Chapter 1B: The Power of Music

Salinas Bend, in the 1970's, was a 200-acre Heritage City park located in the relatively rural southern section of the city. Situated along the Sacramento River, which formed Heritage's western boundary, its primary purpose was a boat launching facility and family picnic area. That was during the day. During the weekend night hours it served as a favored location for students from three local high schools to hold their keg parties. Hundreds of teenagers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen would descend upon the park after 10:00 PM, parking their cars in the boat trailer lot and setting up kegs that the more business oriented among them would purchase and then charge two dollars per person for an unlimited refill policy, at least until the keg ran out, which typically gave each purchaser an average of eight to ten plastic cups full of cheap beer per keg. Since the site was so isolated from the rest of the city-it was surrounded by dozens of square miles of farmland upon which onions and tomatoes were grown-the partygoers could be as loud and obnoxious as they liked with little risk of the Heritage Police making an appearance. The Heritage PD did, of course, occasionally show up to break things up, but this was more for form's sake than anything else. They actually liked having the majority of the south area's teens gathering in one, known spot in the middle of nowhere instead of breaking up into a dozen or more parties in more populated areas.

As a member of the stoner clique, Jake was a regular attendee of the Salinas Bend keggers during his junior year. Typically he just kind of hung out, sticking close to a few friends, watching the antics of others while he smoked a little weed and got pleasantly buzzed on beer. He was the quiet one, saying little unless he had something important to say, which wasn't often. He had long since learned that his peers were not terribly interested in politics.

On the night in question, Jake was sixteen years old and still a virgin. He had made out with a few girls before, had even done some light petting, but such encounters were very few and very far between. Since getting his driver's license two months before he had been borrowing his parent's 1972 Buick station wagon to get him to the weekly parties on the theory that having his own transportation would improve his success rate with the opposite sex. It was a sound theory that might have held water-even with the wood panel siding on the wagon-if not for the fact that Jake was so painfully shy around girls he rarely got one alone long enough to sustain a conversation. And so, on this evening, like so many others, he was just standing around in a group that consisted mostly of males, sipping beer and maintaining a stronger than average buzz, waiting for some kind soul to pass a joint in his direction, saying little, mostly just watching and dreaming.

And then he heard it. The sound of an acoustic guitar being strummed. His ears perked up and sought out the source of the sound. It was coming from the midst of a group of about twenty people on the other side of the parking lot. A bonfire had been built out of broken up pallets and was blazing away. A male figure was the center of this group's attention. He was sitting on the top of a picnic table holding a guitar, strumming open chords on it. Even over the babble of conversations and the sound of multiple car stereos belting out conflicting tunes, Jake could hear that the guitar was out of tune. He headed in that direction, no one in the group he had been with even noticing his departure.

He knew most of the people gathered around the picnic table. They were a mix of juniors and seniors from his school, about half girls and half guys. In the stoner clique, as with any clique, there are cliques within the clique. This group was the elite among the stoners, the hard-core and coolest, the rulers of the clique as far as such a thing existed. The guitar player was Eric Castro, one of the premier members of the ruling clique, one of the hardest of the hard-core. Castro fancied himself a musician because he owned a guitar and had learned to play a few chords. He and a few of the others in this group were always talking about how they were going to get a band together. The guitar he was playing was little more than a toy, a knock-off of a knock-off of a Fender Grand Concert. The strings were of the cheapest quality commercially available. The finish was scuffed and scratched. Jake thought that if he paid more than $15 for it, he had been ripped off.

And yet, despite the out-of-tune sound, despite the toy-like quality of the instrument, everyone in the group was staring at Castro with rapt attention as he finished strumming the open chords and started to play the opening of Simple Man by Lynard Skynard. His playing was only barely palatable. His fingers moved clumsily over the strings as he picked out the first few bars over and over again, never launching into the heart of the song.

"That's, like, so cool," crooned Mandy Walker, a chubby, jiggly stoner girl sitting next to him.

