James Brown made me a hot, sweaty mess. Or maybe just existing did. It was a billion degrees under a nearly cloudless sky, with a sea of humans all around me and Cal radiating heat and angst. Maybe it was too early, and the crowd hadn’t warmed up. Sonically. No doubt everyone was plenty warmed up—physically. Thankfully, there was an intermittent breeze.
Possibly, my generation wasn’t familiar enough with the Godfather of Soul. Or James’ old-school Soul Review, complete with a zoot-suited horn section and backup singers in matching evening wear, was incongruous with the times or the venue. Or shit, even the temperature. The vibe was off. Unmet expectations hung in the air.
Turned out, Cal was a dancer. And not just one of those Grateful Dead, twirling in a circle endlessly dancers. Or even one of those dudes with upper/lower body confusion where the shoulders find the beat, yet the hips don’t get the memo. But with an honest-to-goodness rhythm and willingness to move his feet. And ass. Color me surprised.
“I need water!” I fanned my neck with the lid of a discarded pizza box. The smell of pepperoni wafted with each downstroke.
“I’m hungry.” Cal’s stomach growled in response to the pizza whiff. He tugged the front of his Dead T-shirt, forcing air to his chest and keeping sweaty swirls of tie-dye from clinging to his skin.
Unlike many other fellas in the vicinity, Cal kept his shirt on. Whether he was being a gentleman, suffered body image issues, or had a gnarly war wound, I didn’t know. This odd first date with a man old enough to be my father required a barrier. It wasn’t a date so much as an “I’m alone. You’re alone. Let’s not be alone together” kind of situation. Either way, I was grateful not to find myself with Shirtless Guy. And Cal was cool.
“You still wanna see moe.?” I asked, following the dispersing crowd.
“Absolutely. They’re one reason I came.”
“The food court is on the way to the West stage. I may brave a port-o-potty on the way.”
“Judging from the size of this place, it could take us until their start time just to get there, but you wouldn’t know it by this map.” Cal consulted the cartoonish layout at the center of the full-color brochure. The ridiculous hand-drawing of the grounds wasn’t even close to being to scale, but it got the job done.
A ring of rowdy guys, flushed from the heat and, from the smell of things, beer, swarmed around us, beating their bare chests and woo-hooing in a testosterone-induced one-upping group ritual. One fellow sprang up and pushed off the shoulders of another with a half twist, dismounting to the side. Somewhere a Russian judge scored it a three. The ringleader swatted the brochure from Cal’s hands, posturing. “You don’t need that, old man. Just go with the flow.”
The others laughed and puffed themselves up as the ringleader hip-checked Cal when he bent to pick up the map. Cal stumbled as the dudes laughed and roughhoused around him before bounding away, congratulating themselves for humiliating an old man and being Masters of the Universe.
“Assholes!” I called after them.
Ringleader wheeled around, walking backwards while keeping pace with his buddies. “Show us your tits!” He juggled some imaginary boobs in a way that suggested the ladies of his life probably experienced some unnecessary roughness. His friends turned, not wanting to miss a potential flash of flesh.
Instead, I flipped them the bird. My driving finger was probably going to get a workout over the weekend, judging by the energy and the boatload of other bros begging the ladies for a free show. Plenty of other gals had their tits on full display, so the demand just felt greedy.
“Ignore them, Gettie.” Cal tucked the brochure into the front pocket of his backpack and steered me toward the East food court.
After stocking up on bottles of water (me, at $4 a pop) and getting a pizza and a beer (Cal), he and I explored the grounds on the trek to the West Stage. We discovered the hangars. One was a sort of movie theater, while the other was home to the Emerging Artists Stage. Both were ginormous—large enough to house a B-52 bomber. Each. One such bomber was on display near the entrance, outside the twelve-foot-high barricade running the perimeter of the base, keeping gate crashers out and the animals in. No amount of “peace and love” mantras painted on the cheap plywood would make the wall feel any less like a zoo enclosure.
