Simpler, more jump-aroundy times.
I've been trying to write this fucking post about this fucking minor glimpse into my life for 5 days now. And hadn't made it past the first sentence. That should probably tell you something about my current existence. Also? I just realized that the amount of overtime I worked last week alone will pay half my mortgage this month. That is cool and jewtastic and terrible and slave-like all at once, so I'll leave it at... hooray retirement. At least now I'm home from work and accompanied by an overly generous glass of Peruvian apple-infused pisco.
At any rate, it's not that the story I intended to share was of much importance. You know how sometimes some thing or another has some kind of minor, Seinfeldian, yet still vaguely interesting meaning to you, but then you get distracted by so many other things-or-other that by the time you return to the original plot thread you can't really not overlay the spoilers and the context that wasn't there and some kind of larger significance that didn't exist at the time?? Yeah. Well. This was just a story about a Flogging Molly show. I'll write about what it wasn't later.
Which is to say that, boys and girls? I have a story about leaving my body. Okay, about leaving my -ness. If only for an evening.
So. The other night I went to my favorite music place, to see one of my Favorite Bands to See Live Ever, and do one of my favorite things to do, namely, to pretend I'm someone else. I didn't have an actual fake persona crafted for myself or anything, although I freely admit that I have been known to do so.
Especially when alone. Did I mention I was alone? And that being alone at a punk rock concert watching a band I really like is also one of my favorite things to do? Maybe that's weird, I don't know. Well, I guess I do know, because I rarely see other people alone at shows, so. Whatthefuckever. I think that unless you bring someone who really likes whomever you're seeing along, it's much more fun to be able to revel in your anonymity and dance like a total retard and chain-smoke and give up your bubble of peace and privacy and engage in furtive frottage with strangers and get sweaty and just... lost.
Obviously, one of the myriad reasons this particular venue, a lovely old-fashioned outdoor courtyard resting like an oasis upon downtown St. Pete and hidden among mid-century brick buildings on all sides, is my favorite is the sound. The sound is fucking great. And Flogging Molly would sound fucking great playing out of an empty can of cat food as it is. 1 + 1 = fuckyes.
I got there with cash in my pocket and chemicals in my bloodstream and glee in my cockles and mud in my head. Anyone who knows me very well has probably walked into at least one argument about why I don't like Guinness and yet really want to like it. Naturally, it being a week before St. Patrick's Day at a Flogging Molly show, I needed Guinness. Just one. And I fucking liked it. My hands were so shaky, for whatever reason, that I spilled it on my feet, but I still liked it. I keep trying and trying and trying, but I never like Guinness from the 3rd swallow on. Zoë prefers her breakfast-beers to be, say, Sammiclaus or Old Rasputin rather than medicinal Guinness, but who the fuck knows who this girl was.
I don't even know how to describe the show itself, so I won't bother. It was just... rock. They played all my favorite songs save for one, which would have required a freckly pocket-sized imp playing the golden shileileigh anyway. I've seen them four times now and every single time has just been so perfectly Rock that I have to assume they either have incredible luck or were put on this earth to entertain me specifically. Regardless, everyone else was just as enchanted as I always am. Which is a rare and beautiful thing.
It wasn't the rarest of the things to be found at Dave King's feet that night. I didn't walk in looking to talk to anyone at all, and I really never actually walk into anywhere looking to talk to people, so. And yet, unbeknownst to me, the once-thought-to-be-mythical Social Zoë was staked out in the wings somewhere behind stage right. Not just vaguely amusing Witty Banter Zoë, but serious genuine extroversion. The kind that has more than one person who isn't preoccupied with trying to not be awkward. The kind that puts me at ease with the humans of the world as much as I am with its inanimate things and places. The kind that made me feel At One With People. The kind I actually like.
I, the girl in the Well, testify truly and affirmatively to the following on the evening in question, not having provoked nor expected any of it. Two separate groups of total strangers got me stoned. (Which never happens, not in public, and not alone, and not with strangers.) A group of fratboys made me their expeditious leader on a mission through the undulating close-pressed crowd. "We're all with you, Combat Rock!" gargled one of the enthusiastically drunker Dudes. (Is it still acceptable to wear Clash t-shirts non-ironically outside of the Well? Good.) I danced for three hours straight on the evening in question. I booty-danced with a random beautiful girl with big tits and small tank-top. I flailed around wildly in the pit and thwacked several people but avoided every elbow. I loved the opening band. I had only one drink. I was adopted by a stoned trio of friends by the end of the night. I saw women with boyfriends whose bachelor friends tagged along shooing them over to talk to me specifically. (I decided that was the time for me to pee.) I was the object, and not just perpetrator, of some serious frottage. I came and left by myself. I twanged and thumped and rumbled and crooned and rocked with euphoria, just pure glee, for hours. I was playing a thrillingly foreign yet entirely natural role in a play written about somebody else.
