I need to pick a rock/metal concert to go see for my yearly personal outing. I don't go to many of these concerts, but I love them when I go. I love them because I'm so out of my depth it's hilarious. I am not the concert going type, but every time I go, I have a ton of fun and have a ton of stories to recount.
I don't go to clubs, I go to pubs. I don't go to house parties, I go to game and movie nights. I don't go to metal/rock concerts, I go to plays and Star Trek music collaborations with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Is this just my introverted nature or am I just a hapless fish out of water?
I've been using the word "hapless" a lot lately.
About a year ago I posted my adventure at the last metal concert I went to, complete with cotton candy hair, random water spraying and having to stop by a shady underground gay bar to ask for directions. I lost fifty dollars that night out of my pocket that night. I picture myself, this awkward young girl running around in the snow wearing black pants and a purple button-up shirt looking for a wad of money that I knew I wasn't going to find. Close to tears and devastated that I had lost money I spent a month walking dogs to earn I had to return to the concert and face the doorman, his raised eyebrows and scornful glares.
I spent the concert standing in one of the raised deck areas away from the crowd of people on the floor. The opening band amused me a great deal with their showmanship, but I was happy to be out of harm's way. I don't do well in crowds. By this I mean I have a tendency to get knocked around, scratched, pushed, stepped on, pushed then stepped on and yelled at. I need about fifty more pounds on me for this to be fun. I also avoided getting the random bursts of water from the lead's mouth. Mr. Bald Man standing beside me with his daughter found this hilarious...and no doubt stupid. Though that makes me wonder...who goes to a metal concert with their daughter? A daughter that's over 18 because it was adults only. Meh.
I have been focusing on identities and perceptions lately in a lot of my writings, and I often wonder what other people see in me that I can't. I'd like to think I know myself quite well, that I can hide my emotions and thoughts at will and have a certain demeanour and way of carrying myself. In the last while, I've learned how very wrong I am. I'd like to think myself experienced, that I've tried a lot and seen the world, but there's so many instances where that idea gets beaten down quicker than you can say "you live under a rock honey".
I remember my first clubbing experience. I wish I had a recording of myself that night. First time clubbing. First time legitimately drunk. First time dancing like a fool because I was drunk. Let me just tell you that I'm not what you call the clubbing, drinking and dancing type...at least everyone else had a good laugh at my expense.
The occasion was my good friend's 18th birthday. I wasn't too keen on going, but I was willing to take one for the team so to speak. She said to use a sort of code word to let the people inside know we were part of a group. My problem was I tried to tell the bouncer this code word. I am happy to admit that he was thoroughly confused as to why I kept saying "dreamboat" to him. Thankfully my friend saved me further embarrassment by ushering me inside.
I've yet to find a place I hated more. A building full of drunk, petty, loud, obnoxious people dancing, scrutinizing and dressed like cracked out barbie dolls. Okay I exaggerate, but there's my perception popping in. I followed a few of my friends to the back where there were pool tables and creepy older men that would just stare. Then they'd move to a closer table and stare. Then they'd get another drink and stare in the "unstarable" places. We decided to go to the bar and get some drinks.
I got drunk on a rum and coke, a beer (Heineken I think) and a tequila shot. It was the tequila that did me in. I now hate all three drinks. I'm more of a Rickard's and Keith's beer (Canadian if these aren't available), Caesar, Vodka, Gin and Tonic kind of person. I didn't know that at the time of course. All I remember is being extremely dizzy, flailing around on the dance floor and driving in a car with too many people in it. I think we had four people in the back and three in the front...still not as bad as the time we fit 13 people in a station wagon in high school, but that's another story (though I remember I was in the "trunk" and it was VERY UNCOMFORTABLE).
Tequila has haunted me ever since...as well as the dreamboat.
I got a little better at composing myself at clubs and bars. I still don't frequent them. I think the last time I was at a club was May 2009. After attending a hockey game with my cousin from Chicago, he wanted to see 17th Ave and the bars down there. I had never been to the bars on 17th, so I just improvised. We walked down there and found Bob the Fish on the corner of 17th and 3rd. I was already pretty drunk on two beers (I'm a lightweight okay? besides, it was SADDLEDOME beer...you know that shit's not what it seems). Got another beer at Bob the Fish and tried to keep my cousin away from my phone since he kept trying to take it to text a friend of my multiple times to get her to come out.