"Yeah," agreed Cindy Stinson, a skinnier, younger girl who sat on the other side. "My brother can play, but nowhere near as good as you."

Castro shrugged modestly, obviously proud of his alleged skill. "It takes lots of practice and dedication," he said solemnly, having to stop playing while he talked since he could no longer look at his fingers. "I picked this acoustic up just to play around with at the park. You should hear me on my electric."

"I bet it's awesome," Mandy said. "You'll have to play for me sometime."

"One of these days," Castro said, inflecting just the right tone of non-committal. He began to pick at the strings again, playing the opening to Love Hurts by Nazareth this time. He made fewer mistakes on this riff but played a lot less of the song before starting over.

The Castro concert went on for almost fifteen minutes, which was the amount of time it took for him to go through his entire catalog of acoustic jams he'd been taught or had managed to pick up by looking at tablature charts. Jake watched in fascination the entire time, not at Castro himself since he was not good enough to even qualify as a hacker, but at the group of people watching him. They had abandoned the recorded and broadcast music to watch him play a few simple chords. They were not talking to each other or joking or engaging in the age-old game of flirtation, they were watching, enjoying. He was making something that approximated music and they were listening to it. There was a magic at work here. He could see that as plain as he could see the alluring bounce of Mandy's tits beneath her halter. If Castro could produce magic by mangling a few popular songs, what would Jake be able to do? Even with the low self-esteem he had for his music producing abilities, he knew without a doubt that he was exponentially better than Castro. What would these people do if he were the one playing for them? No matter how his mind tried to degenerate this thought, to whisper that they would laugh at him and ridicule him, that they would take the guitar from his hands and throw him in the river just to see the splash, he knew it wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

"I need a hit," Castro announced, setting down the guitar behind him. "Whose got some fuckin' weed?"

While several people scrambled to pull out a joint to share with the rock god in their midst, Jake began to walk forward. Later he would tell himself that it was the alcohol coursing through his veins that made him do something so wildly out of character. And perhaps that had a little to do with it. But it was unquestionably more than just liquid courage. Jake wanted to play for these people, wanted to see the adoration in their eyes directed at him.

"Wassup, dude?" Castro greeted Jake as he saw him standing before him, giving the standard head nod one gives a lesser whose name one can't remember.

"Nice guitar," Jake told him. "Do you mind if I... you know... check it out?"

"Do you play?"

Jake shrugged shyly. "A little bit," he said.

Castro smirked. "No shit?" he said. He picked up the guitar and handed it to Jake. "Here you go. Let's hear what you got." The expression on his face implied that this was going to be amusing.

Jake took it, hefting it a few times, getting the feel of it. It really was a cheap piece of shit, hardly worthy of being called a musical instrument, but it was magic in the making all the same. He stepped a few feet to the right and sat down on the other side of Mandy, who was ignoring him as she usually did. He ran his finger across the strings, producing a strum.

"Oooh yeah, baby," Castro said with a laugh. "You fuckin' rock, man."

"Fuck yeah," some other wise-ass put in. "Eric Clapton, eat your fuckin' heart out."

This produced a round of laughter from the crowd, a brief and mildly contemptuous round. Jake ignored it and strummed the E string a few times, listening to the tone. He reached up and adjusted the tuning knob half a turn.

"Hey, what the fuck you doing?" Castro said. "I just tuned that thing."

"It must've came out of tune when you were playing it," Jake told him. "I'm just getting it back."

"It sounds okay to me."

"Well, it's hard to tell without a tuning fork and all this noise out here. I'll have it close in a minute."

"Now hold on a minute..." Castro started.

The pivotal moment in Jake's life might have ended right there. Castro didn't want a little dweeb messing with his guitar and was about to snatch it back. Jake would not have fought him for it. If it were taken from his hands he would simply go back to his original group and go on with his evening. But then Doug Biel, a fringe member of the ruling stoner clique vying for full membership, stepped forward with a hand carved marijuana pipe and a butane lighter. "Here, Castro," he said. "Hit some of this. My brother picked it up in Hawaii. Best shit you'll ever smoke."

