Winnie #3
When I got off the bus, he was the first thing I saw.
His hair was shaggier, he was wearing dark jeans and a navy peacoat, and his open-eyed expression was hopeful and boyish.
I ran to him and dropped my backpack at our feet so I could stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck.
Oh my goodness, that kiss. His hands were in my hair and in the back pockets of my jeans, and someone actually shouted, “Get a room!”
We laughed at this, our foreheads together.
“I missed you so much,” he said, moving a hand to my cheek.
I felt like crying, and to avoid it I nodded and turned my head to kiss the palm of his hand.
He held me close all the way home. We didn’t leave our bedroom for two days and basked in only the best of us.
We talked for hours and traced our names on each other’s backs and made spaghetti to eat in bed when our energy ran low.
We listened to records we’d heard while apart and explained why we loved them, read each other bits of books, woke each other with kisses on the shoulder, and fell asleep intertwined.
He was learning the banjo, and he was in an entirely different band.
Folk, not psychedelic. Greta (bass) and her brother Dane (drums) had formed the group back in Minnesota with a lead singer and guitar player named Greg, and they brought their sound west after Joan Baez heard them at a festival and told them San Francisco was where it was at.
As soon as they arrived, though, Greg’s mother found out she had advanced cancer, and since his dad had died in Korea and he was an only child, he felt it was his duty to return home, care for his mother, and marry his high school sweetheart.
Dane and Greta found Lincoln at an open mic night and asked him to be their new front man and guitarist right away.
Dane smoked a lot of pot, but Greta had taken note of what had happened to Janis Joplin and didn’t touch any of it.
Plus, she was a lesbian, which set my nerves so much at ease.
For money, Lincoln was working in a school of all places, teaching music to children on food stamps in the Mission.
“I can’t believe it, but I love teaching,” he said.
“All those smiling, eager faces. Little boys who can’t sit still for math will pick up a drumstick and focus for hours.
It gives them such a sense of accomplishment. ”
“Sounds like it gives you the same,” I observed, feeling so warmly encouraged by this turn of events. Teachers didn’t cheat or do too many drugs, or leave their first loves whom they’d come back to for a third try.
“Not as much of an accomplishment as having you here,” he said, kissing me again.
City Lights even took me back as a copyeditor, and I got right back into writing freelance pieces for the Chronicle, and even a few album reviews for Rolling Stone.
The poetry came in fast and furious, too.
No more ancient wars and dirges, though the magical elements remained in the new poems in the form of love potions, faeries, and sea monsters.
To commemorate our fresh start, we decorated a new place from scratch with pieces from Goodwill and the moving sales of people around the Haight who’d had enough of city life and were moving to airier hills and houses across the Bay.
Soon, our little one bedroom was full of bohemian paisleys and velvets, overgrown plants with funny-shaped leaves, and Moroccan poufs and carpets.
Crisp, white sheets were our only brand-new indulgence, and I loved smoothing them out on our bed after washing them every week.
Miranda and I slowly found our footing, too, as long as we didn’t talk about Lincoln or Dad.
I was relieved when she told me she’d found someone to do my job at the vineyard, a young guy from Stockton named Will who wore Buddy Holly glasses and had gone to Davis to study history and taken a few enology classes.
He also worked as a stringer for The Sacramento Bee, covering agriculture in the Napa and San Joaquin Valleys.
He couldn’t tell the paper about this side gig for the winery, since it would compromise his journalistic integrity, but he seemed happy enough to compromise it in exchange for access to the pinot and extra income.
“He’s not you, but he’s pretty good,” Miranda said on the phone. “He gets why people drink wine, and how to get them to drink Californian instead of French. He also thinks we should be entering our bottles in competitions. There are more and more of them that pit old world against new.”
“You think Hartley’s ready for that?”
“I do. Honestly, I think our wines are much better than French in many ways. More interesting.”
“That’s exciting!” And I meant it.
It was during that halcyon time that Lincoln and I went with his bandmates to a Jefferson Airplane concert, and instead of calculating our highs down to the gram like we used to, he and I shared a joint—our first in months, which felt like a huge accomplishment—on the way to the concert and it carried us all the way through from “White Rabbit” to the encore, “Somebody to Love.” Little did we know it would be one of the band’s final concerts.
I sometimes wondered—if I’d known, would I have enjoyed it more?
Attended sober and paid more attention? That’s the worst thing about memories.
They taunt us with all the should-have-beens.