No Re-Entry
March 24, 2017
My heart beat with the thrumming of the bass, vibrating up through the floor and into my feet. I could feel it in my teeth.
Behind me, only the unstable metal of the barricade kept me safe from thrashing bodies; clearly oblivious to the boy who had just been unfortunate enough to fall and fade beneath their feet.
They didn’t seem to be aware of their painfully human state, moving with the quick and feverish urgency of fish out of water. It was as if their bones were covered in steel, pristine and glistening with the sweat of strangers, immune to the force it was surely enduring.
Only I knew better. Tomorrow they’d wake up in a semi-conscious daze greeted by an angry purple blush that tinted their skin; cigarette smoke still meticulously weaving its way through each strand of hair, staining their pillow with its memory. I could almost hear the ringing in their ears, a final and definite reminder of the night before, the night playing out in front of me now.
I wonder what that boy would feel tomorrow.
April 1, 2016
This isn’t like anything before, a whole new sensation alien everything I had known. The floor beneath my feet had a heartbeat. Did anyone else notice, or was I alone?
No, I wasn’t. We were all feeling the same thing, the same night, the same energy that resonated out of the concrete walls and off of the faces lit under cheap stage lights. They weren’t gods or prophets, it wasn’t their acne-scarred cheeks pinned up into a tight smile on the other side of your TV screen. “Those are your friends. Those are your neighbors, your brothers, sisters, up on stage.” A band I once interviewed backstage before a show told me that, spoken into the makeshift mic of my phone. I wish I could tell you I’d understood, but I didn’t. Not until this moment, right now, right here.
They weren’t something you’d see posed prisinely in glossy print, carbon copies. They were right in front of me, so close I could see the sweat that dripped into their eyes, and in their eyes I could see the reflection of every body that spanned out in front, every face that felt exactly what I was feeling in that second.
The room had a heartbeat, it felt the music and pulsed with the same blood and adrenaline that rushed through ourselves. It was us – them – we were all together in this little concrete room, alive with the imminence of teenage adolescence.
February 18, 2017
Always a concert to go to, trying to figure out a way to get there or a place to sleep afterwards in the hopes that the night would never end. It’s what I used to live. What I dream of now.
I remember what it was like before, when we were all together and it felt like nothing could take away our flood of unconditional love. We walked together, hand in hand, like we couldn’t breathe if we couldn’t feel each other close by. You might think I sound dramatic, but that’s what it felt like.
Have you ever loved someone so much that it physically hurt? Like every signal your brain sent into the atmosphere was automatically picked up by this other half I had somehow found in the expanse of our planet. I had that, with an entire group of beautiful girls who danced and laughed like we were endless and nothing was ever wrong.
Something was always wrong, but never when we were together.
I remember all of those nights, our bodies strewn on top of one another like an intricate puzzle; my head on her lap, her feet crossed with her feet, her hand in her hand, my hands stroking her hair. It all just fell into place like that. The red lights above us cast harsh shadows, hinting at the bruises we would find tomorrow.
We danced all night, nearly every weekend, always together. Everyone knew us and referred to us as one of the same. When we were out – we weren’t ourselves, we were us.