"Maui Wowie?" Castro said, immediately losing interest in Jake and the guitar.

"Bet your ass," Doug assured him. "This shit goes for twenty-five an eighth."

"I haven't smoked any Maui Wowie in a couple of months."

"Well fire it up, brother. Fire it up."

Castro took the pipe and the lighter from his hands and took a tremendous hit. He then passed the pipe to Mandy, who sucked up a hit almost as big. She passed the pipe over the top of Jake, to John Standman, who was sitting on the other side of him.

Jake didn't mind. He continued to tune the guitar, striking each string a few times and then adjusting the knob, working entirely by ear. By the time the pipe was sucked dry and passed back to Doug, he had it about as tuned as the cheap, saggy strings would allow. He strummed a few open chords and then grabbed a G chord and began to play.

He picked out a simple medley at first, a slow simple piece of his own composition. His left hand moved slowly and surely over the unfamiliar frets, his calloused fingertips grabbing and pressing with exact pressure, drawing sweet vibration from the strings as the fingers of his right hand picked at them.

The conversation around him stopped. The re-stuffing of the marijuana pipe stopped as well. Eyes turned to him in surprise and wonder.

"Wow," Mandy said, looking at him and acknowledging his existence for perhaps the first time ever. "That's pretty good."

"Thanks," Jake said, giving a slight smile. "I use this as a warm-up exercise when I play."

"What is that?" asked Castro, his mouth open wide, his expression that of a man who has just seen his pet dog start to talk to him. "Is that Kansas?"

"No," Jake said. "It's nothing. Just a warm-up to get the fingers limber."

Castro seemed to have a hard time with this concept. It was nothing? How was that possible? The only thing that could come out of a guitar had to be either random noise or something that one heard on the radio, right?

Jake began to play faster and with more complexity, his left hand making chord changes, his right strumming harder. As always happened when he played, his digits seemed to act independently, without conscious thought, transforming the notes and rhythm in his head instantaneously into music emitting from the guitar.

"Wow," he heard Mandy whisper beside her, something like respect in her tone now. She turned her body so she could see him better.

He picked up the tempo a little more, his fingers hitting the strings harder, changing chords faster, as his confidence increased. He looked at Castro and was gratified to see his mouth still hanging open. Nor was his the only one.

He did a brief solo of sorts, picking out a glowing trip up and down the neck and then settling back down into a strummed melody-an instrumental version of one of the songs he had written. He gradually worked that into an improvised riff that he played around with for a minute or two before working that into the opening bars of All Along the Watchtower.

"Yeah!" someone yelled out from the crowd.

"Play it, man!" someone else yelled.

Jake played it, his hands belting out the rhythm to one of his favorite songs like they had so many times before in the privacy of his bedroom. Later, he would not remember making a conscious decision to start singing. If told earlier in the day that he would break into song before a group of twenty people from school (a group that was growing bigger by the second as people from other groups heard the music and drifted over to see who was making it) he would have judged the teller a liar or insane or both. Singing was a secret thing he did, like masturbation, a private thing, like taking a shower. But when the opening bar of the song worked its way around again on the guitar, his mouth opened and he heard himself belting out:

"There must be some kinda way out of here"

"Said the Joker to the Thief"

"There's too much confusion"

"I can't get no relief"

His voice was as clear and crisp as it always had been, this despite the cigarettes and the beer he'd imbibed in tonight. He wielded it perfectly, instinctively, utilizing all the lessons he'd learned over the years and coupling it with his own natural ability. His audience did not make fun of him as he'd always feared they would. They did not laugh at him. They did not mock him in any way, not even those, like Castro, like John Standman, who were known for such behavior. They watched him, their eyes aglow, their mouths open as he made music for them and before he got to the second verse, many of them were tapping their feet to the rhythm, were nodding their heads towards each other in confused respect.