By dinner time, Cal and I had trekked from the West stage to hear moe., then back to the East stage to hear Live. Even though I had reapplied a layer of sunscreen before each band, by 5 p.m., my skin showed signs of overindulgence, and my feet were tired. Cal and I hid in the hangar from the unfriendly fire in the sky, along with thousands of others, to listen to some dude named Mike Errico. I’d never unsee the jackass grooving to Errico’s acoustic guitar, harmonica, and slit drum with nothing but a sock on his dick. Somehow, that sad elephant trunk was more disturbing than nakedness, given the fellow’s attempts to make it windmill.
After the short set, Cal and I bargained. He’d experience The Roots for me, and I’d tolerate Korn for him. While the sound was for shit during The Roots’ set, the groove was undeniable. Cal was pleasantly surprised by how the hip hoppers skirted the edges of experimental, free-form jazz, and he came away with appreciation.
The energy for Korn pooled like the brown sludge near the port-o-potties—hot and with some stank on it. I had never seen so many people in one place. Hundreds of thousands of sweaty bodies. It was fully night, yet still in the 80s with plenty of haloed, smokey light from the rigs. Fireworks streaked over the stage as the drummer teased the beat on his cymbals. The crowd bristled, ebbing forward. A guitar jangled, looping the intro of something the masses seemed to know, steadily building tension. With some heavy notes, the bass rumbled through the sound system, reverberating through my hollow parts, as another guitarist filled the gaps with his fuzzy guitar riffs. Screams, whistles, and cheers rang all around.
“Ahh, here we go,” Cal murmured as frontman Jonathan Davis sauntered out, looking utterly ridiculous, taking his place at center stage.
He screamed, “Are you ready?” and the band came together, clicking into beast mode, as the crowd surged with undulating waves, uncontrollable motion, and a deafening roar.
I wasn’t familiar with the band’s catalog. There were moments I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. Under the noise and guttural exhalations, I suspected there were words, and fucked if I could understand any of them. But the crowd, they knew. And they ate it up, becoming a living, breathing, amorphous organism capable of mass movement.
While Cal seemed to know what to do, I didn’t. A fight-or-flight response coursed through my nervous system, heightening awareness of my smallness in this vast churning sea. This wasn’t dancing. I was being batted around like a silver ball in a pinball machine, hitting every bumper—until I wasn’t.
My feet were no longer on the pavement, and I fell backward. Except this wasn’t falling. It was some awkward, cheerleader-like partner stunt where, in seconds, someone or several someones lifted me into an elevated supine position. The hands of strangers tightened around my ankles and pressed into my spine, passing me forward. My backpack slipped from my shoulders and dropped to the concrete.
“Cal!” I twisted, pleading while partially upside down. “Cal!” My left leg slipped through the crowd’s hands, and I accidentally kicked some dude in the head.
“Bitch!” he yelled, punching me in the thigh.
“Gettie!” Cal lunged to connect with my outstretched hand, but I was already too far, and the hole in the crowd self-sealed around him.
“My bag!” I squirmed and twisted, reaching for Cal and gesturing wildly. “Throw it to me!”
“I’ll find you!” He snatched it two-handed and lobbed it toward me with an underhand toss. Granny style.
His aim was true, and my overstuffed backpack landed heavily on my pelvis. I scrabbled one-handed to keep hold of it, nearly losing it as my legs and shoulders dipped and dropped with no coordination, like fucking on the world’s worst waterbed. I pushed the bag into my hips, clinging to it for dear life.
My occupied hands left my boobs unprotected and fair game. Someone grabbed the right side. Somebody else got a handful of the left side plus a fistful of tank top, tearing the thin strap from the shirt, and exposing the bikini underneath. Scratchy fingers pulled the ties at my neck, exposing half my chest. Beer breath and body odor filled my nostrils from the nearness of the humans passing me like a rag doll overhead.
As the crowd surfed me toward the stage, hot, rough hands groped my tits and ass. My shorts wedged so far up my butt, I was certain my cheeks were on display. A frenzied shirtless dude with glassy eyes and dripping with sweat took advantage of my splayed legs and thrust his hand in my crotch and breached my bikini bottoms.
