“I’ve never heard of poison acid before this weekend. What I mean is some trips make you paranoid. You could hallucinate, for example, that your friend is trying to kill you.”
I gasped.
“It’s the risk you take. On the other hand, it could take you towonderland.” Leon’s man-giggle followed as he crossed his legs.
“Livy thinks my brother’s doing it in ’Nam.”
“My little bro is shooting up heroin. We’ve talked about it in our letters. Something he’d never have done had he not been drafted. He’s gotta get the images out of his head somehow.”Exactly what Livy said.When he dropped his chin, I could see the wolves of worry on his face.
Although he hadn’t meant to, he scared me to death. I pictured Ron on a bad acid trip. I pictured him pressing a needle into his arm.But I’d become a master at blocking out the bad, so I pushed away the unsightly images just as Chip Monck leaned into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Santana.”
A thin, curly-headed Hispanic dude stepped onto the stage, wielding his guitar like he was taming a tornado. He wriggled and writhed as if he was locked inside a jar with that tornado, fighting to get out. No one in our group had ever heard of him, but if his first song was an indication, he was on his way to stealing the festival.
Woodstock turned into a gigantic dance party. The stomping was so intense I could feel the ground rumbling underneath my feet like an earthquake.
For the first time all weekend, I cut loose. I spun around in circles, laughing with every turn. With every shift of my shoulders and every twist of my hips, I felt life returning to my soul.
The way Livy danced was so Livy. She pouted her freshly painted Pink a Pale lips while shimmying to the ground. Seconds later she twisted over to Leon and stuck out her thumb, bouncing it to the beat of the music. My heart sank. The Hitchhike had always been her favorite dance move, but what bothered me was the way she laid it on thick for Leon.
She thrust her thumb in front of his face, seductively moving it from side to side, like she wanted his ride and his ride only. Johnny stood next to him, but she never asked him for a ride. If she’d bothered to look at me, that thumb of hers would have become a bull’s-eye, split in two by the poison arrows jutting from my eyeballs.
But a still small voice told me to let it go.That’s just Livy,the voice said, before something else occurred to me. Old Livy had made a comeback. She was taking my advice.
Sometime during the next tune, the couple in front started a limbo. They invited everyone around them to join in. We all took turns dancing underneath.
Livy, on her second turn, slipped and—splat—fell down into the mud. Scrambling back up with a smile, she pretended she was fine. I knew better. She was mortified. She wouldn’t look at any of us.
Once Santana’s set ended, the mud looked a hundred times worse. Three hundred thousand fuckers, as Country Joe McDonald had called us, jumping up and down had obliterated what was left of the grass.
Dave and Slim, who had missed Santana’s performance, scooted into our row wearing wet, yet clean, clothes. Livy, coated head to toe in mud, tackled them with questions. “Where did y’all find a shower? Was there shampoo? How about towels?”
“No shower, man,” Slim said. “We found the lake.” He pointed toward the lake behind the stage, then whispered into Johnny’s ear.
Livy waggled her finger. “Hey, man, secrets are rude.”
“I just said it’s a beautiful scene, man.” With his palms lifted, Slim gave us all a silly face.
“Very beautiful,” Dave said, exchanging a knowing smile with his brother.
One by one Livy met all our gazes. “If I don’t wash this dirt off soon, I’ll self-destruct.”
I glanced down at my own mud-coated body. A dip in the lake sounded good to me too. “I’m game,” I said.
“Let’s all go,” said Slim.
“Who’s gonna save our seats?” Livy asked. When no one volunteered, she picked up our overnight bag and slung it over her shoulder. “We can always find more seats.”
Dave sat down in the mud. “You guys go on. I worked too hard for these seats.” He turned around to look at the crowd. “Can’t promise there’ll be five more when you get back.”
John Sebastian, one of my favorite singers, strolled up to the microphone in a tie-dyed pantsuit. Despite the chance to hear him sing, and the threat of losing our choice piece of territory, the five of us, including Slim, disregarded Dave’s warning and headed to the lake.
Woodstock
Day Two
Saturday, August 16, 1969
3:30 p.m.