He sang out the verses and strummed along, mixing his voice and the guitar nicely, never missing a chord, never forgetting a word, never having to look at his fingers to find the right fret. When the last verse was complete he ground out an acoustic guitar solo, his left hand once more moving with blurring speed up and down the neck, his right hand finger-picking out each note. After about thirty seconds of this he began to strum again, a slower, heavier version of the opening bars before finally working up a fancy flourish of strings to bring the song to a conclusion.

And then it was over and silence descended. But only for a second.

They did not applaud him, but only because that was simply not done in such an informal setting. Instead he was greeted with a chorus of appreciative phrases. "Yeah!" the most common, followed closely by "bitchin'!", "nice!", and, that perennial favorite "fuck yeah!" He was clapped on the back by several people, asked where he had learned to do that by several others, told he was fuckin' radical by others yet. Mandy's reaction to him was quite gratifying as well. She leaned into him, her large breasts pushing into his upper arm, her Maui Wowie scented breath blowing softly in his ear.

"That was tight," she told him. "Really fuckin' tight."

This time it really was the beer that made him speak wildly out of character. "Just the way I like it," he told her. He started to blush automatically, started to berate himself for saying something so stupid, was preparing, in fact, to apologize to her out of simple instinct. And then he looked in her eyes. They were shining at him and it was she who was blushing.

"Do something else!" someone shouted out, demanded of him.

"Yeah," other voices chimed in. "Let's hear some more."

A chorus of agreements followed, followed by a few shouted requests. "Zepplin!" was of course the most frequently heard. "Do some fuckin' Zepplin, man!"

Led Zepplin, to the teenage stoner crowd of 1976, was revered about as much as Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary were in the Vatican. Jake was no exception to this worshipfulness. While he didn't know how to play every song they had released, and some of them didn't translate very well to an unaccompanied acoustic guitar, he certainly had a vast and well-practiced regiment of their work in his head. So, brimming with the excitement of discovery, basking in the glow of something very like group adoration for the first time in his life, he gave the people what they wanted. His fingers began to move again, strumming up the opening chords of Rock and Roll.

He played it as effortlessly and as smoothly as he'd done Watchtower before, his voice ringing out in perfect harmony with the guitar chords. People were now swaying back and forth as they watched, some mouthing the words along with him. Mandy had now turned completely toward him, her knee touching his lower thigh, her boobs bouncing up and down alluringly as she moved to the rhythm. He cast appreciative glances at this sight as he played, noticing with black excitement that the friction of her movements (or perhaps something else?) had made her nipples erect beneath her shirt. She saw him looking at her but did not turn away in disgust as she probably would have only ten minutes before. Instead she smiled back at him, her eyes unabashedly looking him over and seeming to like what they were seeing.

Yes, he thought as he poured out the second chorus and prepared to launch into another solo, I think maybe I like this. I think maybe I like it a lot.

By the time he finished Rock and Roll, the crowd around him had grown to well over fifty people, with more still streaming in his direction. Nearby car stereos had been shut off so he could be heard better. The cries for more, more, more, continued, as did the shouted requests for particular bands. He played some Foghat next, churning out Fool For The City and Slow Ride. He then mellowed a little, showing off his fingerpicking skills by doing a rendition of Dust in the Wind. Some of the guys groaned a little at the slow tune but the effect on the girls was something he immediately catalogued and vowed to repeat as often as possible. They all but swooned over him as he used his voice to its best advantage. Remembering something his father had told him once during a lesson, a hint about performance technique, he made a point to look at his audience as he sang, making eye contact with several different girls, as if he were singing to them personally. Some blushed and looked away. Some smiled back at him. A few chewed their lips nervously as they held his gaze. None seemed to mind his eyes upon them, particularly not Mandy, whose gaze grew dreamy as they stared at each other all through the second chorus.

