Tuesday Night Concert
I spent today table hopping. Orders filled my pad, but I tried to not look when putting them in the computer. Yes, sir. Thank you, miss. Ran out food trays and carried back bare plates. Need a refill? Brought out three cups in one hand, two in the other. Trays slowed the pace. After my lunch shift, I went home, showered and changed. I looked around my apartment for a moment.
Unease sat in the stillness.
I did my dishes, took out the trash, and started learning a new song on bass while practicing an old one. The curly-haired woman I’m dating, affectionately nicknamed Hushpuppy because she’s a cornball, invited me to a punk concert. I changed into a rattier pair of shoes and left.
The first band was stuck in Minnesota with car issues. Their van broke down due to a hatred of fans. Or some mechanical issue, but how could it not be about us?
The second band played one long song of noise rock with vocals too soft to be heard over the feedback. They all wore wide, torn jeans in various hues of black. Every member but the drummer had hair long enough to get caught in their armpits while they jumped around. They stopped playing and packed up after one song.
Everyone in the crowd looked at each other, shrugged and went to the parking lot with disappointed murmurs. The crowd waited outside between acts because no one wanted to stand in a packed room without air conditioning in the dead of summer.
Hushpuppy’s friends left right after the second show. They had lost any rowdy energy brought with them. Red wine and the smooth jazz vibes of Mr. Toad’s Pub lured them away.
Now we’re alone. She sits on a curb lining the outside of the building. We pass a cigarette back and forth and talk about the disappointment that was the second act. Suddenly, the crowd floods back inside through the steel door taped with a red “x” for the final act.
I help her up and she skips to the door. I release her hand to let her frolic. She stops and looks at me as if I took her plate before she finished eating. In a few months we won’t be speaking, but it’s best not to think about that now.
Inside, the sweat on my back grips my white t-shirt. We stand in the crowd’s front row, in the middle of a plywood-paneled room.
The industrial fan in the back corner can’t reach us through the mass of black-shirt bodies. I am an ice sculpture dripping from my nose into a puddle on the cement floor. The air wiggles between the crowd and the band who stands on a persian rug.
The room fills with amp feedback. A woman in a faded green dress screams into the mic. Her words are lost in the fuzz. She jumps, twirls and pinballs into the musicians beside her. The drummer's hair whips around like an angry janitor's mop. He beats the drums like a boy bashes the sternum of his abuser. The guitarist swings his leg. He loses balance, extends to look like a capital “T.” The ground waits for his arrival. He regains stability and keeps kicking like Chun-Li. The bass player stole his head shape and fuzz length from a tennis ball. One foot on the ground and his other on a speaker. He looks like George Washington ready to mosh across the Delaware.
The gap between the band and me fills with guys two stepping with destructive intent at the end of their limbs. I was unaware of the punk show choreography. I love a sardine mosh pit, where the crowd throws each other around like a circle of elementary school bullies until somebody falls or passes out. This mosh pit is a violent game of sharks and minnows. Those not engaging in the dance routine form a semicircle in the middle of the room, stretching from speaker to speaker. I stand at the front of the crowd and Hushpuppy is to my right.
Bodies bound wall to wall. Whatever fuels them is left splattered on the plywood. A man in a yellow t-shirt gets up to speed and jumps onto one hand, flinging himself upside down into the right wall. He scrambles to his feet. He bolts to the other side. He plants his hand and jumps back-first into a woman on the wall. Her seltzer erupts. Alcohol drips from her giggling face. A short man runs through the crowd in proper football form. My stomach catches his shoulder. I push down on his scapula. He loses balance and meets the floor cheek to concrete. He rejoins the dance, grin dripping with blood.
A behemoth of a man spins himself through the semicircle of headbangers like a car wash rocker. He starts left and rotates right. Hushpuppy tucks behind me. I push the spiraling behemoth along his path. Sweat from his hair flung off like a dog fresh in from the rain. He smashes into the girl whose seltzer splashed in her face and turns back. The guy to my right and I shove the behemoth in unison. He gets off course, but only for a moment.
The music ends. We leave to join her friends at Mr. Toad’s for wine and Go-Fish.
