Armageddonland

Woodstock, 1969

Janis Joplin is wailing into the microphone a mile away, her voice so full of angst and drugs it's keeping us all awake in the middle of the night. Hardly the lullaby that Creedence was just before. I’m laying in the crook of Billy’s arm–the boy I met yesterday when I jumped on the back of his bus. I like his mustache and groovy haircut, and the way his jeans sit real low along the rim of his tan stomach. Mostly I like the way he swaggers around like he owns the world. He has fierce dark eyes that pin you down when he looks at you, and of all the half a million pretty girls here, he chose me. He’s gotta be at least five or six years older than me, possibly ten–but that doesn't seem to matter. In fact, a lot of things don’t seem to matter now.

My right ear is against his chest and I am simultaneously listening to the erratic beat of his heart and Janis’s band. My eyes are cast up to the black sky searching for stars, but I can’t find any. Maybe it's the smoke in my eyes. The sickly sweet smell of burning grass singes the balmy night air, filling my nostrils with every inhale and making me smile in spite of the hunger in my stomach and the sunburn across my chest. I laugh–a weird gurgling sound that bubbles up from my parched lips against my will. My body is past exhaustion, but my mind still wants to play.

Billy chuckles too, a raspy sound in his chest that makes my head bob. “Huh-huh, you want some?” He passes the smoking joint to me between his fingers. I take it without answer. I’m not sure why. I’ve forgotten why I ever said no in the first place.

I breathe it in like I’m a genuine hippie and not some naive poser who only heard about half these bands a day ago.

Billy’s friends have all paired off, huddled under blankets in the grass, or sleeping in truck beds or lean-tos or under a tree. We are alone, and I want to ask him things that I’ve only asked invisible boys in my imagination.

“Billy, where are you from?”

He makes a grunt noise. “Virginia, small town. You?”

“New Jersey.” I answer. “Newark.”

“City girl?”

“You could say that.”

“I like city girls.” He grins.

I blush and turn away. “So what do you do? Like for a career?”

“Career?” He snorts, giving her a sideways look. “Do I look like a white collar to you? Nah, I ain’t got nothin but time. After this, I’m taking the bus and the boys cross the country to California. Live on the beach, learn to surf…strike it rich.” He says, taking the joint from my hand and puffing on it again. “Cali’s where the money is.”

The ugly weight in the center of my stomach I’ve been ignoring returns again. I think about my Congressman Father, my overbearing mother and my full-ride Princeton scholarship waiting back home and grimace. “Sounds like fun.”

“Well it sure as hell beats waitin’ around for Uncle Sam to call us to war.” He says, snuffing out the glowing embers of the weed in his hand. “Gotta go catch life before life catches me.”

I nod, agreeing with this ideology despite everything I know that stands against it. “I wish that life would just stop for a little while, you know? Just pause for a moment, so I didn’t have to do anything or go home after this. Just not have to worry about anything.”

“Who says it doesn’t?” Billy asks. “What if the world ends tomorrow? All this war and rules and being this and being that. These three days are for us. We got no rules here. They can’t stop us. The highways blocked for miles; they say the bands are flyin’ in on helicopters now. There’s four hundred thousand people here. They can’t stop a crowd like that. Tonight, here, we live the way we want. No rules, no cops. Just Freedom.” He flexes his arms behind his head and rests his head in his palms.

It’s easy to believe what Billy says. Everything he says is what you want to hear. Still, I let his words sink in, thinking about my lonely life back at my large, empty house, full of socialite parties and laughter with no love. I think about all the dresses I wear to impress all the people I don’t care about and the words I must say and I am shocked now how I have endured it for so long. I have been nothing but a pretty statue. “Just Freedom.” I echo, closing my eyes and sighing.

Billy rolls over onto his elbow. “What’d’ya say we get outta here? My friend has a tent by the trees. Nice n’ private.”

The look on my face must betray my fear, because he smiles and flicks the corner of my lips– some strange twitch he has around women I’ve noticed that’s supposed to be charming. “Hey now, no worries, I won’t do nothin’ wrong. I’m a Gentleman first and foremost. Nothin’ but chivalry here. We can just talk.”

How is it possible to feel like a bird trapped by a cat but also a bird soaring on the breeze? My heart is hammering out of my ribs and I can feel my pupils dilating and my lower belly tingling. His smile and body are so intoxicating I’ve forgotten how to breathe. I nod and let him lead me by the hand through the dark, stumbling over crumpled bodies. Down on the stage, Janis is speaking into the microphone, but none of the words she says make sense.