In all, he did twelve songs that night, going heavy on the Led Zepplin and Jimmy Hendrix. He did one more slow song-Yesterday, by The Beatles-near the end and then closed the set with the hard driving Tush by ZZ Top. His audience, which now included almost everyone present at Salinas Bend on that night, continued to shout out requests at him but he wisely elected to adhere to one of the golden rules of performing: Always leave your audience wanting more.

"I gotta take a break for now," he said, putting a pained expression on his face. "My hands are getting sore and my voice is getting kind of scratchy." This was not the least bit true. He often played and sang for two or more hours in his room and usually quit because of boredom instead of finger or voice fatigue, but it was a lie they bought and when he handed the cheap guitar back to Castro he took it from him without further protest.

"Dude," Castro said, looking at Jake as if he might be hot. "That was fuckin' cool. I didn't know you could play."

Jake shrugged, reverting back to his shy persona now that the performance was over. "I just mess around with it a little. Thanks for letting me borrow your guitar."

"Mess around a little? Shit. I mean I'm pretty good and all, but you're even better than I am." Castro said this as if this admission pained him greatly. "You play electric too?"

"A little bit," Jake said, not mentioning that he owned two electric guitars-cheap Les Paul knock-offs at this point in his life-in addition to having access to the four his father owned.

"We'll have to get together and jam sometime, you know what I mean? You ever think of joining a band?"

"Well..."

"Hey, dicknose!" Castro shouted to Doug before Jake could answer. "Where's that fuckin' pipe? Give my man here a goddamn hit!"

Jake was given not just one hit of the potent Hawaiian bud, he was given three and he was soon in the stratosphere. Someone else handed him a fresh cup of beer. The radios came back on and the majority of the crowd drifted away but Castro and his immediate circle continued to talk to Jake, telling him about this concert they'd been to, that song they knew how to play, how famous their band was going to be once they got it together. Jake nodded and responded in all the right places but barely heard a word said to him. His attention was instead on Mandy, who had scooted even closer and was now almost snuggled up against him, her breasts making frequent and seemingly accidental contact with his arm.

Eventually the conversation shifted away from guitars and music and onto other things like cars and movies and drugs. The focus shifted off Jake as well as Castro and the other ruling members fell back into their more natural patterns. It was then that Mandy tugged his arm.

"Let's go fill our cups up again before the keg runs out," she said.

"Uh... sure," he replied, standing up.

They walked over to the keg, taking up position at the end of a line of about thirty people. As they moved slowly forward towards the tap, Mandy held onto his arm possessively, cuddling close to him. She was not able stake her claim on his conversation as easily as she staked it on his person. All those around him in the line commented on his performance, asking the same questions he'd been asked back in the group, making the same observations. Two more people asked him if he would consider joining their band when they put one together. He answered politely and monosyllabically, more than a little overwhelmed with this sudden attention.

Finally they reached the head of the line, where the keg was stored in a park services garbage can filled with half-melted ice. Jake primed the keg with the hand pump on the tap. He filled Mandy's cup and then his own.

"You wanna take a walk with me?" she asked as he handed her drink to her.

He swallowed a little nervously. "Sure," he replied, nodding a little too forcefully. "That's a good idea."

She led him away from the parking lots, toward the river. As they walked, Jake's mind reviewed what he knew about this girl he was going off alone with. She was sixteen and, though not the best looking of the stoner girls, was one of the favorites among the guys, which accounted for her membership in the ruling clique. It was said that she loved making out, loved having her tits played with and would do both of these activities quite freely with anyone who could get her alone. Getting to third base was reputed to be a little more difficult but certainly within the realm of possibility if one did a decent job working his way to second base. Only a select few had actually fucked her. No one had ever claimed he'd scored a blowjob from her, although there were occasional, unconfirmed reports of hand-jobs. Jake wondered what he was in store for. Would he even get to first base? Sure, the power of music on her attitude had been quite magic, almost supernatural even, but he wasn't playing music any more. Would the spell last? Or would she suddenly remember that she was with a virtual nobody and storm off? He wasn't sure. This was well beyond his minimal experience. The other girls he'd made out with had been those as shy as or even shier then himself.

