Dan from New Orleans
We got our tickets from roll call, and the relief that came with it was instant cause for a celebratory smoke for the two smokers in our quartet. They lit up, and after a moment of reflective commentary on the ridiculousness of the whole situation, being in New York City on such short sleep, tired legs, and little planning, this guy with camo shorts walks up to us. We ate a six in the morning breakfast at White Castle – where were our heads? Nervous giggles all around from a bunch of small towners.
And that’s when we met this guy, Dan, who said (and sounded like) he was from Nawlins (New Orleans, dontchaknow). Anyway, this dude, he was sweet.
He approached us because of the cigarettes.
“What are those?” he asked, pointing to a hand holding a dart.
What a miserable country, I thought. Our corporations can’t even perpetuate their own identity as Canadian. Even in our closest neighbouring country, we’re looked at like a bunch of wandering vagrants smoking cheap stuff short of Marlboro. Was smoking such a foreign concept when on the topic of our land? Our government systematically extirpated any sort of relationship with this menace in the advertising realm of its marketplace as if it was amputating some unsightly extra appendage, but it still allowed those companies to manufacture and traffic the things. The hypocrisy is ludicrous, of course. Imitate the rod and spoil the pimp, I guess. It almost makes me want to smoke. I probably would if I wasn’t allergic to it.
We pathetically explain the relationship we have with these cigarettes and tell him we like his shorts, laughing because we’ve all got the same thing going on. They’re really just convenient for wandering and carrying a lot of shit. Dan told us he was in New Orleans when Katrina hit – maybe those shorts had some history.
Dan’s about to leave to find his friends, and he turns around to ask the four of us if we’d like to join him further up the line – and well, the dude’s friends are right at the front. I’m not even talking twenty or even a couple people from the entrance or anything. I’m talking right at the gate. It turned out these friends were just two Aussie girls he met while partying the night before. One was talking about a party she was going to have after the concert in her loft. One of my friends looked up like it was an opportunity for a place to stay the night. Our luck was only this good in this state of miserable presentation: we must have looked like helpless, scared rodents in a city that’s too big even to begin looking for the scraps of food left in the gutter.
Either way, I guess we must have been good people.
We stood in line for another twenty minutes, and security opened the gates. They let us loose, but not before they dissected the contents of our bags for some sort of treasure akin to some booze or a bag of dope. We were too cautious for anything like that though. We were wild kids, but we shrank at the very notion of American border authorities, with ominous, post- 9/11 images of Muslims being picked out and dragged into interrogation rooms by some of the most clean-shaven cops in the country haunting our foresight. They confiscated my Nalgene bottle because it was too likely to be used as a weapon and I was a teenager in one of the largest settings perfect for anonymous, mindless, destructive behaviour. Event staff saw punks like me beyond their aviators every weekend, and even more often in the summer. And this was a hip-hop concert; too often closely affiliated with its violent brother, rap. I felt raped and insulted, but I gave the swine my bottle and in my head I thought of profanities I was too weak and outnumbered to assault him with.
Dan let us in on a little secret. He’d smuggled in some joints under his belt. We kept him around for some entertainment, I forgot to mention, he was a pretty funny guy.
Halfway through the day, Dan was still with us and he was comfortable enough to break out a new treat. He turned to my friend and asked if he wanted a hit. He took the offer, but not after he realized what was being pushed on him. Dan opens his mouth to reveal a single tab of what could only have been genuine LSD. We all knew how much hospitality was too much. “Nah man, I’m good.” Dan shrugged his head and closed his mouth, waiting to be lifted to a new level of existence among a crowd of sweaty, shirtless youth that was just there for the good time. I wondered what horrible incantations he would start shouting when the crowd conjured waves of Ws out of their hands when Wu-Tang Clan came on stage. I remembered that DARE program and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas simultaneously.
But what did I know. Dan was the epitome of hip, and he must have done this before. A concert held in a venue that could handle a capacity of up to 70000 people was a helluva lot to lay on any amateur acid head, after all. It was clear that Dan was used to the crude nature of authority in this country, and fear hadn’t ripped his heart out yet.
^From the front of the line (thanks Dan).
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