a little help with genre
I am a poet. I do not have the particular endurance to write much prose, especially not stories or novels. However, I volunteered myself to take a Creative Nonfiction course this semester in hopes to expand my horizons. This is one of the pieces I put in my final portfolio for the class.
No Day But Today
As we travel to New York, we do everything humanly possible to not discuss the upcoming show. I sit in the front seat and try not to speak for fear of letting my nerves out of their carefully constructed cage in my stomach. Matt drives and fiddles with his iPod, which is connected to his stereo, switching songs depending on my various facial reactions. Ron sits in the back, watching movies on his laptop that he brought. He’s playing Casablanca, listening through large headphones that cover his ears, and speaks the dialogue at random intervals. Matt talks to Ron about music; his answers come spaced out in between lulls in the movie. They mostly discuss indie rock, about which they are both elitist. I stare out the window and insert an answer here or there to this conversation between two people who know each other far too well. Every few seconds I have to convince myself that I am finally going to see Rent on Broadway, after a four-year obsession.
When I was in eight grade, I auditioned to be part of my newly constructed middle school’s first spring musical. Like seemingly every other school in the United States, we were performing Annie, the exasperating tale of an orphaned redhead with an overly optimistic outlook on life. I had never had any interest in being in theater or performing in front of hundreds of people; the thought actually made me quite sick to my stomach. I didn’t even like Annie. I wanted to strangle little girls who wandered the hallways singing, “The sun will come out tomorrow...” when it was raining outside. However, my mother had a different idea. Auditioning would make me more social, not to mention that it would let out some of the dramatic energy I had pent up.
The audition went disastrously. I could sing and project my voice; the songs were simple and easy to learn. Yet, when it came time for the dance audition, I not only fell, but I dragged down three other girls with me. And when I had to read dialogue with others, I froze up and couldn’t even speak. Needless to say, I didn’t receive a part. I cried the whole afternoon and swore off auditions.
Yet, a fascination in musicals began as I watched my choir friends perform in the musical later that year. The manner in which they performed this story through song amazed me; in musicals, the songs told the story, not the dialogue. Even though I didn’t have what it takes to perform in musicals, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t enjoy them.
My mother bought the film version of Cats for my 16th birthday. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous musical was the longest running show on Broadway, running for almost 20 years with unlimited success. Another of his musicals, The Phantom of the Opera, broke the record a few years later. Cats told the story of the Jellicle Cats and the one that would be reincarnated to a different life; the lyrics were taken directly from poems in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The show wasn’t famous for a brilliant plot though; most critics, most recently my college professor who taught Lyric-Writing for Musicals, condemn the show's loose plot and lack of transitions. Yet, audiences didn’t care. Everyone was amazed with the gorgeous costumes that made men and women look like large cats. There were elaborate face paintings and whiskers attached to their faces; each cat looked different, with colors and features remaining the same in Broadway and London performances, even when the actors changed.
I was immediately struck by the simple music and the motifs that returned when characters entered or exited. Lloyd Webber had an unchallenged grasp of music; the songs were uncomplicated but pleasant because of that. Of course, the costumes were beautiful, and the dance sequences were amazing, with trapezes and upwards to 30 cats dancing in circles. I fell in love and decided that I had to see it on Broadway, where shows should be seen. A video could never hope to capture the deafening effect of thunderous applause and the audience’s guttural anticipation of live performance. However, the show had already closed its run on Broadway, with over 7,000 performances in its 18-year run. I was depressed for months with the thought that I hadn’t discovered it soon enough.
When my best friend Matt brought up the idea to travel to New York City and see Rent on Broadway, I thought it was a joke. I laughed and told him he shouldn’t tease me. When I realized he was serious, I jumped at the opportunity. How many times does one get a chance like this? I only had the chance once before, as a choir trip in my senior year of high school. We saw two interesting shows, but we didn’t get to choose them. The whole point of seeing shows live is to feel the anticipation in your stomach of something you’ve wanted to see for years; you want to see shows that mean something to you. We were originally going to New York to see Rent: the rock opera musical that took Broadway by surprise.
Our trip was planned for April 2003, not quite two years after September 11th. Parents fought against the trip for our safety, which is understandable in hindsight but outrageous to a teenager with her heart set on New York City lights. When my choir teacher sent home a permission slip with a description of the show, parents rallied together against the questionable material. Words like “sexuality,” “drugs,” and “AIDS” scared them. My teacher didn’t want parents to cause any more trouble, so he changed the trip’s itinerary. Rent became a forbidden beauty.