The boat launch area was one of the darker parts of the park. It consisted of a sloping concrete ramp and a fifty-foot dock that protruded out into the river. There were no streetlights here because the facility was not intended to be used at night. They walked out onto the dock and sat down at the end of it, both of them taking off their shoes and socks and rolling up their pant legs so their feet could dangle in the semi-warm water. The sound of crickets chirping easily overrode the sound of revelry coming from the parking lot.

"Nice and peaceful out here, isn't it?" Mandy asked as she snuggled up next to him, her warm, soft body pressing into his.

"Yeah," Jake said nervously, taking a drink of his beer in an attempt to quell his dry mouth. "Very nice."

Her foot began to rub against his under the water, her bare toes caressing him. "Romantic even," she whispered.

He was shy, but not dumb. He put his arm around her, pulling her closer to him. She cooed a little, laying her head on his shoulder.

"You have such a beautiful singing voice," she told him. "Who would've thought? And when you were singing Dust in the Wind to me..." she shivered a little. "Wow. When you were looking in my eyes while you sang it... I knew there was connection there. I mean... didn't you feel it?"

"Yeah," he said, putting his head even closer, snuggling his nose through her brown hair. "I felt it."

"That's such a romantic song," she crooned. "It just gets you, you know?"

"I know," he whispered, even though Dust in the Wind really wasn't a romantic song at all. Quite the opposite in fact. It was a dark song about the inevitability of death and about how meaningless the actions of mere humans really are in the great scheme of things. But Mandy really didn't need to be enlightened about this, did she? He thought not.

She tilted her face up to his and he kissed her. Her lips were full and soft, very sensuous. They exchanged slow, soft kisses for a few moments and then her tongue slid out of her mouth and into his. He swirled his own tongue against it, not caring that she tasted of beer and cigarettes. He tasted the same, he was sure. She was a great kisser, he discovered, which was hardly surprising considering the amount of practice she'd had at it.

It didn't take long before she laid back on the dock and he lay forward, half-atop her. They continued to kiss each other, deep, tongue dueling, spit swapping French kisses, the kind that gave "making out" its name. His hand rested on her hip for a while and then slid up and down her bare leg beneath the hem of her denim shorts, feeling the soft skin there. It felt very nice, very feminine. He caressed here for the better part of five minutes before moving his hand back upward, onto her stomach.

"Mmmm," she cooed into his mouth as his hand rubbed her tummy through the Black Sabbath T-shirt she wore. He made larger and larger circles until he was just below her breasts on the upturn, just above her waistband on the downturn. He didn't risk going any further. Never before had a girl allowed him this much liberty on a first encounter.

Mandy came to his rescue. Seeming to sense his hesitation, she broke the kiss long enough to whisper, "You can touch them if you want. I like it."

He trembled a little but did as requested. His hand came up and landed softly on her left breast. He squeezed it experimentally. It was soft and pliable and oh so sexy.

Mandy broke the kiss again. "You can touch them underneath my shirt," she said softly. "That's kind of the best way."

"Yeah," he said, his mouth rendered otherwise speechless.

She giggled and pulled his face back down. Their lips connected and their tongues made contact once again. He brought his hand down to her waistband and began to tug on her shirt, trying to untuck it. Here he encountered problems. Her shorts were so tight upon her that the shirt didn't want to come free. He tugged harder and harder, moving it only a quarter inch or so at a time.

"Hold on," Mandy said. "You'll rip it."

"Sorry," he mumbled, embarrassed, feeling like what he was: inexperienced.

She giggled again. "It's okay," she said, pecking at his nose. And then, to his aroused astonishment, she reached down and unbuttoned her shorts. She then slid the zipper down, opening them wide. "There," she said, her tongue licking up the side of his face to his ear, where it swirled around the lobe. "That should help, shouldn't it?"

Chapter 2 »