We got tired of that place soon since it was overcrowded, so we walked down the street a bit more. I think my cousin was worried about me after three beers. I'm a giddy drunk, and I never think I'm drunk when I actually am. We stopped in a couple places to take a look, completely passed over an extremely colourful place that looked like a disco, and finally stopped at a club I can't remember the name of.
My cousin asked if we were dressed well enough to go in. Both of us were wearing jeans and Flames jerseys. He skips over our clothes and looks at our shoes. I was wearing brown skater shoes. He was wearing black dress shoes. He looks at me, tells me my shoes are iffy, but that my cousin's were good enough for both of us.
Are shoes normally a deciding factor for club entrance?
Meh. Inside we head for the bar. We weren't the only ones wearing jerseys thankfully, but we were certainly under-dressed. Most of the people there were out in dresses and suits. At the bar my cousin insisted I get some water while he got his drink on. It was at the bar where we met Ultimate Frisbee Guy. No idea what his real name was...I don't remember. My cousin struck up a conversation with this guy talking about basketball and such. He introduced me, and from that point on he kept trying to get me to agree to come and watch him play Ultimate Frisbee at the Calgary Sport and Social Club.
Then he kept buying us drinks. I did about two of the shots before I started pouring them out behind his back into an empty glass. My cousin saw and started laughing, because he started doing the same shortly after. They were pretty nasty shots. My cousin then bought us a couple round of shots worth about 20 dollars for fun and to pay the guy back. He took them, but insisted on paying 40 dollars for them. My cousin just shrugged and took the money.
We are wonderful people.
He got constantly creepier as the night went on. My cousin said if he was bothering me that he'd take care of him, but that he didn't think he could take on him and his friends combined. We stayed there until about 2:15 in the morning when the bar started to close.
Yes, the bars close at 2 in Calgary. Yes, our night life sucks.
We left the bar and decided to get pitas. Apparently we weren't the only ones in the mood for pitas, because there were about 20 people lined up for them. We got our pitas while my cousin kept asking the guy in front of us what he thought about some basketball teams. Pitas in hand we went in search of a taxi. His idea of getting a taxi was standing in the middle of a road waving his arms. Apparently that's how you do it in Chicago. We finally got a taxi after I convinced him to get off the road, and knowing little about taxis, I got in the front seat. Thankfully the driver probably just passed it off as drunkenness.
I can imagine how I looked these nights, how naive I probably seemed to all the people around me, and yet that's part of what makes the experience fun for me. When I'm completely out of my element, and end up having adventures. Hundreds of people have crazier stories than I do, but this is what passes for excitement in my life.
Is this why people think I'm so innocent all the time?
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I have never once stepped near a club, a bar, a concert, or any sort of the nature. The closest I have *ever* been would have been when I was still going to school. Every single day in school was infinitely more awkward, dangerous, and pathetic than what you described here. Only when I finally started swinging my own punches did the repeated attempts on my life and dignity end. To this day I wish I had been less lenient, more aggressive. I should have killed dozens of people before stepping away, though it pleases me to know the kind of futures that awaited them instead. Pray I never encounter any of these individuals ever again.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in public gatherings or socializing, much less getting drunk publicly, or dancing. Such frivolities are vain and meaningless, and only offer opportunity to, at the least in your description, get knocked around. At worst, you end up in a ditch somewhere. But, in general, the very process of being willingly lost in a sea of conformity is essentially suicide of the mind.
You may think of yourself as naive, or had done so in the past, but at the very least it takes great courage to willingly put yourself in such environments not be ruined by them like everyone else has been. Most people might think of me as foolish or naive, yet turn around and worship sky fairies, believe in pop culture, and throw away themselves to nonsense.
The value of experience lays in how much you are willing to transform, for indeed, man is shaped by his experiences. I am who I am for I have seen what I have seen, felt what I have felt, and traveled many roads, none pleasant. Thus, I am not a pleasant man, and surely not a man desirable for company. But, perhaps, change is necessary for one to move beyond their prison veiled as a sanctuary, and find their way home. Safeguard innocence, no matter what you do. For, once that veil is shattered, there is no returning, and you may never find your way home.
Whatever you do, be safe.