Chapter 19: The Festival Grounds
The air hit her first, a thick perfume of weed smoke, sandalwood incense, and something warm and yeasty that might have been a hundred people dancing without deodorant. Cherry Valentine stepped off the shuttle bus and planted her sandals in the packed dirt of the festival entrance, adjusting the flower crown that kept slipping against her sun-kissed hair. Her breasts, painted with daisies in yellow and white acrylic, bounced lightly inside the crocheted halter top that was less clothing and more suggestion. She had a press badge clipped to the hem of her frayed denim cutoffs, a digital recorder tucked into her back pocket, and a press of bodies thickening around her like honey.
"Free Love Music Festival, Day One," she said to the recorder, holding it up to her lips. The wind caught her voice and carried it away. "Cherry Valentine reporting from the main field. The vibe is already unreal and I haven't even made it past the gates."
She pushed forward through the crowd, past a man juggling fire torches in his underwear, past a woman spinning a hula hoop around her hips while wearing nothing but body paint that spelled out the word PEACE across her torso. The main field opened up in front of her like a vision from some psychedelic fever dream. Tapestries hung between poles, woven with mandalas and spirals, rippling lazily in the warm breeze. A stage rumbled bass-heavy music in the distance, but closer, right ahead of her, a drum circle had formed.
Fifteen or twenty people sat in a loose ring, slapping at djembes and bongos with their palms. Their bodies moved with the rhythm, and as Cherry watched, she saw that most of them were naked. Fully naked. Tie-dye fabric lay discarded around them like shed skins. A woman with armpit hair and a beaded headband straddled a man's lap, her arms around his neck, grinding against him in a slow, deliberate rhythm that matched the drums.
Cherry stopped walking. Her lips curved into a slow grin.
"Oh, my," she murmured.
The drumming accelerated. It was primal, organic, like a heartbeat magnified through the speakers mounted on nearby poles. The woman on the man's lap leaned back, and Cherry could see the man's cock sliding into her, slick and shining, as she rode him in sync with the drumbeat. Around them, other bodies intertwined. A red-haired man with a full beard lay on his back on a woven blanket while two women took turns on his dick and his face. Another group of four had formed a chain, mouths and cunts and cocks connecting them like a human knot made of sweat and heat.
Cherry's heart hammered in her chest. She had come here to write a piece on the counterculture revival, an immersive journalistic look at the legacy of free love and hippie ideals at a modern music festival. She had packed her notebook, her recorder, and enough optimism to fuel a dozen feature stories. She had not expected the subject matter to present itself so literally, so immediately, so completely naked.
"This is D... this is definitely material," she said into her recorder, her voice breathy. "The free love ethos is alive and well. It's not just a slogan at this festival. It's a way of life. I mean, a literal, pants-off, holistic approach to community bonding."
The man with the fire torches jogged past her and offered her a fist bump. She returned it, laughing. A woman with flowers braided into her long gray hair approached her, draped in a flowing sarong that left nothing to the imagination when the wind caught it. She smiled at Cherry with warm, crinkled eyes.
"First time at Free Love?" the woman asked.
"First time," Cherry confirmed. "I'm here for the coverage. Immersive journalism."
"Oh, honey." The woman laughed, a sound like wind chimes. "You came to the right place. The immersive doesn't get more immersive than the main drum circle on opening day. They've been at it since dawn."
"Since dawn?"
"Sixty-nine hours, going on seventy." The woman winked at her own joke. "Free Love is about shedding more than your clothes, you know. It's about shedding your ego. Your inhibitions. Your sense of self. All that heavy baggage we carry around in the real world. Here, we connect. We share. We love."
"We love," Cherry echoed, watching as another man crawled out of the pile of limbs, his cock glistening, and knelt beside the red-haired man's face for his turn. The red-haired man opened his mouth eagerly.
The gray-haired woman rested a gentle hand on Cherry's shoulder. "You look like someone who understands that. I'm Meadow, by the way. I've been coming since 1971."
"Cherry Valentine."
"Cherry." Meadow's eyes swept over the painted daisies on her chest. "Pretty name. Suits you. You go on and document what you need, sweetheart. Just be careful. This drum circle has a way of pulling you in."
Cherry swallowed. The warmth pooling between her thighs was unmistakable. She adjusted her cutoffs, feeling the damp pressure of her own wetness against the denim seam.
"I think I can handle it," she said.
Meadow patted her cheek. "I'm sure you can, love. There's water and honey over at the community tent if you need sustenance."
She drifted away, merging into the crowd like she was made of smoke. Cherry turned back to the drum circle and let herself really look. The rhythm had shifted, a new syncopation driving the bodies faster, harder. The woman who had been riding the man had flipped over, taking him from behind, her ass bouncing as he drove into her. Her head was thrown back and she was wailing, not in pain but in some ecstatic release that seemed to rise up from the earth itself.
Another couple nearby had stopped dancing and dropped to their knees. The woman took the man's cock into her mouth with a practiced, hungry motion, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked him deep. He fisted his hands in her hair and thrust into her throat with a groan that mixed with the drumbeat.
Cherry raised her recorder again. Her hands trembled slightly, but not from fear.
"The drum circle is the heart of the festival," she narrated. "It's a living, breathing thing. And the energy here is... something else. I'm noting in real time that the boundaries between audience and participant, between observer and subject, are very porous. Very flowing. It's like the whole meadow is one shared consciousness."
