Woodstock

I met Peaches–nicknamed for her cherub cheeks–at a high school graduation party when I flashed my Woodstock ticket saying: “I need a hitchhiking partner,” to which Peaches sang out: “Let’s go!” 

At a later party, the house was raided and everyone was pinched for the find of a nickel bag of marijuana shoved in a crack between sofa cushions. We were hauled off and given a Visiting a Disorderly House charge, then sprung by disgruntled parents paying forfeit bonds. Before my parents arrived, a boy from the party, Stanley, who spoke of himself in third person, said: “Stan-the-Man will drive you two to Woodstock in his sweet Impala hearse, up and running, road-trip ready.”

On the way to Woodstock, Stan insisted Peaches sit next to him, making her uneasy, having to shove his hand off her thigh or shoulder each time he attempted to touch her or pull her close. At the traffic jam going in, we jumped out and walked the rest of the way without him.

As the festival fence came down and megaphones announced, “Free Concert,” Peaches and I synchronized our wristwatch graduation gifts and arranged to meet back up right there at five o’clock on the last day. 

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We stuck out our thumbs at the nearest highway entrance to leave Yasgur’s Farm. A Caddy pulled up, its driver a cigar-smoking man with a diamond pinky ring. We were tired and had already thrown caution to the wind, so we weren’t picky and hopped in for a ride that was so welcome and smooth that Peaches and I slept like we had not in days.

The Caddy dropped us in NYC’s East Village with a bag of truck-stop hamburgers we wolfed down, having subsisted for days on brown rice and granola from the Hog Farmer’s Free Kitchen. There on the street we felt like oddball celebrities, everyone abuzz, recognizing us as having been to Woodstock by our mud-encrusted shoes. I bought a pair of green platforms from a street vendor, dropped my filthy canvas sneakers into his trash can, and there met Dusty, a young man with a folk guitar slung on his back who was sniffing soap and candles. 

“Woodstock?” he asked rather longingly. “Tell me all about it!”

We accepted his offer to let us bathe and stay the night at his nearby walk-up. In the kitchen, he lifted a plank of wood that doubled as a table with its porcelain teapot and cups, to reveal a Victorian bathtub. Peaches slept on his Murphy bed while I soaked in the flickering light of a scented candle until my fingertips and toes shriveled. It was a chore to scrub away the tub scum ring of the farm where I had cleansed away the men who tried to trade a place to sleep in their tents for sex, choosing instead being underneath tables, away from medical-tent screams from freak-outs on overdoses. I washed off the stoner who tried to force himself on me across a bale of hay. I scrubbed it all off with Dusty’s new loofah and sandalwood soap.

Dusty left and returned with some lo mein and a lesson on how to use chopsticks, and asked: “Now what about your promise to tell me all about Woodstock?”

We stayed up late as I relayed bits and pieces: Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young stealing the show with their debut concert, playing my favorites, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “Blackbird.” Joe Cocker’s gyrations and raspy voice delivering “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Janis Joplin belting out a throaty “Piece of My Heart.” Sha-Na-Na’s rambunctious antics doing the Twist to “At the Hop.” Jimi Hendrix’s dedication of “Foxy Lady” to the girl in the yellow underpants as he pointed upwards to the rising sun. Dusty’s questions became an ever-distant hum as I drifted off to sleep on his couch.

We woke to discover Peaches took off, leaving a note she would be at Port Authority for the noon trip back home. She never boarded the bus that I stalled until the last possible moment. She had disappeared into the city.

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My father, stoic and clearly holding back anger, met my Greyhound in Pittsburgh. Despite his punitive quietude, having believed I was camping with a friend’s family, I was relieved to be home. Home, even to my mother in a tizzy, screaming: “Reefer-smoking naked people sliding in mud!” But home still, where the refrigerator was full, baths long, towels and bedclothes soft and fresh. Home, where I could close the door to my room, don a headset to shut out the screams and the silence, turn up the music to a blackbird singing in my head and my heart feeling free.

Andrena Zawinski has authored four full-length collections of poetry and a debut collection of flash fiction, Plumes & other flights of fancy. Flash Fiction publications include 3rd Wednesday, Chiron Review, Evening Street Review and Midway Journal with a Best Small Fictions nomination, as well as The Writers Journal, and others. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA but lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

A Song for Andrena