Spies

Do you remember when we saw Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock before he died?1

I don’t.2

But every time I put needle to vinyl in my sagging apartment and the notes flow out in billowy spirals of acid-washed calligraphy, I think I do.3

I was twenty-three. You were eighteen. It’s as simple as that. I think in those times, people our age were drawn to that place, like iron filaments race towards a magnet when the timing’s right. That year, the timing was perfect. Your father spent his days vomiting in his study while your mother chain-smoked Drano in the kitchen. Your brother was in law school, powered by his own aspirations, dreaming of the chance to chase ambulances for the next thirty years. You were a high school drop out: not dumb by any means, just disinterested. You rolled cheap, smelly cigarettes and built handmade instruments out of PVC pipe and super glue in your bedroom instead of studying for exams, that’s all. An education was worthless to you, just a piece of paper with your name on it that you could exchange for cash after years of hard, trite work. I remember you saying this to me over and over again in our tent, as if you couldn’t stand to forget it. What is truly important, you always told me, is freedom in mind, body, and spirit. A diploma is bondage. I can still smell your shitty cigarettes, and your dream of rolling one with one of those worthless diplomas. 4

My father sold real estate like his father and some say his father before him, though I’m not sure if they had real estate per se in those days. My mother whiled away her time buried under six feet of earth held back by stout wooden planks. I had just graduated from college, an un-named Ivy League school where I led protest after protest, calling all our unruly intellectuals to arms. We fought with ball-point pens and tennis shoes, not rifles and tanks. Editor of the school paper, I jeered and mocked the government, while penning elaborately eloquent entreaties to our Congressboys to bring our troops home. I have been tear-gassed when the pigs invaded our mall. I have carried countless signs tacked to wooden two-by-fours. I have holes worn in my shoes from trampling on authority. And I have a diploma. I went to Woodstock a hero, decorated with piping-hot rebellion and decades of pent-up social unrest.5

That summer, you ran away from home and had your freedom, at least in body. You hitched a ride with a farmer with nothing but your shirt (reeking of tobacco and plastic) two pairs of pants, one pair of underwear, and a battered, stained copy of On the Road. He gave you a thumbs-up, a real cigarette, even twenty dollars for traveling expenses; after he dropped you off two hundred miles down the road, he had converted to Zen Buddhism and was on his way to Columbia to start a vegetable farm. You arrived at Woodstock glowing with the plenty of your freedom; you had fought the man and won, even if the man was just two faded husks of humanity strong. 6

We met during the first wild, vibrant, screeching, brain-shattering, unearthly howls of the Star-Spangled Banner. We both looked at each other and knew. It wasn’t important what we knew, just that we knew. As Jimi wailed and the bombs crashed and people died all over the world and the sky turned green and the earth opened up and the crowd surged and Jimi overdosed on a fret board, we took acid and were two dozen places at once, dangling by a string on the curve of the earth, human spies of thought and consciousness, spies that could not be shot down or chained or maltreated or taken for granted or lost in the azure blues sky of anonymity. For we were free and we knew it, felt it, heard it in the feedback, saw it in the mud, dreamt it in the clouds. We breathed. 7

I remember you playing the sitar like George Harrison. I remember dancing like Roger Daltry. I remember staying up all night making plans to overthrow the government, save all the babies in Vietnam, and make love to several communist women at once, turning them into liberated free-thinkers in the blink of an eye. I remember you making plans to go to Africa and live in the bush, hunting warthogs and dancing in the starlight, one with nature. It was the 60’s, the world was brand new, and we were going to change it, show them how to live.8

I can see it now while I sink into my patched and worn recliner and hear my pristine fantasy recollections wash over me in stereo sound. I close my eyes and try to breathe. But it’s not true. I can’t do it. I never could do it. My lungs aren’t quite as I imagine they once were. I am in real estate. I am sixty-some years old; I’ve lost count. I have an apartment that is not me. I have bonds to society: a car, old kids who are just as sedate as I am, a fancy microwave oven that I got for half-price, nice clothes that show my social status. I have read too many Bukowski poems and written too many contracts. I have arthritis in my right hand and my cheeks hurt when I smile because I’ve been smiling without reason for the past thirty years, since I took over my father’s business. I have hands that are wrinkled and without calluses, and my brain is pure and clean enough for a man of my age. I am safe. I have always been safe. I never left my room in college. I’ve never touched a single harmful substance except for the shitty coffee that my assistant makes. I have never smelled a hand-rolled cigarette. I have never gone against anything that anyone in a slightly higher rank than me has said. I have never had a blocked artery. I have never been close to love, not even with my wife. I have never taken a risk that wasn’t a sure thing. I am rich and I am in America, and that means everything. 9

But I am dying, I am aging, I am suffocating, I am trapped, I am alone, I am in chains, and the needle reaches the end of the record with a wistful pop.