JOYOUS LAKE

Last night in Woodstock the great independent bookstore, The Golden Notebook, reopened. They asked some writers to read stories about Woodstock. This is the story I read.

Joyous Lake

By the time I got to Woodstock, the music festival was five years in the past, entirely too many people had taken the brown acid, and everyone in the gorgeous little country hamlet seemed to be under thirty. Everyone who mattered, that is. Almost all the business owners, chefs, bartenders, and town officials seemed to be play-acting at being adults, and yet there they were, out front and in charge. It was as if the parents had evacuated and the children had taken over the ship. And, boy, that ship was sailing.
I was a college dropout who didn’t know how to do much, but gambling was in my blood. I started taking bets on baseball and football games. Local plumbers and electricians thought it was adorable that a girl knew so much about sports. Some days I made over two hundred dollars which was great money in 1974, but I started spending too much time looking over my shoulder, wondering if the cops were going to arrest me for the illegal betting or for the half-pound of pot I kept stashed in a pair of purple cowboy boots in my closet. When I was offered the job as the cashier at The Joyous Lake, I gladly turned away from my illicit life.
The Lake was the center of Woodstock life in the early and mid-seventies, a bar/restaurant where Taj Mahal and Bonnie Raitt played regular gigs, Paul Butterfield and Tim Hardin held court at the bar, Rick Danko and other members of The Band often had to be driven home, John Hall made his merry music, and Timothy Leary stopped in for the homemade sangria. It didn’t seem so annoying to explain to tourists that Woodstock the festival took place over fifty miles away in Bethel New York, while Woodstock the town got the burned-out, tie-dye-wearing kids who spent their time spare-changing each other and generally getting on everyone’s nerves.
The Lake was owned by a charismatic couple named Ron and Valma Merians. Ron was a handsome, somewhat overweight ex-podiatrist who was a terrific cook and knew how to bring diverse people together and make them all feel as if he was their best friend. Valma was a stunning ex-model, born in Spain, who could dazzle just by being in the room. They had a young baby they named Three (as in “Baby makes three”). Often I would hold Three for hours, and every time the old-fashioned cash register would make its Beep-Beep-Beep sound, Three would throw her head back and laugh, and so would all the customers.
The Lake boasted one of the first open kitchens, with a fantastic salad bar at one end and quick sautéed dishes and perfectly grilled steaks at the other. Most of the waitresses at The Joyous Lake wore tiny little short-shorts and bandanas tied strategically around their breasts. When they went missing for fifteen minutes, you knew they were either getting high in the walk-in or giving blow-jobs in the bathroom.
When the crowds got thick, the waitresses pushed their way through with their trays held high above their heads. “Coming through,” they would yell, and men would let their hands roam along their bodies. Nobody bitched or talked about sexual harassment. Nobody cared.
As soon as you got off your shift you’d head right out onto the dance floor. Everyone would be pressed together--- male and female, young and old, straight and gay. I would bump and grind next to a stranger for a few hours, and then, with nothing more than a nod, decide to go home with him. The sex was friendly and dangerous, all at the same time. In the morning, I’d kiss them and hold on to their scent, and then head back into town, sometimes not even knowing their names.
First thing in the morning my best friend, a brunette named Alice, who wore tiny white T-shirts and short skirts with stiff crinolines underneath, would call to wake me. Alice was a waitress at The Lake and was divorced with two kids. She was the only person we knew who had to be up at a regular hour.
“Alone?” she would ask.
If I said ‘No,” she would whisper, “Call me, call me, call me,” and hang up.
One morning I called back and told her that the guy I had been with was deformed. “Deformed how?” she wanted to know.
I couldn’t explain it on the phone, so I went to her house and drew a picture that resembled a deflated Ku Klux Klan headpiece. Alice and I stared at it for a long time. We called her friend Richard, a well-known authority on penises. "Uncircumsized,” he said when he saw the drawing, rolling his eyes at us.
I couldn’t wait to tell the waitresses that night.
Being a waitress at The Lake was as good as it got in Woodstock, and being the cashier was all that, times ten. I didn’t have to be on my feet all night. I got paid great and didn’t have to worry about squirrelly tippers. I got to go upstairs to the private apartment above the kitchen and do coke with the musicians who were waiting to go on stage. I got to fuck Dave Masons drummer.
And the amazing food was free.
I didn’t have a car when I first moved to Woodstock, so I hitchhiked everywhere. I would walk out of The Lake at four in the morning and stick out my thumb. I lived in a small house less than a mile away, but hardly ever had to wait more than a few minutes for someone to drive by and pick me up.
Oftentimes I had all the money we had taken in that night at the Lake, thousands of dollars, tucked into the back pocket of my jeans. Only once did I have a problem, with a local guy I had seen on the dance floor many times. When he started driving that night I remembered that he had told a mutual friend that he finger-fucked me at a party. I was about to remind him of his lie when I realized he wasn’t taking me to my house, he was taking me to his. I was surprisingly calm, just quietly urging him to turn around and drop me off. He kept me pinned back in my seat with his beefy arm while he navigated the hairpin turns. When I realized he was serious I started yelling, tried to wriggle free, made an attempt to bite his hand. But he was a bear of a guy. He didn’t say a word, and I starting thinking he had rape instead of robbery on his mind.
As soon as he stopped the pickup truck, I jumped out and started running. There was a potent moon shining, and I could see piles of plywood and firewood stacked up around his cabin. He was slower than I was, but I had no idea where I was or how I could get out of there. Finally I felt him right behind me, and I picked up a 2-by-4, turned around and started swinging. The first blow hit him on the upper arm, and he screamed in pain. He stopped, so I ran behind him and swung hard, bringing the piece of wood down on his shoulder with a sickening thud. He went to his knees. “You crazy bitch,” he yelled, trying to regain his bearings. “You’re fucking nuts!”
“Who’s nuts now?” I shouted as I jumped in his truck and gunned the engine. I tore out of there, drove the truck to the center of town, parked it in the NO PARKING zone, tossed the keys behind a tall hedge, and sat on the curb til my breathing was normal and my body had stopped shaking. Then I stood up and stuck out my thumb.
When a car stopped right away, I stepped in without a care.