An Exaggeration

The sun is melting your face. Your skin will start to peel. The dust in the air is causing a brutal tickle in your throat, so you take a sip of your beer. The $9 beer you've been clutching for a half-hour now because you can't afford another – and the line's too long at the beer booth anyway. You take that sip and it's warm. Some pseudo-hippie with a bronze tan, wearing short-shorts and nothing else walks up to you, puts his arm around you. He's sweaty and sticky from a round in the crowd at the main stage. You had seen him there, hugging another man dressed just like him. He's smoking a spliff now – takes a pull and he says, “Did you see the Decemberists?” You shake your head, terribly confused by this hippie's strange behaviour. He smells like apples and you don't know why. He continues: “I always thought they sounded like a wistful winter's evening but, shit, they rocked the house!” He takes his arm off yours, passes you his joint. You take it – not because you enjoy drugs but because this is a $300, 3-day music festival and you're gonna take it for all that it's worth. He walks away without a word and you wipe the sweat off your brow with a yellowing handkerchief. The racket of some band you've never heard floats above the the scene, carried in with the breeze, and you think: This is all very weird.