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{red} kate massey I. He’s wearing Ray-Bans, even though it’s dark outside. They’re new, and red, and he’s proud of them. He likes the way his bangs rest lightly on the top of their frame, bouncing slightly every time the crowd jostles him. He likes that they hide his eyes. If there were something to hide, that would be very useful. He could totally be high right now. No one would know. They aren’t noticing him, though. Most of them are high themselves, so they probably wouldn’t even care, but anyway they’re preoccupied with their jostling. This is what they came for. Now they’re bouncing, sort of crashing into one another when there’s enough room. Crashing takes momentum, which takes space. Mostly the bodies are just smushed together, like the fish in the bottom of the net. The ones on the top few layers can flap around to where nobody’s smushing them, but the ones at the bottom are just stuck, shoving against the stage. Occasionally when things space out, in between songs, they throw their arms around each other’s shoulders and they’re like the Rockettes, but without the kicking. Just bouncing and jostling. Always the jostling. Our friend with the Ray-Bans looks like he’s participating, but he’s not really. Sociologists call what they’re experiencing “collective joy,” but there’s prerequisites for getting in on it. Our friend doesn’t have them. He isn’t getting it. Maybe he should be high. He’s focusing on the fact that his Ponys keep getting stepped on. He sort of has to go to the bathroom, but he can’t extract himself from the crowd, because he doesn’t want to be the asshole who shoves his way back in. He shouldn’t have worn a jacket, but he can’t go check it at the back for the same reason. He’s got feathers in his shirt from a few minutes ago when they used a giant hose to blow thousands of feathers into the audience and they got everywhere, in his mouth and his nose and apparently his clothes, because now his chest itches. He wants to be home, finishing Dune, but last time he did that his friends had to walk home, and one time this guy got mugged one block over, so he should probably just stay till the end. II. She’s pretty sure she’s never felt this good before, or at least not this kind of good, but that makes sense, of course. She doesn’t know what it’s supposed to feel like, because she forgot to look it up on wikipedia before she left and then it didn’t seem so important to know what it was supposed to feel like, because she was quickly finding out what it did feel like, and then she was here, and it’s pretty damn great. Usually she would have a better adjective, and tomorrow she will, tomorrow when they ask her and she tells them and maybe adds some stuff, some swirls of color and light and inversion of earth and sky or something. Right now all she has is great, or maybe exultant. That sounds good. But it doesn’t matter that much, because when something is, like it is right now, to her, there are no adjectives, there’s just is. She’s dancing and jumping and bouncing and screaming and everyone around her is doing the same, and she doesn’t know any of them them but she loves them, she loves all of them, and her bright red scarf has fallen off and gotten lost underfoot but she hasn’t noticed yet. She’s looking up at the lead singer in his unitard and it’s weird but that’s okay because she knows the words to this one. The crowd is pulsing and swaying slightly and it looks like a jacuzzi from above, but with people instead of water, but she doesn’t know that, because she’s part of it and she can’t lift her arms because there’s people on all sides and her nose doesn’t itch that much anyway. Yeah. Exultant. III. It’s a sort of peculiar thing, this jamming together of people. It’s two parts violent, one part intimate. The rubbing together of bodies that didn’t know each other before but they pretty much do now. A good bit of it could probably be avoided, but that’s not really the point. When the opening band finished and packed up their synth and they brought the real instruments on stage, he was stage right and she stage left. Each was separated from the front row by only a few not-yet-sweaty bodies, but from each other by at least a dozen. The headliners have taken the stage and set the revelers in motion, and it’s impossible to stay put. She, of course, doesn’t want to, and he’s indifferent anyway, but forces larger than either sweep both toward the middle. She jumps and dances with abandon, and in the closeness of the crowd she keeps bumping into him. Eventually she stops trying not to. She’s noticed the sunglasses and she takes his hand. He can’t help but want to dance with her, so he does, and soon he’s jumping and jostling and screaming as loud as the guy with the purple corduroy pants. He’s put his arm around her, sort of accidentally, sort of not. The band is nearing the end of their set, but they aren’t done yet, and she closes her eyes and can’t feel or see or smell anything, because the music courses through her skull and takes over. She’s got her head on his chest, and he’s pulling her closer, and she’s not resisting. She opens her eyes and looks up at him, and his hair is dancing on top of his Ray-Bans, and she wants to kiss him, and she does, for a long while. She closes her eyes and returns her head to its spot on his chest, and the music stops, and he takes her hand and leads her to the bar, where they sit and do not speak. He fills a cup with water from the cooler at the end of the bar, and she empties it, and he brings her another. He has grasped her hand in his and it’s warm and soft and slightly sticky. Her pocket vibrates and reminds her of something. She squeezes his hand and holds his gaze as she slides off the bar stool, and he stays put. She kisses him on the cheek and enters the throng of bodies moving slowly toward the door and he watches her go. |
