My first Woodstock crush

i was seven when i had my first woodstock crush --my mother’s young lover charles.

my father had long since run off with the baby-sitter, but i did not seek a new dad. i hoped to steal charles away from my mom.

i had a romantic’s heart, but a careful and calculating brain.

i’d figure charles out and make him mine.

first i’d have to get him away from the pottery wheel.

.

charles would smell up the house with thick joints then  make these intricate drawings. he’d set them spinning on the wheel. i braved the sweet stink to be near him.

he had hair to his shoulders, soft dark eyes of goodness.

one day i got him alone on the couch. he was wrapped in a tye-dyed rag, and looked like a gentle king. he had white white teeth and was laughing so easily.

the radio played a hendrix song,and i fel tliek there were angels all around us.

so...if you cuold have anything in the world, i asked him—what would it be?

i was sure he’d say a matchbox harley, and even though it was my favorite toy i was prepared to give it up.

charles said: i only want.. world peace.

no, no, a THING i said, something real, like if  i could give you soemthing, like for your brithday or soemthing,  what would it be?

now charles was singing along to do you beleive in MAGIC--, eyes closed, tracing the meoldoy of the song in the air.  after a while, he opened his eyes and watched his own hand, fascinatied, wanting to know if i too could see the electric colored trails. he had sensitive hands, long brown fingers. neither of us could take our eyes off hsi hands.

then he admitted there WAS

something else he wanted-- a german shepherd puppy.

by the time i got the dog, charles was gone. the dog was -- skinny, full of worms, needing to be walked.
 

i walked right into sean, who was 12.

he had that bad-boy allure; kicked out of school for breaking  a kid’s arm.

he would tickle me--so hard i thoguht the guy with the broken arm got off easy.

he took me in the shed behind our house and closed the door. he pulled the latch on the bulb. still enough daylight to see a flash of something white through his pants. he touched his mouth to mine, cold, quick.

one morning, he lead me to the woods. he said: do you know what rape means?  fear seemed to feed my love.

i ‘d sneak to his house in the purple twilight. if i walked barefoot  through a tangle of thorns he promised me a gift.

i got nothing but torn feet.

once when it rained we ran to shelter beneath a willow....there was no tickling, no talk of rape, no painful test.  thunder broke the sky. i waited for the kiss...and when it didn’t come i loved him even more.

looking back i wonder—who set the mold—the stoner who left before i could give him his gift, or the boy who left without a final kiss?

in 40 years of woodstock loves, i can only remember the small of jack daniels, the ghosts, chased through any fire, til you fall in a snowbank and write the name of longing  with the toe of your doc marten boot.   the  graveside you sit by and whisper to,  so many loves outlived, or buried beneath the mounds of secrecy.

may i find that path, walking with angels, bare feet only tickled by the grass, a path to realms where love is the only rule.

this love will surely be a puppy, i don’t care what breed.