I should be doing that. That should be me.A few hours past with variations of self-entitled whining buzzing through my head as I walked through the park with no particular purpose or direction. Suddenly I remembered that I had friends other than Dakota who were there at the festival. I wasn't all alone, all I had to do was contact them and we would meet up and everything would be all right again. I reached into my pocket for a mobile phone only to retrieve week old receipts for cigarettes purchased at local gas stations. I walked past groups of enthusiastic, wide eyed, wide smiling kids throwing a Frisbee around. They noticed my scowl.
"Hey, smile, man!"A rage swelled inside me, completely consuming my being. I was nothing but pure hatred. A walking, breathing, fuming mass of contempt and loathing, spitting out a verbal black death.
"FUCK YOU!"
Jack Johnson took the stage. The crowd was massive and I quickly realized that there would be no way of finding Dakota through the sea of people. I settled in a space near the back of the crowd while the bland, inoffensive surf rock dissipated from the speakers. Instead of soothing and swaying me, inspiring me to calm down and take part in the hippie love fest that surrounded me, my disdain for the music's repetitious rhythms and meaningless lyrics melded with my overall hostility, forming a symbiotic relationship bent on destruction. After he finished playing, I picked fights with people who chose to express their satisfaction with his performance out loud. "Are you kidding? That guy was terrible! What a snoozefest." No one appreciated my thoughts on the subject.
I stayed at the back of the crowd long after Mr. Johnson left the stage, standing in one spot in the hopes of Dakota finding me. She did. Running towards me with an excited yelp, she leaped into my arms. "Hi! I'm so glad I found you! I've been looking all over! Are you having a good time?" I grumbled something incoherent. As much as I wanted to let go of my animosity, I just couldn't. She ignored it for the moment and we moved on, walking side by side through the park as the sun went down.
The headlining band that night was R.E.M. I remained in a bad mood as they took the stage and couldn't bring myself to bother watching them. I was never much of a fan and I just didn't have it in me to give them a chance that night, no matter their status and never mind the company. I was lost. I wanted to go home. Not only back to Dakota's apartment, but to my real home in Los Angeles. I kept thinking of why I moved away from Austin in the first place and how everything that transpired that day was a perfect example of why I left Texas in the first place. Hippies, college students and no musical prospects. I thought back to the night of the party at Garrick and Toby's and how I said out loud to anyone who would listen that I would either have to get a gig or get laid while I was there. Dakota liked the joke and since I didn't really mean it, never expecting to get either of those things, I should have considered myself lucky. I didn't. There was no joy left in sex, not with Dakota, anyway, and I didn't even bother fantasizing about other women. All I wanted to do was play music. A few songs into R.E.M.'s set, I sat down on the grass and stared at a forest of ankles. Dakota found me after a few minutes and asked what was wrong, but I couldn't express anything. Nothing was wrong, really, I just needed to sit there and snap myself back into a good mood if I could. She didn't have the patience for my bullshit, pulled me up, and dragged me out of the festival.
During the drive back to her apartment she let me know how much she hated it when men pout and whine and how pathetic it was for me to do so on one of the last days that we could have had fun together. As she berated me I shrunk further and further into myself until I heard nothing but that faint buzz again, and my eyes focused on the endless repetition of billboards and gas station signs that adorned the highway along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment