My pores have come in contact with the sweat of 35 different people today. Condom balloons, inflatable penises. Stray sandals. Bands I’ve never heard of and never will again. Sheets of slanted rain blanketing the stage front. Rain clouds drift, influencing the intensity of the precipitated water strikes. One heavy drop bursts right into your pupil. Of all the places it could land, it makes its way into the direct path between your eye brow and glasses rim, perfectly centered. Tilt your head a slight degree, and bam. Straight to the retinas. It almost burns, until the drop dissipates into the depths of your eye fluid. You utilize a few frequent blinks get your life back on track, as soon as you realize that the Crowd’s energy is reaching a paradigm shift. You see one pair of eyes ahead of you, until the entire population of the region you’re suffocating in is now facing the opposite way of the stage. Grab an arm or leg. A grimy shoe. Particles of mud under the fingernails. Watch out for the untied laces. Lift a head. Fist pump an asscheek. Anything to get these god damn animals off of you.
A good band has a constant stream of body surfers.
A good crowd doesn’t drop them, unless they greatly exceed the courtesy weight.
Twiggy girls flawlessly glide along the surface wave of the Crowd. Adolescent boys are simply tossed from one unexpecting spine to the next, while kicking faces and eardrums with their checkerboard Converse. Failing, flailing. Into the dirt. Only to be sprung up into the air, like an orangutan onto another oblivious spine, and dumped over the security bar. Guards pluck the surfers from the Crowd like babies in a nursery, sometimes cradling them or simply making sure that their bodies are positioned in a way that allows limbs to slide over metal railing without destruction.
Bonding over organized power cords and brain-pulsing drum solos. Comradery when a fellow surfer is trying to catch a wave, or needs a hand after busting ass in the midst of the ocean. The relief of passing a kidney stone over your head, so you can enjoy the aesthetic presence of the band and stage theatrics once more.
Until.
You feel.
The shift.
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