Mostly Semantics

Concert review time: lame edition! So last night we (Meat, Tweaks, BFlux… a bunch of other people) went to see Presidents of the United States of America. For this privilege we laid out $20. Each. Was it worth it? In a word, no.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, really. Thinking back on it, I was just swept up in the excitement of nostalgia, I suppose. PotUSA is a total guilty pleasure, and it’s so nice when you find you share that with a bunch of your friends, right? And it’s not just ‘Lump’ and ‘Peaches’, oh no, ohnono - obviously I love ‘kick out the jams’, plus ‘dune buggy’, ‘kitty’, I mean, ‘carla the stripper’ (which is actually called ’stranger’ but I’m with you on this one Tweaks) - the point is that there are a lot of songs there that hit a certain sweet spot for me.

The thing is, if I had stopped to consider what actually going to the show would be like, there’s no way I could have justified that kind of expenditure. $10 tops. I’m too lazy to link to myself here, but I am certain I’ve explained that I tend to judge heavily based on my impression of the crowd, and this crowd was absolutely full of chiefs and fat chicks and weird old dudes and kids, wtf kids, how did you ever even find out about this? So there’s the crowd, plus then they apparently have some new album bullshit. I just want to hear material from your first two albums, guys, I’m sorry. This is how it is. Oh, Jack Talcum, aka the guy from Dead Milkmen, opened, and was exactly as you’d hope: the same. He’s the guy from the Dead Milkmen, he knows his role. Get around to playing ‘punk rock girl’, sing some funny things, and leave the stage on time - we have work in the morning. You’re alright by me, Jack Talcum. And actually, y’know, PotUSA, they did an ok job, all things considered. I know, y’know, you have to make an attempt at pushing your new album… though really, pushing the shirts like that, I don’t care how cute you try to be, it’s awful. Oh, and pointing out your girlfriend and dedicating a song to her… what the shit. You are like 45 years fucking old PotUSA, cut the crap.

But what I really want to get to here is another Embarrassing Tale of Dancing and Woe! So about four songs in a group of three people, two female, are squeezing their way to the front, past me. It’s a pet peeve, because, y’know, you’re late. Suck it up, stand in the back. This is not ‘nam. But whatever, it happens all the time, just keep moving - except they don’t. They stop. Like RIGHT ON TOP OF ME. Literally this one tiny girl is like squeezed up against me - and I was operating with a bare minimum of personal space here already, there was little room to shuffle and accommodate. So I literally hear the other girl yell “it’s ok, we can stop here!” - as I’m staring daggers into all three of them. Mind you, this is in the middle of a song. So finally the ’stop here’ girl notices me and kind of sheepishly asks “oh, are we in your, like, personal space?”

“UH, YEAH. YEAH YOU ARE.”

But it didn’t change anything. They just stayed there. Eventually I went back to watching the show, except now I had this one girl like right on top of me. All up on me. Which was irritating, of course. A few songs in, though, a really weird thing started. She was trying to, I guess, dance or whatever lame white folks do at a PotUSA concert, and she grabbed my hand pretty awkwardly and was trying to sort of dance with it? With me? I don’t know - I didn’t grab her hand back, even - I held my fingers out stiff and she just gripped the fucking thing anyway and was like half-twirling underneath. Bear in mind I am seriously more than a foot taller than her, so she’s got her arm like straight up, while mine is pretty much straight out to the side. So really… very awkward. Particularly since we were packed too tight to really move anyway.

After this first weird dance thing happened she kind of looked at me and tried to start a conversation of sorts. She said “it’s not fair! You’re tall and can see from anywhere!” - keep in mind she was not behind me at this point. So I said “well yeah so all you have to do is keep grabbing people, like this (demonstrating by grabbing Meat’s arm) - they’ll let you through and you can go up front where you can see.”

“Oh no, I can’t do that!” - wtf? YES YOU CAN. YOU JUST DID. But so whatever, I ignore it and just hope that this madness stops. IT DOES NOT. She spends the rest of the concert like grabbing my hand, grabbing my arm, hugging my waist, kind of halfheartedly grinding against me, etc. As far as I could tell she was not rolling, though I definitely could be wrong. She didn’t strike me as the type, though - pretty lame people overall, like I said. Then again, you probably wouldn’t size me up as a person with a lot of drug experience at first, either, so who knows. She was definitely drinking, but she didn’t seem like absolutely shitfaced at all. So basically, she was just a girl who thought she could play off having squeezed into this spot in a pretty awful way by behaving all flirty and silly, because then a girl can get away with anything? I guess is the thinking? And I guess she’s right, at least for that night, because I didn’t really do anything. By the time the concert was winding down, I even kind of played along with her - I mean… not a huge amount or anything, but enough. The point is she grabbed my hand, arm, and waist a lot, and it was highly uncomfortable. I was, suffice it to say, really concerned about what was going to happen at the end of the show, but mercifully she had kind of relocated to the other side of her friends for basically the last song. As soon as the encore finished I turned around and kept my eyes straight ahead on the door - no eye contact for me, thanks.

There have been two basic reactions to this story so far - horrified at her behavior is the most common, with a “shit MBG if I had known I would’ve come to protect you!” from some of the female friends there (thanks Terri) or a “I can’t believe she just thought she could play it off like that.” But then there is this second, barely whispered undercurrent of an interpretation that says she was legitimately flirting with me and I’m an idiot for not seizing the opportunity with more gusto. Tweaks, for her part, is certain she saw the girl staring at me like she wanted to talk to me on our way out the door. Like I said, I honestly didn’t look at all, as I was pretty well mortified at that point and just wanted to get outside to talk about this craziness. On the one hand, I can’t remember ever being so crassly used and violated. On the other hand, I’m pretty much a giant pussy who is scared shitless of women. I mean, the girl was not objectionable in appearance - actually fairly cute overall. Is it wrong that this makes me deeply suspicious of her motives? I mean… what the shit happened there? What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? I don’t know. These questions, they plague me. Commenters, please, sort me out on this one.

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