By the time we reach the tent, I sink to my knees and am ready to sleep. But someone has beer and I am dying of thirst. I take the bottle and drink the entire thing before I remember that I’ve never had beer before. Someone laughs and says, “Billy’s havin’ fun tonight!”

I wipe my face like a fifty year old man at a bar and burp, forgetting who I am and why I should care that Billy is having fun tonight.

Billy yells into the tent and a couple comes scrambling out in a blanket, half-dressed and hair tied in knots. They run for the trees and vanish into the shadows. Billy comes back for me and pulls me up, then digs one lean, muscled arm under the crook of my knee and lifts me into his arms. I’ve never been carried before, and the sensation makes me gasp. Billy laughs. I throw my arms around his neck to hold on. The feel of his warm, sun-baked skin so close to mine and his breath on my face does something far worse to me than beer or drugs.

“Ever been to a rodeo Grace?” He asks, the slight lilt in his voice reminding me of something from Gone with the Wind.

“No,” I breathe.

“Well, they don’t call me cowboy for nothin’.” He grins a lopsided grin.

I vaguely remember the other girls on the bus calling him Cowboy, but the puzzle pieces in my brain are sloshing around and refuse to connect what that might mean. My vision is hazy as he lowers me and swings me into the tent that smells rancid with sweat. Billy lays down close to me and strokes my arm, whispering into my ear how beautiful I am. Everything he says makes me laugh and every touch makes me giddy. When he starts to kiss me I am heady with nerves and desire, but I manage to groan a weak protest against his cheek, “I need to be careful.”

He laughs breathily. “Being careful is for rule-followers. We’re at the end of the world, remember? Armageddon. We don’t have rules in Armageddonland. Be free.”

Be free.

I can taste the freedom even now. It’s an experience you can never forget, even if you want to. The moment the human soul untethers itself from reason or principle, releases from moral restraint–from choices–takes the mind to a baser level. To not have to think, but only act and feel, uncages a feral side of us we never knew existed. We are no longer intelligent beings–why would we need to be?--we are worry-less, decision-less. Floating. We become one with nature, a force to be acted upon. Controlled. I let go of everything and feel nothing but pleasure.

But what happens when the world doesn’t end?

I wake up late the next morning, naked and sticky with sweat. I am dizzy and sick. Sunlight is spilling from the opening in the tent. For a moment I am terrified, forgetting where I am. I cannot remember anything.

Cowboy crawls over to me. Says he has something that will help me wake up. It fizzes on my tongue.

The next thing I know we are running naked into a shimmering pond, the sun all over my bare skin. We are splashing eachother and laughing so loud and so wild I don’t recognize the girl I am trapped inside. Another girl there hands me a crown made of reeds, and calls me queen of the faeries. I can see them darting around our heads, flitting like sparkling dragonflies. We run and skip and fall into the water. I am a mermaid, preening on the rocks. The goddess calypso.

But then I am vomiting, and someone pulls me from the water.

Bugs are biting me, biting me everywhere. They are digging under my skin. I can see them–thousands of little black beetles worming inside me. I scream and thrash. Something is holding me. It’s a snake, coiling its scaly muscles around me, tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe. I’m so hot.

Then I’m cold. So cold. I’m shivering, shaking. I can hear my teeth chattering. I blink open my eyes and look up at pale sunlight glowing through white fabric. I am in a tent, lying on a cot under a scratchy wool blanket. Underneath I am naked, my skin caked in dried mud. There is a streak of dried blood on my arm. My entire body feels shrunken and weak–I can hardly lift my head to look around. A girl with warm brown eyes and freckles comes to tell me to drink. She has to tilt the cup of water into my mouth and half of it spills down my chin. She looks worried. Should I be worried?

The sound of rushing wind assaults me. I am being lifted and carried to a…helicopter? I wince at the spinning blades. People are shouting over me. I am strapped inside. I ask where I am going but no one hears me.

I am once again a statue.

A needle pierces my arm, it tingles, then I fall asleep.

I wake up to an unnaturally bright light. Beige walls and the smell of sterility. There is a beeping noise that won’t stop. It is my heartbeat–pulsing green on a monitor. I watch it peak and beep faster as I begin to register my surroundings. I am in a hospital.

For the first time in hours, my mind is clear. I am thinking again. I look down at the IV in my wrist and start to breath fast and shallow. Why am I here? What happened?

I remember being sick. I remember mud and water and Janis Joplin and…Billy.

