse said, “You’re one of the performers? What’s your name?”

  David said, “He’s Jimi Hendrix! He’s huge! I have a poster of him in my room! He’s the whole reason I wanted to come here in the first place. And now he’s right here next to me—can you believe it?”

  The nurse said, “Is this boy telling the truth? Are you really Jimi Hendrix?”

  Jimi nodded.

  The nurse said, “I have a son and a daughter, and they both LOVE your music. They’re not going to believe this! Can I get your autograph for them?”

  “Anything for you, sweetheart,” Jimi said.

  “Oh, my kids are going to think their mother is so far out!” the nurse said. Then she giggled. She actually giggled. “But David, you are still going to have to prove to me that you’re all right. Jimi—may I call you Jimi?”

  “As long as you call me.”

  “Oh, stop!”

  “Jimi, take your friend Gabriel over to the other side of the tent so I can ask David some questions and do a few little medical tests, all right? If everything checks out, I’ll release him to your care.… God help us all. After you sign some autographs for my kids.”