Rent premiered on Broadway on April 29, 1996. The musical is based on creator Jonathan Larson’s life and Puccini’s opera La bohème. It features eight characters who live in New York’s East Village: Roger, Mark, Mimi, Maureen, Joanne, Angel, Collins, and Benny. Each character has distinguishing characteristics that make them easy to identify with, thus making the show interesting to teenagers who could see themselves in the characters. Everyone loves Roger, the struggling songwriter who is also is a former heroin addict. And everyone pulls for him and Mimi, a 19-year-old stripper, to get together. However, Mark is my favorite.
Though the spotlight is shared by the eight characters, Mark has the most face time and sings many of the songs as a kind of narrator. Within a few minutes of the first song, I am hooked. Mark embodies a characteristic that I see in myself: a desire to capture real life and present it profoundly to others. He struggles to create a documentary about the homeless and AIDS; he has been unsuccessful so far, wondering in the first song, “How do you document real life when real life’s getting more like fiction each day?” Mark also evokes the most emotion from me (besides perhaps Angel, who dies of AIDS in the second act). Mark is recently dumped by Maureen, so she can date Joanne. Throughout the show, Mark has his friends but no one to comfort him in the way Mimi and Roger comfort each other. After Angel’s funeral, Mark even muses about this in a short but moving moment: “Why am I the witness? And when I capture it on film, does it mean that it’s the end and I'm alone?” Even at the end of the show, when things end as happily as possible - Jonathan Larson wanted the end to be uplifting, not depressing - Mark is still romantically alone, though he has his finished documentary to keep him company.
Unfortunately, Jonathan Larson, who wrote the lyrics, music, and book, died before he could see the success of Rent. The night before Rent’s Off-Broadway premiere and almost 3 months before its opening night on Broadway, Jonathan passed away in his home from an aortic dissection, believed to be caused by Marfan syndrome. Marfan syndrome is a genetic disorder that is usually characterized by long limbs. Jonathan showed no physical symptoms, and that is why, when he had chest pain and nausea a few days before, the doctors diagnosed it as the flu. An aortic dissection is a tear in the wall of the aorta, the largest artery of the body. Aortic dissections have nearly a 100% mortality rate, even if intervention is timely; the rush of blood and corresponding loss is simply too much for the body. Jonathan was only 35 years old. He left the world with a simple, bare production called Tick, Tick...Boom! and Rent in its early stages; had he lived, it is a guarantee that he would have created more shows that could have brought Broadway to a new level.
We finally arrive in New York City, after a timely four-hour drive that took forever, thanks to an ongoing argument between Matt and Ron about which underground band is more indie than the other. Ron tries to get free internet on his laptop as we drive past internet cafes, while Matt searches for a cheap parking garage. I am sick to my stomach in anticipation. And it’s only ten in the morning. Ron and I finally convince Matt to pull into a garage. He grumbles about paying $20 to park, even though Ron is consistently telling him that it’s a good deal.
We step into New York City, and I am overwhelmed with buildings. As my last trip to New York was with a bunch of high school students, we were simply excited to be somewhere without our parents; I didn’t pay attention to one single building, except Ground Zero where the Twin Towers once stood. I locked arms with my friends, laughed too loud at jokes that weren’t funny, and checked out the boys at every stoplight. I can’t even remember the shows clearly or the theaters in which we saw them. My high school mind was not equipped for Broadway; I didn’t care about those shows that meant nothing to me.
Matt and Ron start walking down Broadway in Times Square, and I follow. The Nederlander Theatre was built in 1921, and it underwent many changes in owner before becoming the home of Rent in 1996; it’s now the only theatre below 42nd Street to currently host a show. The theater actually looks like it’s down a large alley, in contrast to the glitz of Times Square. We approach the theater from left, and I see R-E-N-T in neon letters. It’s just like an old-school theater with big, red letters that are placed one on top of the other. There are fire escape ladders leading from one balcony to the next. Across the street, the scene looks like the buildings I imagined from Rent; metal rails make up two-feet by one-foot square balconies with cement floors. The brick is old and faded red. At the front of the theater, there is already a crowd formed. Teenage girls are giggling, and teenage boys pretend they don’t want to be there. A group of girls is wearing Rent shirts: black with white block letters, R-E-N-T.
