Heather Buyce-Vasquez
Rose, Monterey California, June 1967
“Music is a safe kind of high” ~ Jimi Hendrix
“On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.” ~ David Bowie
Thirteen ½ year old Rose McNeely is far from home. Three hundred and nineteen miles in fact. Her long dark curly hair whips in and out of the open window as the wind tears at it. The long red Chevy Camaro streaks down the black road in a cloud of gravel and whine. Beside her a young man from South Los Angeles sucks on a cigarette, his slick black hair crackling under the fading layers Murray’s pomade. Rose eyes him from her place in the passenger seat. His white tee shirt is blinding and a thin gold cross encircles his neck. His black sunglasses hide deep brown eyes but they crinkle on the sides as he looks back at her his eyes swinging back and forth from her and her white hip hugging crochet mini dress to the narrow road leading into fairgrounds.
There was a generous supply of holes in the dress with some cut just a little too large and little too close together. Rose laughed a low tinkling sound.
She was in her element. Rose was not a talkative girl and she generally disliked large crowds and displays preferring her small room with walls covered in murals she sketched and her guitar and composition book. But today – today was different. Raul Molina wanted to take her to a concert. It was all anyone was talking about. It had been a surprise even to her that she’d agreed to accompany him to the concert. One that she was sure her mother would not have allowed her to attend given it was in Monterey so far away and even more because of the music and the boy. But the music – ah the music. She couldn’t miss it. Right now her mother thought she was at a sleepover at Judy Gifford’s house for the whole weekend. And perhaps it was because her mother wanted so desperately for Rose to fit in and to find friends that she so blindly said yes when Rose told her about the sleepover. It was not her habit to lie to her mother and she felt a sense of regret and hesitation. But when Raul left a flyer announcing the concert in her locker after third period and the band names came off the page in a rush of color and sound that her mind was made up. She had to go.
The grass was brown and crunched under her bare feet. She walked almost unseeing towards the enclosed arena which was already jam-packed. The smell of pot hung over the crowd in clouds. Raul took hold of her hand as they pressed forward being carried along by the crowd. There was a sudden blackness then a bright blinding light as she left the cover of the arena entrance. Rose’s head started to ache as she squinted in the sunlight. She could see the blue sky above and feel Raul’s hand in hers holding tightly to her fingers.
The air was electric.