Woodstock

(This is an excerpt--the first chapter really--from a larger story I've been working on.  It has been very challenging and even a little frustrating.  I bit off a lot to chew.  I was hoping that maybe some feedback might reignite my passion and dedication to the project.)

            “Why aren’t you naked, Bob?” said Seraphim, her manner slow and deliberate.

            “Huh?”  Bob snapped to attention.  Her smooth brown areoles had hypnotized him.

“Your clothes, man, you should lose your clothes.”  She knew he was staring at her bare breasts, but that didn’t bother her.  Although Seraphim had only known Bob a few hours, she trusted him completely, just as she trusted everyone she met at the festival—like one massive, happy family.

“I’d love to, darlin’, but I have something I don’t want to lose track of.”  It was partly true.  He was also embarrassed by his doughy, middle-aged physique.

                Seraphim wove a sprig of hemlock into Bob’s shaggy  brown hair.   Her own auburn curls were salted with clusters of the dainty poisonous flower.

                “Lost in our clothes,” said a naked young man sitting beside Seraphim.  Two tabs of acid had dilated his pupils to the size of tack-heads. 

“What’s that, Billy?” Bob said smiling.  The things people said while on psychedelics always amused him.

The boy looked at Bob.  “We are lost in our clothes,” he said without a hint jocularity.  “Clothing is like a series of caves we lose ourselves in day after day.  It—,” he tried to continue, but couldn’t.  A wave of LSD washed over him, and his eyes dove deep into space.

“What were you gonna say, Billy?” He said, in an attempt to bring the boy back from the ether.   

Billy looked at Bob and laughed, loudly and abruptly.  “I don't know.  I’m sorry, man.  I’m peaking, hard.”  He stared over Bob’s shoulder intently.

“I know.  I can see your mind branching out in a thousand directions at once.”

“Exactly, man!”

Bob chuckled.

“Does anyone want to go hear some music?” said Seraphim.

“I don’t know,” replied Bob.  “I’m a little nervous.”

“Is it the mescaline?”

“No.  It's not that.”

“Nervous, nervous, nervous,” Billy chanted.  “Nerves,” he carefully enunciated the word as if examining each of its letters.

The mescaline made Bob want to verbalize everything he felt, but he thought better than to state his fear plainly.  He took a moment to formulate an explanation. 

“I feel like I’ve been here before, numerous times throughout history.”

The two said nothing.  They watched him with undivided attention. 

“It’s like I know I’ll love Woodstock so much that I’ll be able to return to it again and again throughout the rest of my life.”

“Groovy,” said Seraphim.  Wonder shown in her bright green eyes.

“It is, but that would mean there are dozens of me’s from different times roaming around the festival.  I’m nervous I’ll run into myself.”

“Why does that make you nervous, man?  I’d love to hang with myself.”  Billy could barely finish the sentence before breaking into a fit of giggles.

“I’m afraid that if I come in contact with another version of myself,” he paused, “we’ll annihilate each other at the subatomic level.”

Billy and Seraphim looked at each other gravely and then burst into laughter. 

“I like you, Bob.  You are out there,” Seraphim said with a smile.

“I think I’m just going to hang back from the stage, but I’ll walk you up to the edge of the crowd,” he said, opening and closing his hands. 

“Groovy.”

As the trio headed up a hill Bob threw a few psilocybin mushrooms into his mouth.  He washed their stale, earthen taste off his tongue with a can of warm Utica Club beer.  “Two stems, one cap—stand back,” he said to himself.

Fanning out below the crest of the hill was a sea of hundreds of thousands of people.  To Bob, in his drug-addled state, it looked like a massive bowl of colorful cereal teeming in frothing milk.  The beginning of Motherless Child by Sweetwater was drifting from the stage in the distance.   As they neared a drum circle Bob thought he caught a glimpse of himself, bare-chested, dancing with a plump blond woman in an emerald green sundress with gold trim. 

His heart sped up and his breathing grew shallow.  “Hey, let’s listen to these cats jam!” said Bob, leading Billy and Seraphim toward the drum circle.  “Keep it together.  Everything’s okay,” he whispered to himself through a gritted smile.  “I think you’re actually doing quite well—totally fine.”

They followed Bob’s lead and plopped themselves on the grass at the edge of the circle.  Billy and Seraphim’s nakedness prompted nothing more than an affirming smile from one of the conga players. 

Bob's nerves were calmed by the entrancing beat of the hand-drums. 

Seraphim leaned toward him.  “Are you a Bob from the future or are you a Bob from the present?” she said with coy smile.

“Can you keep a secret?”

She winked.

Bob spoke softly so that only she could hear him over the clamor.  “I’m a Bob from the future.”

“Batteries,” Billy suddenly blurted out.  They looked at him curiously.  His face wore the expression of someone who had just discovered the answer to a very big problem.

Seraphim looked back at Bob.  “If you’re from the future, then what song plays next?”

“It’ll be Look Out followed by For Pete’s Sake.”

They looked toward the stage and waited.  After Motherless Child ended Sweetwater began playing Look Out.  Seraphim quickly turned to Bob, her mouth agape with amazement.  He closed his eyes and smiled and nodded.

She leaned in and kissed him.

“What was that for?” asked Bob, his cheeks flushing lightly.

“That was your prize.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, scanning her up and down, breathing in her being.  Bob ran his fingers through an unadorned ringlet of hair.  Despite the warm air a shiver relayed through his body.  “I love you," he concluded.