My head starts to spin. I feel sick again. A nurse walks in with a face that says nothing. She tells me I was very dehydrated and recovering from some bad drugs in my system. She asks me what my name is, and where I live? Do I have any family they can contact?

I am falling down a cliff, sliding down a mudslide. I remember everything now and I don’t want to. I can’t fathom it. I want it to go away.

I shove my fists into my eyes. Hot tears spill down my cheek. Then I am sobbing. I can’t stop. The nurse tries to quiet me.

When I finally get out my name and who my parents are, I go numb. I know now what I have done. What choices I have made.

Billy promised me the world would end. He promised me there would be nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. In Armageddonland, there are no rules. Just Freedom.

“Why did you take me away?!” I yell, shocked at the strangled sound of my voice. “Why didn’t you leave me there?!”

The nurse looks taken aback. She holds down my IV-strapped arm in a pincher grip incongruent with her small size. She calls into a phone for help.

“No! Take me back.” I beg, banging my head feebly against the pillow. I cry until I dissolve back into a choiceless, decisionless creature. I will just wait. Wait to be acted upon.

It turns out that life after Armageddon is exactly what you would expect–miserable. Hours later I sit on our velvet sofa in front of our immaculate fireplace, my parents talking over me like I’m not there.

“We’ll send her to Susan’s.” My mother says tersely.

“Not your horrible spinster Aunt.” My father claps back over a cigarette.

“What choice do we have? None of your charitable relations will take her.”

“Send her to the boarding school in New York, like we should have done years ago.” My father says gruffly.

My mother’s face settles into a grim line that lets me know she will not argue back.

Two weeks later I find out I am pregnant. I can’t decide if it is a tragedy or a miracle in disguise. I avoid boarding school by two days and am whisked away to crazy Aunt Susan’s. Susan gives me all kinds of herbal remedies and teaches me how to breathe when the baby is born. When I deliver the baby she is small and red and crinkled and beautiful and not mine to keep. I watch as she is taken away to find a new family. It was my parent’s choice. I can’t argue with it–I am not ready to raise a child.

The years pass and my parents forget about me. I decide to live life like Billy: Take life before it takes me. I travel to California in my friend’s beat up Chevy, sometimes sleeping in the car along the way and eating whatever we can buy at the gas station. I walk along the beach, breathe the sea air. I think about Freedom.

I become a waitress at a diner and then a dance teacher. I marry a boy who sells cars at a dealership. He is flashy and confident and reminds me of Billy. He beats me and calls me a whore and then leaves me. I get drunk and end up walking to a bridge. Then I realize I am not thinking, and the feeling terrifies me. I never want to not think again.

I eventually go back to New York, live with Susan for awhile. She tells me that marriage is often overrated and prefers the company of her plants. I begin to wonder if I’ve made a mistake.

I spend the next two years working like I’ve never worked before. Down on hands and knees, scrubbing floors and vacuuming houses like the ones I used to live in. I don’t envy them. Not anymore.

I save every dollar I earn until I have enough to go to school. I become a journalist. I write for the New York Times. I meet a man who is intelligent, but shy, and handsome in a quiet way. He loves me and is careful with me. We get married.

We live for years in debt, in a house with bad plumbing. We have four kids. I drown in an endless swirl of motherhood, taxes, bills, groceries, and needs. Never wants. I don’t have time for wants anymore.

I’m a grizzled seventy-two year old woman now. My husband is long gone, dead from a heart attack. I spend my afternoons sitting on the front porch of my old brick house in Texas, living near my son and his kids. The others don’t speak to me much. Say I worry too much.

I guess I do, I think to myself, worry too much. Funny how that happens. The things we hate in youth one day become our constant companions. I’ve finally given up smoking but my lungs are still paying the price.

We are all still paying the price. Because life goes on. The world keeps spinning. And all choices have consequences.

Except for one place: a place alive only in my memory that I try to forget but at the same time long to remember.

Armageddonland. It’s like a vivid dream that sounds so silly now. I can’t decide if it is a major regret, or a priceless treasure.

“What if the world ends tomorrow?” I whisper to myself, leaning back in my rocking chair. I’m eight years away from eighty. The thought has never felt so real.

Death is a mystery, as alluring as the moment the soul untethers from thought and choices and lives by desire. What is it? Is it freedom? Is it rest? Is it the end of the world? Does anything we do actually matter?

I contemplate running naked into a pond again, or smoking pot, or doing something so vastly uncharacteristic of the lady with gray cropped hair and khakis sitting in this rocking chair. Maybe death is the end. But what if it’s not?

What if the world doesn’t end?