L011a

Lollapalooza 2011.  Saw Deftones a few hours ago.  It's already a good day.

I'm drunk; not on booze, as I came alone and didn't feel like shelling out ten dollars to a stranger (ten dollars I may never see again) for a single music-festival beer.  This is my first and so far only Lollapalooza.  I don't know how to sneak things in.

I'm drunk and here alone.  Drunk not on booze but the energy, the enchantment of shows I've seen by people I normally don't even like or that I've just come to appreciate (see above).  I'm a zombie, a damned gluttonous soul looking for more experience, more sound, more songs I don't know to scream along to, more movement and bodies to roll in.  Between sets, I meander.  During them, I'm part of everything else.  I watch, learn, and before long, I'm moving like they do.  Leaping, gyrating, heads banging, even to things that aren't remotely metal, a dance of chaos.  That's music to me.

I'm here alone and I can do this.  To me, that's special.  I'm alone, but yet... we are legion.  We're all here for one reason, the reason on the stage at the time.

It's night.  Evening.  Whatever.  Headliner, in the Big Damn Field.  Eminem.  Spirits are high.  So are the people.  Like, everyone but me.  Not upset; I don't smoke.  I look around.  It's the first time in this whole day that I've really observed rather than experienced.  For the first time that day, I feel as alone as I am.

These aren't exactly my people.  They're not even the people from before; they're not who I saw Fitz and the Tantrums, Black Lips, Death from Above 1979, and Deftones with.  These...  These are people from my high school.  Not actually - that's a small blessing.  But they're the same concept.  Bros with neon tank tops, Kanye glasses, dumb tattoos, snapbacks.  Girls with brown roots in bleached hair, cutoff shorts, pierced belly buttons, ridiculous eye makeup.  One hanging off the other, screaming their asinine jokes.  The lion's den, folks.

My judgments and reservations washed away soon enough, right when the sun went down and the music began, when Slim Shady himself took the stage.  I survived the show unmolested (in any sense of the word), loved it as much as any of the others.  One of those girls - the ones with their obvious bleach jobs, wearing next to nothing, slippery with sweat that isn't all theirs - one of them asked if she could get on my shoulders.  I obliged, of course.  There she remained for the latter half of the set; my face in a vice grip between thick pink thighs, her buttocks on my upper back (thank you scoliosis), her cooch saddling my neck, her stomach caressing the crown of my head with each heavy breath.

This isn't the story of how I fell in love at a concert with a girl whose name I never knew.  No such thing happened.  The only attraction was purely animal.  I'd have liked to screw her, but I didn't.  I didn't even get a number.  I was used, and it was awesome.  Strangely enough, she was there with a boy.  Several boys, but one boy in particular, I could swear I saw her kissing earlier, unless my ridiculous contact high was playing tricks on me and I was an idiot for being so chivalrous.  Out of all her friends, including possible-boyfriend, she went with me, some random stranger, there alone with his little red pool bag, trusted me as beast of burden, trusted that I could support her (substantial) weight for more of this set than the boys (tank tops, Kanyes, snapbacks) that she came with.

I was used, and it was awesome.

I'm not sure what this story is about.  The one pattern I can recognize is, even when I wasn't among my favorite demographic, when I was a nomad in the enemy state, I had as good a time as them.  Maybe this is a story about my ego boost.  Maybe it's one about how you can't choose your fans, or a story about music bringing people together.  Maybe it's a story about nothing, or a story about me telling this story.

Maybe it's a story about me trying to tell a story, a story where with each story I tell, I get closer to the end, closer to what the story means.