Punk shows are like that. The guys that you know just well enough to fear are all in the crowd. They’re the hookups, the ones with the weed and the acid. They rage just a few feet away, circle jerking, moshing, shoving strangers, elbowing dudes in the face. You are in awe of them. You couldn’t get in there and do that. Here’s where your women’s lib stuff breaks down. Here’s where you feel the raw strength of men, and you feel, even though you are wearing baggy jeans, a loose Tshirt and not one fucking speck of makeup, here’s where you feel that, yes, they are more powerful than you. Yes, you’re a pussy, and there’s no getting around it.
SoCo sets you free. You swig it from the pint hanging heavy in your jean pocket. You like feeling the liquid leap around inside that bottle as you bounce to the beat. Then all of it is inside you and the bottle is tossed to the edge of the crowd and you don’t know where your friends went and you don’t care.
When the Asshole that stole that joint from you that one time comes high-elbowing through the crowd in your direction, you throw your arms up to shield your face and lean away from him. His arm flaps up and out close enough to your cheek that the breeze cools you and you drop your hands quick enough to push hard on his back, your palms planted for one second on his shoulder blades, and you push him forward like a kid you might push on a swing, adding to his momentum through the crowd while his elbows miss one guy then ear jab another. On it goes.
The crowd pushes against your back so that the edge of the stage is cutting into your ribs. You’re so close to the singer that you can see the color of his leg hair. He’s got his foot up on an amp just in front of your face, and you see black hairs covering the tan skin above his white sock. This is the guy you listen to as you drive around your town from one friend’s house to the next. This is the voice that you match your voice to as you bellow the words along with him when you drive around with nowhere to go. And you are close enough to see the bow he’s made with his shoelaces when he tied his old school Vans, and you’re singing along now, your mouth making the same shapes, moving the exact same way, that his is.
The singer belts it out, your favorite song, and you can see his eyes scanning the crowd on the main floor and in the balcony. Eyes watch him from a thousand angles, above and below him, from faces that are screaming, bodies that are flailing. Hands clap and pump the air, and elbows smash heads. You watch him so hard, your attention so lit up, that you think he might feel this one, most powerful glaring. You run your electric attention along his fingers that hold the mic and up his neck that’s dewy and flexed. Then you linger at his face, his mouth, his eyes. The air is caught in your lungs because the crowd’s swell squeezes you almost in half against the stage, and you keep your eyes on his eyes the whole time begging him to see you.
The crowd surges, heaving you forward and your hand reaches out almost close enough to touch the singer’s calf. That sweep of your fingers so close to him does something to the singer, it gets his attention, and you see his eyes move from your fingers to your face. Your hand still reaches without any particular intention, just reaching forward the way your whole body is, the way your life is, reaching forward desperately, reaching out for something to grab hold of.
The singer’s hand swoops down and he locks his fingers around your palm and your fingers clutch around him, HIM!, and you feel both of your arms tense up, getting strong, as he lifts you on to the stage.
You see the faces you know, then, as the crowd shifts from something you are a part of to something you can observe. Those guys you know look smaller. Those elbows seem miniature now. Those guys are wannabee dickwads, and you are up there with the rock stars. The band chose YOU!
It’s like you’re supposed to dance or jump or something. The members of the band are on every side of you, and they are rocking out like they do, arms pumping out the beats and chords, and their bodies rock and bow and twitch with the music, and they all look at you, nodding, putting their spotlight on you, the entire crowd’s thousand angles on you, and you are supposed to do something.
Your arms fly up in the V for victory. You scream out to the crowd, “WOOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!!” and see the hundreds of arms below you ready to catch you.
“Go on!” The singer mouths to you. “Jump!”
And you think, “Backstage, baby.”
“Go for it!” you read on his lips, but there’s no way in hell you’re gonna jump into the groping hands and sharp elbows in front of you. There’s no way you’re going back to where you came from. You see the opening at the side of stage behind the sound tech guy, and you stomp your feet toward it, running across that stage, that barrier between all the nobodies and you.
Gina DiPonio teaches in (and earned her MFA from) Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing Department. She also teaches academic writing at Roosevelt University and University of Chicago. Her work appears in Traverse Magazine, The Sun, Contrary Magazine, Two Hawks Review, and Hair Trigger, among others. Most recently, she won the David Friedman Memorial Award for a chapter of her novelistic memoir in progress.