ihavebeenfloated

I turn my head to cough, my breath comes out thick and angry, tearing at the back of my throat. I spit at the ground and scan the horizon, the crowd, looking for eyes searching for my own. An older woman catches me, red hair, tight leopard print pants, thickly applied makeup, and a bellybutton capable of holding a few cigarettes in case of emergency. I keep going, but there’s nothing. So many couples, every time I spot a broad who might be alone she has some gorilla appear by her side next time I see her. Joe Jackson was right. I light up a cigarette and sit down, still searching as if for prey, and the old redhead now is turned toward me and keeps looking at me as if she is seizing me up for nutritious value. I’m not sure how to take this, so I just stare at the ground and avoid the glances of the girl who is next to me who can’t possibly be interested in a hideous chud like myself.

There’s a short girl next to me during one of the bands, I keep the people away from her and manage to make sure no one crams their way in front of her, but I know she still can’t see shit. I’m tempted to ask her if she wants to climb up on my shoulders, but I never do. She seemed like she was a fan but didn’t know how to react to a show that no one in their right mind would actually expect. I could have supported her weight, and I feel bad, even know, that I did not offer her the opportunity, even if it was unlikely that she would have taken it.

A skinny, blonde girl who stood behind me appeared in front of me about two songs in. I only knew she was behind me because I turned my head before the band came on and almost smacked her in the face with my own. She worked her way beside me when a few other girls surged their way up against me so that they could dance around among the stationary bodies witnessing the weirdness unfold on stage. There seemed to be groups, people who didn’t know how to react, people who didn’t know how to react and loved it, and people who knew what was coming and loved it. The girl next to me worked her way in front of me and spent the rest of the show seizing like an epileptic dachshund. Her body was approximately sixteen years old but her face was older so I did not really understand her ability to commit entirely to the music like that, especially a pure rock show. I’ve been there before, just lost it entirely, I was a sweaty mess by the end of it all, but for this girl to just be violently thrashing her upper body back and forth was something no one was really equipped to understand. A girl across from me would just watch her for minutes at a time and smirk in a condescending sort of way and I wanted to wipe it off of her face just to teach her some respect. Eventually she fell backward into me and I had to catch her and she laughed and smiled and that was the only moment we shared. How you can spend an entire show so close to someone, in such an intimate and vulnerable mindset, and never really bond with them is beyond me. Concerts should be quieter just to facilitate potential for forming relationships between two people so utterly in love with music that they are willing to devolve into spastic, primal movements in response.