Seraphim closed her eyes and smiled.  “I love you too.”  She stood up and took his hand.  “Let’s go back to my tent.”

“You and Billy aren’t, um…?” said Bob as he rose to his feet.

“It’s cool,” she said definitively as she led him away from the group.

Bob looked back toward the circle.  Billy smiled and waved.  Surprised, Bob waved back.

As they neared Seraphim’s campsite a canvas door-flap unzipped, and a young woman with coarse black hair stepped out of a beige tent.  A tail of smoke followed her.  She held out her palm and a hand grasped it.  Bob froze at the sight of the man who followed from the tent.

“Is that me?” he whispered to Seraphim, hoping it was a drug-induced hallucination.

She answered with a gasp. 

The woman from the tent look confused.  “Do you have a twin brother, Bob?” she asked the man she had just smoked a joint with.

“Yes,” both Bob’s replied simultaneously. 

The dark-haired girl approached Bob and Seraphim.  “Wow, you two look so similar.  It’s trippy.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone says,” said the second Bob.  “Could you excuse us for one second, darlin’?  I have to talk to my brother for a hot minute.”

She nodded.  As the dark-haired woman headed down the aisle of tents, the Bob’s looked each other up and down.  Two identical beings—the only difference was their clothing and the superficial signs of self-inflicted chemical abuse.   

When the other woman was out of earshot Seraphim blurted out, “I can’t believe you two are the same person!”

“She knows,” said Bob prime.

“Probably not the best idea,” replied second Bob.

“I was vague.  I didn’t think I’d be running into myself to prove it.”

“Far out,” said Seraphim.  She touched second Bob’s face to be certain he was real. 

“I think we’ve just about maxed-out Woodstock,” said Bob 2.  “Maybe one of us should go home.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Silence.

Second Bob spoke first.  “The oldest should go.  What year are you from?”

“I’m from 2011.  You?”  Bob 1 was certain he’d get to stay.  He had no memory of this ever happening, which meant that the second Bob had to be older.

“I’m from 2010.”

“What!  No way?” 

Second Bob shook his head.

“But I don’t remember any of this.”

Second Bob smiled.  “I’m not surprised.  I am on a ton of stuff right now.”  He laughed.  “I think I may have erased all our memories from the past month in one day.”

“Why does the oldest have to leave?” said Bob 1, not ready to concede Seraphim to the natural order of time.

“Because you’re the one that can cause the most damage to our history.  Since you’re older, I’m not altering our past by interacting with you, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t altering your past by interacting with me.  This exchange could change you, possibly for the better, but possibly for the worst.  We shouldn’t chance it.”

Bob 1 sighed, defeated by his own logic.  “You’re right—we’re right.  I’ll go.”

There was a look of disappointment on Seraphim’s face.  “I don’t want you to leave me, Bob.”

“Well, I’m not exactly leaving.”  He nodded at the second version of himself.  “I mean, I am still here, technically.”

Seraphim looked at the other version of him, slightly suspicious.  “I guess so.”  She shook her head.  “This is so gnarly.”

Second Bob walked up to Seraphim and put his arm around her.  He went to touch first Bob's shoulder.  Before Bob 1 could move out of the way, Bob 2 grazed his t-shirt.  
First Bob winced, fearing his atomic annihilation, but nothing happened.  As Bob 1 exhaled his counterpart looked at him curiously.  Then he smiled and nodded.
“I’m sorry.  Chalk this up to the perils of time travel," said second Bob.

When Seraphim turned back, the Bob she had first met was gone, as if he had vanished into air.  She looked at the remaining Bob, reticent to embrace him.

“It’s me, darlin’,” said Bob.  “It’s still me.”

After reconciling the moment, she took him by the hand and led him to Billy’s tent.

They lay on an unfolded sleeping bag, sharing a fat joint.  Bob was now naked as well.  
"Why didn't you and the older Bob annihilate each other when you touched his shoulder?" said Seraphim
"Oh, that," laughed Bob.  "That's been disproved."
"But wouldn't the other Bob have known that?"
“Can I tell you a secret, Sera?”

“Of course,” Seraphim replied as she ran her fingers through Bob’s chest hair.  She had never been intimate with a man who was so much older than she was.

“I’m actually from 2013,” he croaked through a mouthful of smoke.

She sat up and looked at him warily.  “But you said the Bob from 2011 was older than you.”

“I know.  I guess I lied,” he took a hit and then coughed up a lungful of smoke, “to myself.”

“But why would you do that?”  She was not pleased.  Her trust was beginning to fray at the edges.

“It’s not anything I ever thought I would do to myself.  All I know is that an older version of me pulled the same trick two years ago.  I felt cheated, so I did the same thing.” 

Seraphim stared at Bob, a look of mistrust on her freckled face.

“Look, I’m not a villain.  I met you two years ago, and I loved you then as much as I do now, but for some reason the future me stole you… from me.  I had to get this back.”

“But why would you ever do that?”

“I guess I enjoyed being with you so much that I just had to relive the moment,” he paused, “at the expense of the first moment.”

“This is so trippy,” she said.

“I know, darlin’, and I'm sorry.” 

She lay back and thought for a moment. “So I imagine that at one point I must have made love to the younger you.”

“You would think.”

“Then at what point would the older versions of you decide to start stealing me from your younger self?”

Bob exhaled a ring of pot smoke.  He stared wide-eyed at the undulating halo as it rose slowly overhead.  “Maybe I never made the decision.  Maybe it’s always been this way, infinitely.”  With a wave of his hand the smoke dispersed.  “Causal loops are funky.”