First Concert
I used to have an original tee from the Damn the Torpedoes tour. It was awesome.
I wanted to go so bad, but didn't know anyone else who was going. I didn't know anything about concerts at all, since I'd never been to one before. I didn't drive, and there was no way my parents were gonna be able to drive me from the hour and a half and wait or drop and pick me up. I had plenty of cash from having done collections for the paper route and not yet having deposited it, but no ride, no way, and I was stuck. The topic came up in Geometry, I don't know how. Denise turned to me and said she and her boyfriend had been planning on going, but that he wasn't able to anymore. Before I had time to hope that she would offer me that ticket, she continued to say that her older brother had bought it from him and was driving, and that they could give me a ride. Denise sat next to me in the back of Geometry in Freshman year. When things got boring (which for the two of us was the usual, because we were good at it), we’d flirt. It was hard for me, because I really liked her and assumed she didn’t mean it because she had a boyfriend with a car. I met them at their house. Todd had a VW bug. They were both waiting outside, and their mom waved to me from the screen door, and called "Hi Quentin!", and I waved back and wondered why she knew my name since we'd never met. Todd got in the driver's seat, and Denise nudged past me to lean the passenger seat up so she could get in the back seat. I started to put the seat back and sit in the passenger seat, when she said, "Nuh-uh mister, you're sitting back here too." I gave Todd a look, and he just smiled and shrugged and held the seat so I could get in the back.This was exactly what I was hoping for, but I had in no way prepared for it to happen. I was tongue-tied and sat stiffly trying not to end up leaning on her, almost specifically because that was exactly what I wanted to do. There weren't any belts in the back, and Todd drove fast, so not ending up leaning on each other really wasn't an option. Todd smoked a couple of cigarettes up front and played Tom Petty songs loud on the cassette player, so we didn't do much talking. A little screaming about "I love this one", some pointing out the window at stuff we saw. Eventually it was just relaxed and we ended up leaning up on each other in a way that minimized the slipping around. When we got to the concert Center, I offered to pay for parking, but Todd said something about Denise making him promise he wouldn't let me. Because she liked me. And as that tried to sink in through my thick skull, we split up. They went in, and I tried to not freak out thinking I was gonna get arrested for buying a scalped ticket. (I really didn't know anything about it). I finally did buy a ticket from a group with an extra because someone had failed to show, for not much more than the actual price. There were people selling t-shirts outside, but I didn't like any of them (in retrospect, I think they were probably all knock-offs). As soon as I got through the gate, and quit worrying that I would get caught in some intricate trap and end up arrested for my ticket, I picked a cool shirt from the merch booth (it was probably too big for me). I pulled it over whatever shirt I was wearing and wore two shirts through the show. The show was awesome. I don't really know how it compares, because it was the first and was just overwhelming. It was loud, and bright, and people were so into it, and the band was clearly having a blast. I was hooked. When it ended, I was worried about not finding my way back to the car, and getting left behind (give me a break, okay, I was in 9th grade). I got there first, and Denise and Todd showed up about 20 minutes later. Denise was wearing the same style t-shirt that I was. Hers was not too big for her. On the way home, Todd played the music loud again and we all three sung along (Todd had a band that he the front man of, and in my mind, he looks a lot like Marshall Crenshaw, at least he had close-cropped hair and wore those Buddy Holly glasses). After about a half hour we were getting too hoarse to sing anymore. Denise looked me right in the eye and lifted my arm up to put it around her shoulders. In minutes she had fallen asleep leaning up on me. Again, it was just what I had wished for, but I was totally unprepared for it to happen, but it did.
The next morning, I figured because I'd worn my concert tee over my other shirt that it didn't need to get washed. I wore it to school. At lunch I spotted Denise out sitting on the hood of her boyfriend's car, and she was wearing hers too. I got asked a few times if I'd been smoking. In Geometry, we sat next to each other where we always sat, and people assumed we were joking when we said we'd gone to the show together. Anyone then would have thought it was ridiculous. I didn't want to have to explain the whole thing, so I left it at that.