Rent is one of only seven musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in the award's 88-year history. The show also won four Tony Awards: best musical, best book for a musical, best original score, and best featured actor (Angel played by Wilson Jermaine Heredia). Rent was one of the first Broadway musicals to clearly feature gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender characters. It is also noted for its ethnically diverse cast, which includes many racial minorities in ensemble and leading roles, like African-American Joanne and Hispanic Mimi and Angel. The show also has a central focus of AIDS and how the gripping disease affects individuals. Rent is also considered revolutionary for bringing controversial topics and counterculture to a traditionally conservative medium, and is credited with increasing the popularity of musical theater among the younger generation.
Our plan is to get the discounted $20 rush tickets that are reserved hours before the performances. These tickets will put us in the first two rows of the theater. Since Rent started the trend of rush tickets, many other Broadway shows have followed the example and now also offer cheaper tickets in efforts to make Broadway theater accessible to more people who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Parents stand off to the side, looking contemplative about the chances of winning the front row seats. Matt, Ron, and I go up to the ticket office. We fill out pieces of pink paper with our names and how many tickets we want. Each of us writes that we want the maximum, two. After we put in our names, there wasn’t anything else pressing for us to do -the lottery wouldn’t begin until an hour before the show. We stand in front of the theater, Matt and Ron discussing a place to eat, and I am still sick to my stomach with excitement. Of all the places in New York City, we decide to go to Sbarro and get a slice of pizza for lunch.
“I could get this in the mall back home,” I whine.
“Yeah, but could you see Broadway out of the window?” Matt replies with a cocky grin.
As we walk towards the theater after lunch, the lottery is beginning. We stand there anxiously, sure that because we are poor college students that we will get the tickets. Ron is the second name called, and we all scream. We have two tickets. However, the next 18 names go by without recognition. So we only have two tickets. Without much fuss, practical Matt buys another regular priced ticket for the orchestra seats. They decide that, because they had both seen the show on Broadway already, I should have one of the front row seats, and Matt would sit with me since he was my closer friend. And then we stand in line, my stomach still in my throat with nerves.
It takes forever for 2 o’clock to come. My stomach is churning, angry that I fed it greasy pizza. Matt takes some pictures of the theater and of us to waste time and get my mind off the excitement. They finally start letting people in a little before curtain time. With a step into the building, I am even more amazed than I was with the outside. Since I can’t recall my first trip to New York - and the only theater I can actually remember is my high school’s auditorium - I am amazed with the carpet, the walls, the stairs, the posters, everything. It is warm, with dark wood and gold embellishments.
Matt and I travel down the red-carpeted aisles, looking at the aged walls colored like sandpaper. The theater isn’t a traditional beauty. The Nederlander looks its age and isn’t obnoxiously over decorated. We stare at our tickets and walk closer and closer towards the amazing stage. There are metal trellises on the right side with junk piled on the makeshift roof. Racks of clothes stand underneath the terraces, along with other various props, like Angel’s drums and Roger’s guitar. Two metal tables sit in the center of the stage, with red and white metal chairs around them. There is a funny white lantern hanging from the ceiling that may be a moon. Stairs hug the back of the stage and lead to a thin platform 20 feet up. Stage left is where the band is. The audience can see the drums, keyboard, and seats for the other players. The band performs right on stage with the performers, which is a rarity in Broadway but entirely necessary for this show, according to Matt. The show aims for an organic feeling; everything is manifested right on stage for the audience to see. Above the band is another large platform with spotlights on the railings.
Our seats are in the very first row, almost in the exact center. Our views are not obstructed by anything, nor are they too close for comfort. I smack Matt’s hand as we sit down, trying to keep the nerves inside. There is a group of young girls on Matt’s side. They giggle and squirm in their seats, and they obnoxiously chew their gum with their mouths open. One blonde yells, “When is this thing going to start?” There are two brothers to my right. One is maybe 14 and quiet; his curly brown hair sits on his shoulders and his hands are shaking. The other, older one sits up straight and talks in a barely audible voice into his ear.
The band starts to warm up. The girls next to Matt quiet down and fix their gazes on the stage. The guitarist strums a few chords that send chills up my spine. The boys on my side sit up straighter in their seats, the younger one tapping his foot with anticipation. I mimic his excitement by clenching and unclenching my fists in my lap. The house lights lull to darkness and a lone spotlight appears on the tables, center stage...