“Get off me!” I squirmed, failing to bring my legs closer together. The left one dropped from a bad handoff, and I kicked him away before his second attempt to steal third base.
Sadly, he wasn’t the only offender. Next to nearly every man passing me was a “friend” ready to grab a handful of this or that and attempt to put their fingers where they didn’t belong. An eternity passed before I ran out of hands holding me up, and I dropped in a heap at the metal barricades in front of the stage. A line of guys in Peace Patrol shirts helped me to my feet and shuffled me off to a side section near the first aid station.
I scrabbled to put my parts away, hands trembling as I excavated my bikini bottoms from the crack of my ass and retied the strings of my top. There was no hope for my shirt, but I’d deal with it later. Getting out of that horde was priority one.
The first aid station practically vibrated. EMTs and nurses, presumably, worked feverishly on broken limbs, folks with heat exhaustion or dehydration, and potential overdoses. I’d never seen a M.A.S.H. unit in real life, but this scene maybe wasn’t too far off. Less bloody, but ripe with the consequences of a day’s worth of bad choices and extreme temperatures.
I just kept moving. Away from the stage. Away from the makeshift emergency room. Away from the massive crowd. I followed the Woodstock Wall until I found the hangar with the emerging artists. While crowded and reverberating with its own energy, I carved out some space for myself at an open slice of wall and slunk to the concrete. Half dazed and with plenty of rising anger and humiliation, I hid myself behind the windshield shade and scrubbed baby wipes over every body part a stranger touched or penetrated. Hot tears streaked my face. I changed my shirt, then held the ruined one over my mouth, yelling into it.
The catharsis of that primal scream reset my nervous system, creating calm. Somewhat. I was still royally pissed and my girl parts hurt from being manhandled. I dug one of my four joints from my secret hiding place and rewarded myself with half a doob while stress-eating two fistfuls of gummy bears. I bit the inside of my cheek with my aggressive chewing.
I holed up in the hangar until my bladder forced me to move, but I found myself back inside the structure’s confines. The walls created a false sense of security, plus I kept hoping Cal would have an easier time finding me if I stayed put.
After midnight, the live music ended, and the rave took its place. The hangar swelled to full capacity, and the scene transformed into a Hieronymus Bosch-like Garden of Earthly Delights backed by Moby’s pulsing mixes timed to strobing lights. Mindlessly dancing only helped for a few songs. Too many shirtless dudes sidled in front or behind me with attempts to grind, and the crowded floor left little room to reclaim my personal space. The hedonistic party reawakened my fight-or-flight response, so I got the fuck out.
Too keyed up to sleep, I wandered all night. Listen Without Prejudice played on repeat from my knockoff Discman. I let George Michael’s songs of sadness and reinvention compete with the noise of the rave and soothe my fear of the predators who stalked the darkness. By the time the batteries died, I had navigated the triangle campground, which was a landmine of tents and stakes, passed-out concertgoers, piles of trash, and puddles of piss and vomit that I could smell before I could see. When the distraction of my exploration exhausted itself, I walked the perimeter of the Woodstock Wall, keeping the plywood barricade within arm’s reach and mapping the best places to use my makeshift SheWee. Nearly all port-o-potties had hit max capacity.
The heat returned with the daylight, and the pull of the hangars sucked me back in. As lunchtime approached, I could no longer fight the need to lie down and traded the movie hangar for the Emerging Artists Stage. The rail riders began trickling in hours before the music’s start time. I hovered at the fringe of some hippies playing hacky sack near the stage stairs. An errant kick connected with the wrong person’s leg, and testosterone levels spiked between the group kicking and the guy from the second group getting kicked.
While an INXS title track earwormed the moment, I slipped around the security fellow who previously guarded the three feet of real estate allowing entrance to what, on paper, organizers considered “backstage”. The guard moved to intervene in the kicking kerfuffle, and I ducked under the risers where the stage connected to the stairs.
After assessing that I was mostly undetectable and that no one gave a fuck, I made my bed. And lied in it.