It was the weirdest and best time I've had in months.
At any rate, it's not that the story I intended to share was of much importance. You know how sometimes some thing or another has some kind of minor, Seinfeldian, yet still vaguely interesting meaning to you, but then you get distracted by so many other things-or-other that by the time you return to the original plot thread you can't really not overlay the spoilers and the context that wasn't there and some kind of larger significance that didn't exist at the time?? Yeah. Well. This was just a story about a Flogging Molly show. I'll write about what it wasn't later.
Which is to say that, boys and girls? I have a story about leaving my body. Okay, about leaving my -ness. If only for an evening.
So. The other night I went to my favorite music place, to see one of my Favorite Bands to See Live Ever, and do one of my favorite things to do, namely, to pretend I'm someone else. I didn't have an actual fake persona crafted for myself or anything, although I freely admit that I have been known to do so.
Especially when alone. Did I mention I was alone? And that being alone at a punk rock concert watching a band I really like is also one of my favorite things to do? Maybe that's weird, I don't know. Well, I guess I do know, because I rarely see other people alone at shows, so. Whatthefuckever. I think that unless you bring someone who really likes whomever you're seeing along, it's much more fun to be able to revel in your anonymity and dance like a total retard and chain-smoke and give up your bubble of peace and privacy and engage in furtive frottage with strangers and get sweaty and just... lost.
Obviously, one of the myriad reasons this particular venue, a lovely old-fashioned outdoor courtyard resting like an oasis upon downtown St. Pete and hidden among mid-century brick buildings on all sides, is my favorite is the sound. The sound is fucking great. And Flogging Molly would sound fucking great playing out of an empty can of cat food as it is. 1 + 1 = fuckyes.
I got there with cash in my pocket and chemicals in my bloodstream and glee in my cockles and mud in my head. Anyone who knows me very well has probably walked into at least one argument about why I don't like Guinness and yet really want to like it. Naturally, it being a week before St. Patrick's Day at a Flogging Molly show, I needed Guinness. Just one. And I fucking liked it. My hands were so shaky, for whatever reason, that I spilled it on my feet, but I still liked it. I keep trying and trying and trying, but I never like Guinness from the 3rd swallow on. Zoë prefers her breakfast-beers to be, say, Sammiclaus or Old Rasputin rather than medicinal Guinness, but who the fuck knows who this girl was.
I don't even know how to describe the show itself, so I won't bother. It was just... rock. They played all my favorite songs save for one, which would have required a freckly pocket-sized imp playing the golden shileileigh anyway. I've seen them four times now and every single time has just been so perfectly Rock that I have to assume they either have incredible luck or were put on this earth to entertain me specifically. Regardless, everyone else was just as enchanted as I always am. Which is a rare and beautiful thing.
It wasn't the rarest of the things to be found at Dave King's feet that night. I didn't walk in looking to talk to anyone at all, and I really never actually walk into anywhere looking to talk to people, so. And yet, unbeknownst to me, the once-thought-to-be-mythical Social Zoë was staked out in the wings somewhere behind stage right. Not just vaguely amusing Witty Banter Zoë, but serious genuine extroversion. The kind that has more than one person who isn't preoccupied with trying to not be awkward. The kind that puts me at ease with the humans of the world as much as I am with its inanimate things and places. The kind that made me feel At One With People. The kind I actually like.
I, the girl in the Well, testify truly and affirmatively to the following on the evening in question, not having provoked nor expected any of it. Two separate groups of total strangers got me stoned. (Which never happens, not in public, and not alone, and not with strangers.) A group of fratboys made me their expeditious leader on a mission through the undulating close-pressed crowd. "We're all with you, Combat Rock!" gargled one of the enthusiastically drunker Dudes. (Is it still acceptable to wear Clash t-shirts non-ironically outside of the Well? Good.) I danced for three hours straight on the evening in question. I booty-danced with a random beautiful girl with big tits and small tank-top. I flailed around wildly in the pit and thwacked several people but avoided every elbow. I loved the opening band. I had only one drink. I was adopted by a stoned trio of friends by the end of the night. I saw women with boyfriends whose bachelor friends tagged along shooing them over to talk to me specifically. (I decided that was the time for me to pee.) I was the object, and not just perpetrator, of some serious frottage. I came and left by myself. I twanged and thumped and rumbled and crooned and rocked with euphoria, just pure glee, for hours. I was playing a thrillingly foreign yet entirely natural role in a play written about somebody else.
It was the weirdest and best time I've had in months.