She stopped recording and pocketed the device. She had gotten comfortable with her own body over the years, more comfortable than most people ever got with theirs. She had walked into locker rooms and boardrooms and fraternity houses wearing nothing but her confidence. But there was something different about this place. There was no script, no setup. No one had invited her to anything. The invitation was simply written into the air, into the rhythm, into the way the naked bodies beckoned without asking.
A man with long dreadlocks, tie-dye pants riding low on his hips and no shirt, his chest covered in tribal tattoos, caught her eye. He smiled at her and raised a joint in greeting.
"Happy to share," he said, gesturing with the joint. "Sunshine looks good on you, flower girl."
Cherry laughed. "Thanks. It feels good on me."
"First festival?"
"First Free Love, yes."
"Ah, then you're in for a treat. I'm Harmony." He was not being ironic. "Welcome, sister. We're all one family here. You want your first drum circle experience to be authentic?"
She felt her pulse quicken. "Authentic is my middle name."
Harmony held out a hand. Not the hand with the joint, the other one. She looked at it, looked at him, then looked back at the drum circle. The bodies were moving in waves now, as if directed by some invisible conductor. A cluster of men had encircled a woman with curly red hair, taking turns fucking her mouth while she knelt on the grass. Her hands were free and she used them to stroke whichever cock she wasn't currently sucking, keeping them all hard and waiting.
"Okay," Cherry said.
She took his hand.
The drum circle had expanded since she first noticed it. More people had joined, shedding their clothes like a collective molting process. Cherry stepped into the circle with Harmony, her sandals sinking into the soft earth. The grass was thick here, padded by woven blankets and the occasional tie-dye sheet. The drumming pulsed through her soles, up her legs, settling low in her belly.
Harmony released her hand and pointed to a spot in the circle where a space had opened up on a blanket. Two people were already there, a willowy woman with platinum hair and a stocky man with a thick red beard, locked in a sixty-nine. Their bodies moved with practiced ease.
"Sit," Harmony said. "Feel the rhythm. Let it move through you."
Cherry sank down onto the blanket. The grass was warm from the sun. She crossed her legs and closed her eyes, letting the percussion wash over her. She could feel the vibrations moving through her body, through the earth, through the very air she breathed.
Dimly, she reached for her recorder, pulling it out to catch the audio. She had almost forgotten she was working.
"Sitting in the drum circle... sixty-nine hours in," she whispered, her voice hushed. "The collective energy is palpable. I've never seen anything like it."
She pocketed the recorder again. The two people in the circle next to her shifted, the woman rolling off the man and landing on her back beside Cherry. She was breathing hard, glistening with sweat, her platinum hair plastered to her temples.
"That was beautiful," the woman said, grinning at Cherry. Her hand reached out, cupping Cherry's knee. "First time?"
"Does it show?"
"Your eyes are so wide. It's adorable." Her fingers slid higher, up Cherry's denim-clad thigh. "Want me to show you what love feels like, flower?"
Cherry's breath caught. She glanced over at the woman, at her pale skin flushed pink, at her nipple pierced with a tiny gold ring, at the smile that was warm and open and utterly without judgment.
The drumming surged.
"Yes," Cherry said.
The woman's hand slipped between her thighs, pressing against the damp denim of her cutoffs. She let out a small gasp.
"These need to come off," the woman observed.
They did. Cherry fumbled with the button and zipper, kicking the cutoffs aside with her sandals. She was wearing nothing underneath, just a thin scrap of cotton that clung wetly to her. The woman tugged that down too, and Cherry stretched out on the blanket in the warm, hazy afternoon light.
Around her, the drum circle pulsed and throbbed. Bodies pressed together in a thousand combinations. No one stared. No one judged. They simply welcomed her, as if she had always been there.
"You're beautiful," the woman murmured. "Like a painting that came to life." She dipped her head between Cherry's thighs, and her tongue, broad and flat, slid up the length of Cherry's slit.
Cherry moaned and arched into her mouth. The woman tasted her slowly, deliberately, pausing to circle her clit with the tip of her tongue before plunging deeper. It was an unhurried worship, an appreciation of the flesh itself, and Cherry felt her body opening like a flower in the sun.
"This is incredible," she breathed.
The stocky man with the red beard crawled around and knelt beside her head. His cock was already hard, thick, flushed dark at the head. He stroked himself, looking down at her with kind eyes.
"May I?" he asked.
"Mmm, yes." Cherry reached up and wrapped her fingers around him, guiding him to her lips. She took the head of his cock into her mouth, tasting the musk of the blanket and the salt of his skin. He was gentle, letting her set the pace, and she rewarded him with a slow, deep suck that drew a shudder from his chest.
The platinum-haired woman's tongue stroked her clit in counterpoint to the drums, and Cherry felt herself floating, untethered. She closed her eyes and focused on the sensation. Her hips rolled, grinding against the woman's face, while her tongue caressed the red-bearded man's shaft.
In the fading light, she could feel herself accumulating new sensations with each heartbeat. The drumming grew faster, more frenetic. Her world narrowed to the heat of mouths and skin.
"Spring is coming," a voice said, and Cherry opened her eyes to see a flurry of hands reaching toward her. The drum circle had loosened, and it welcomed her.