No Day But Today
As we travel to New York, we do everything humanly possible to not discuss the upcoming show. I sit in the front seat and try not to speak for fear of letting my nerves out of their carefully constructed cage in my stomach. Matt drives and fiddles with his iPod, which is connected to his stereo, switching songs depending on my various facial reactions. Ron sits in the back, watching movies on his laptop that he brought. He’s playing Casablanca, listening through large headphones that cover his ears, and speaks the dialogue at random intervals. Matt talks to Ron about music; his answers come spaced out in between lulls in the movie. They mostly discuss indie rock, about which they are both elitist. I stare out the window and insert an answer here or there to this conversation between two people who know each other far too well. Every few seconds I have to convince myself that I am finally going to see Rent on Broadway, after a four-year obsession.
When I was in eight grade, I auditioned to be part of my newly constructed middle school’s first spring musical. Like seemingly every other school in the United States, we were performing Annie, the exasperating tale of an orphaned redhead with an overly optimistic outlook on life. I had never had any interest in being in theater or performing in front of hundreds of people; the thought actually made me quite sick to my stomach. I didn’t even like Annie. I wanted to strangle little girls who wandered the hallways singing, “The sun will come out tomorrow...” when it was raining outside. However, my mother had a different idea. Auditioning would make me more social, not to mention that it would let out some of the dramatic energy I had pent up.
The audition went disastrously. I could sing and project my voice; the songs were simple and easy to learn. Yet, when it came time for the dance audition, I not only fell, but I dragged down three other girls with me. And when I had to read dialogue with others, I froze up and couldn’t even speak. Needless to say, I didn’t receive a part. I cried the whole afternoon and swore off auditions.
Yet, a fascination in musicals began as I watched my choir friends perform in the musical later that year. The manner in which they performed this story through song amazed me; in musicals, the songs told the story, not the dialogue. Even though I didn’t have what it takes to perform in musicals, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t enjoy them.
My mother bought the film version of Cats for my 16th birthday. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous musical was the longest running show on Broadway, running for almost 20 years with unlimited success. Another of his musicals, The Phantom of the Opera, broke the record a few years later. Cats told the story of the Jellicle Cats and the one that would be reincarnated to a different life; the lyrics were taken directly from poems in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The show wasn’t famous for a brilliant plot though; most critics, most recently my college professor who taught Lyric-Writing for Musicals, condemn the show's loose plot and lack of transitions. Yet, audiences didn’t care. Everyone was amazed with the gorgeous costumes that made men and women look like large cats. There were elaborate face paintings and whiskers attached to their faces; each cat looked different, with colors and features remaining the same in Broadway and London performances, even when the actors changed.
I was immediately struck by the simple music and the motifs that returned when characters entered or exited. Lloyd Webber had an unchallenged grasp of music; the songs were uncomplicated but pleasant because of that. Of course, the costumes were beautiful, and the dance sequences were amazing, with trapezes and upwards to 30 cats dancing in circles. I fell in love and decided that I had to see it on Broadway, where shows should be seen. A video could never hope to capture the deafening effect of thunderous applause and the audience’s guttural anticipation of live performance. However, the show had already closed its run on Broadway, with over 7,000 performances in its 18-year run. I was depressed for months with the thought that I hadn’t discovered it soon enough.
When my best friend Matt brought up the idea to travel to New York City and see Rent on Broadway, I thought it was a joke. I laughed and told him he shouldn’t tease me. When I realized he was serious, I jumped at the opportunity. How many times does one get a chance like this? I only had the chance once before, as a choir trip in my senior year of high school. We saw two interesting shows, but we didn’t get to choose them. The whole point of seeing shows live is to feel the anticipation in your stomach of something you’ve wanted to see for years; you want to see shows that mean something to you. We were originally going to New York to see Rent: the rock opera musical that took Broadway by surprise.
Our trip was planned for April 2003, not quite two years after September 11th. Parents fought against the trip for our safety, which is understandable in hindsight but outrageous to a teenager with her heart set on New York City lights. When my choir teacher sent home a permission slip with a description of the show, parents rallied together against the questionable material. Words like “sexuality,” “drugs,” and “AIDS” scared them. My teacher didn’t want parents to cause any more trouble, so he changed the trip’s itinerary. Rent became a forbidden beauty.
Rent premiered on Broadway on April 29, 1996. The musical is based on creator Jonathan Larson’s life and Puccini’s opera La bohème. It features eight characters who live in New York’s East Village: Roger, Mark, Mimi, Maureen, Joanne, Angel, Collins, and Benny. Each character has distinguishing characteristics that make them easy to identify with, thus making the show interesting to teenagers who could see themselves in the characters. Everyone loves Roger, the struggling songwriter who is also is a former heroin addict. And everyone pulls for him and Mimi, a 19-year-old stripper, to get together. However, Mark is my favorite.
Though the spotlight is shared by the eight characters, Mark has the most face time and sings many of the songs as a kind of narrator. Within a few minutes of the first song, I am hooked. Mark embodies a characteristic that I see in myself: a desire to capture real life and present it profoundly to others. He struggles to create a documentary about the homeless and AIDS; he has been unsuccessful so far, wondering in the first song, “How do you document real life when real life’s getting more like fiction each day?” Mark also evokes the most emotion from me (besides perhaps Angel, who dies of AIDS in the second act). Mark is recently dumped by Maureen, so she can date Joanne. Throughout the show, Mark has his friends but no one to comfort him in the way Mimi and Roger comfort each other. After Angel’s funeral, Mark even muses about this in a short but moving moment: “Why am I the witness? And when I capture it on film, does it mean that it’s the end and I'm alone?” Even at the end of the show, when things end as happily as possible - Jonathan Larson wanted the end to be uplifting, not depressing - Mark is still romantically alone, though he has his finished documentary to keep him company.
Unfortunately, Jonathan Larson, who wrote the lyrics, music, and book, died before he could see the success of Rent. The night before Rent’s Off-Broadway premiere and almost 3 months before its opening night on Broadway, Jonathan passed away in his home from an aortic dissection, believed to be caused by Marfan syndrome. Marfan syndrome is a genetic disorder that is usually characterized by long limbs. Jonathan showed no physical symptoms, and that is why, when he had chest pain and nausea a few days before, the doctors diagnosed it as the flu. An aortic dissection is a tear in the wall of the aorta, the largest artery of the body. Aortic dissections have nearly a 100% mortality rate, even if intervention is timely; the rush of blood and corresponding loss is simply too much for the body. Jonathan was only 35 years old. He left the world with a simple, bare production called Tick, Tick...Boom! and Rent in its early stages; had he lived, it is a guarantee that he would have created more shows that could have brought Broadway to a new level.
We finally arrive in New York City, after a timely four-hour drive that took forever, thanks to an ongoing argument between Matt and Ron about which underground band is more indie than the other. Ron tries to get free internet on his laptop as we drive past internet cafes, while Matt searches for a cheap parking garage. I am sick to my stomach in anticipation. And it’s only ten in the morning. Ron and I finally convince Matt to pull into a garage. He grumbles about paying $20 to park, even though Ron is consistently telling him that it’s a good deal.
We step into New York City, and I am overwhelmed with buildings. As my last trip to New York was with a bunch of high school students, we were simply excited to be somewhere without our parents; I didn’t pay attention to one single building, except Ground Zero where the Twin Towers once stood. I locked arms with my friends, laughed too loud at jokes that weren’t funny, and checked out the boys at every stoplight. I can’t even remember the shows clearly or the theaters in which we saw them. My high school mind was not equipped for Broadway; I didn’t care about those shows that meant nothing to me.
Matt and Ron start walking down Broadway in Times Square, and I follow. The Nederlander Theatre was built in 1921, and it underwent many changes in owner before becoming the home of Rent in 1996; it’s now the only theatre below 42nd Street to currently host a show. The theater actually looks like it’s down a large alley, in contrast to the glitz of Times Square. We approach the theater from left, and I see R-E-N-T in neon letters. It’s just like an old-school theater with big, red letters that are placed one on top of the other. There are fire escape ladders leading from one balcony to the next. Across the street, the scene looks like the buildings I imagined from Rent; metal rails make up two-feet by one-foot square balconies with cement floors. The brick is old and faded red. At the front of the theater, there is already a crowd formed. Teenage girls are giggling, and teenage boys pretend they don’t want to be there. A group of girls is wearing Rent shirts: black with white block letters, R-E-N-T.
Rent is one of only seven musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in the award's 88-year history. The show also won four Tony Awards: best musical, best book for a musical, best original score, and best featured actor (Angel played by Wilson Jermaine Heredia). Rent was one of the first Broadway musicals to clearly feature gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender characters. It is also noted for its ethnically diverse cast, which includes many racial minorities in ensemble and leading roles, like African-American Joanne and Hispanic Mimi and Angel. The show also has a central focus of AIDS and how the gripping disease affects individuals. Rent is also considered revolutionary for bringing controversial topics and counterculture to a traditionally conservative medium, and is credited with increasing the popularity of musical theater among the younger generation.
Our plan is to get the discounted $20 rush tickets that are reserved hours before the performances. These tickets will put us in the first two rows of the theater. Since Rent started the trend of rush tickets, many other Broadway shows have followed the example and now also offer cheaper tickets in efforts to make Broadway theater accessible to more people who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Parents stand off to the side, looking contemplative about the chances of winning the front row seats. Matt, Ron, and I go up to the ticket office. We fill out pieces of pink paper with our names and how many tickets we want. Each of us writes that we want the maximum, two. After we put in our names, there wasn’t anything else pressing for us to do -the lottery wouldn’t begin until an hour before the show. We stand in front of the theater, Matt and Ron discussing a place to eat, and I am still sick to my stomach with excitement. Of all the places in New York City, we decide to go to Sbarro and get a slice of pizza for lunch.
“I could get this in the mall back home,” I whine.
“Yeah, but could you see Broadway out of the window?” Matt replies with a cocky grin.
As we walk towards the theater after lunch, the lottery is beginning. We stand there anxiously, sure that because we are poor college students that we will get the tickets. Ron is the second name called, and we all scream. We have two tickets. However, the next 18 names go by without recognition. So we only have two tickets. Without much fuss, practical Matt buys another regular priced ticket for the orchestra seats. They decide that, because they had both seen the show on Broadway already, I should have one of the front row seats, and Matt would sit with me since he was my closer friend. And then we stand in line, my stomach still in my throat with nerves.
It takes forever for 2 o’clock to come. My stomach is churning, angry that I fed it greasy pizza. Matt takes some pictures of the theater and of us to waste time and get my mind off the excitement. They finally start letting people in a little before curtain time. With a step into the building, I am even more amazed than I was with the outside. Since I can’t recall my first trip to New York - and the only theater I can actually remember is my high school’s auditorium - I am amazed with the carpet, the walls, the stairs, the posters, everything. It is warm, with dark wood and gold embellishments.
Matt and I travel down the red-carpeted aisles, looking at the aged walls colored like sandpaper. The theater isn’t a traditional beauty. The Nederlander looks its age and isn’t obnoxiously over decorated. We stare at our tickets and walk closer and closer towards the amazing stage. There are metal trellises on the right side with junk piled on the makeshift roof. Racks of clothes stand underneath the terraces, along with other various props, like Angel’s drums and Roger’s guitar. Two metal tables sit in the center of the stage, with red and white metal chairs around them. There is a funny white lantern hanging from the ceiling that may be a moon. Stairs hug the back of the stage and lead to a thin platform 20 feet up. Stage left is where the band is. The audience can see the drums, keyboard, and seats for the other players. The band performs right on stage with the performers, which is a rarity in Broadway but entirely necessary for this show, according to Matt. The show aims for an organic feeling; everything is manifested right on stage for the audience to see. Above the band is another large platform with spotlights on the railings.
Our seats are in the very first row, almost in the exact center. Our views are not obstructed by anything, nor are they too close for comfort. I smack Matt’s hand as we sit down, trying to keep the nerves inside. There is a group of young girls on Matt’s side. They giggle and squirm in their seats, and they obnoxiously chew their gum with their mouths open. One blonde yells, “When is this thing going to start?” There are two brothers to my right. One is maybe 14 and quiet; his curly brown hair sits on his shoulders and his hands are shaking. The other, older one sits up straight and talks in a barely audible voice into his ear.
The band starts to warm up. The girls next to Matt quiet down and fix their gazes on the stage. The guitarist strums a few chords that send chills up my spine. The boys on my side sit up straighter in their seats, the younger one tapping his foot with anticipation. I mimic his excitement by clenching and unclenching my fists in my lap. The house lights lull to darkness and a lone spotlight appears on the tables, center stage...