Worcester

Like strangers that come back out of the night we call our old friends on the phone and drop in shadowlike to the bars and ask what everyone is up to. And all everyone seems to be talking about is the Love Shack. Love Shack? "It's gonna be the Love Shack," they say. And  everyone claims that it's going to be the salvation of the local "scene" - yes, "scene" as in la cosa nostra, our thing, excluding all others and kept to our precious hipster selves. The SCENE. That which separates the enlightened few from the mainstream masses. So after months like years in hibernated death, it's going to stand up straight again and it's going dance - goddammit. And all because of Ed. Ed, sweet Ed, the sensitive skinny kid with glasses who really has the big "S" hidden under his shirt except no-one believed it till now. He found this place in a Mad Max abandoned ironworks factory near the city limits. It's all half standing brick mill buildings and scattered piles of twisted sheet metal and shattered cement pavement. When we pull up to the shack, William looks around and says, "Man, this is where we should shoot our first video." The Love Shack itself stands crooked and crocked out nearly sideways and a half leaning on slender support beams and propped up with hazardous toxic waste drums. We walk in slowly and look around right away for the exits in case of the inevitable fire. Inside it's all bare two by four slap shod treehouse construction. At the back is an oversized wall of black PA speakers all popping and hot buzz humming to the beat of the opening band plugging in their instrument cords. The audience is a cocktail crowd of old friends with their latest legal beers and self-conscious ironic slaps on the back and gaffaw gaffaws. William and I mingle and talk low and excited to various missing persons. Everyone we've ever known is there and waiting tingled bright eyed and hoping it will all happen again. Then the big speakers start beaming garbled messages low and official before a loud SNAP to silence and then....then the only sound is the whirring of a fan and the seashell hiss of the PA for too long, too long, too damn long, until...BLAM! BAROOOM! AAhhhhh!! Bursting out loud and wild rhythm heavy and low driving up through the floor to the middle of my chest heaving and sucking in heavy watered air. The audience is now a crowd and we sway up and then down and then random rhythmic pulse and heavy slow - our eyes half opened and hair hung all around. The temperature fires up skyrocket hot and wet sweaty heavy air as water bursts out on my face and my hair sticks to it. The crowd sways crooked and close like old lovers at a reunion dance. Drunken sweltering wet open pores and sporadic mixtures of crackling happy violence shot up through the mass. The band on stage is all willow tree hair and army surplus rags. Beating slow and hypno steady on their strings and twanging ringing long until forever. Then they cut fast over to a frenzy beat and flying hair rage as the crowd turns to joyous violent spasms and shreiking and yelling frantic colliding footworking around the pit. Someone crawls across my head and topples headlong into outer space as the crowd surfers roll and criss cross haphazard ecstacy. A guy lands square on the crown of my head and then kicks me with his boots. I don't recognize him and everyone around seems to be giving him the "Who the fuck is that?" look. It's some goatee guido with a fresh tattoo and then I see his newly blonded girlfriend standing at the edge of the crowd and digging him way too much. Okay. It all makes sense, now. He gets back on his feet and pushes a nearby kid with both hands and yells "Aaaah fuckin' yeah!" before barging off into the human mass. People get out of his way. Then I'm knocked off my feet as the crowd spills over sideways onto the floor. We're all scrambling up and away as the Guido Kid swings back-handed at no-one in particular. "That fuckin' shit sucker punched me!" he's shouting. And in a second, two huge fat guys with no hair grab him by the arms and carry him out the door. The band has stopped and Ed is at the microphone saying, "What the fuck is this all about?" Then the Guido guy rushes back into the shack and dives onto some bystander and the whole scene turns to ugly madness. Bodies collide racing toward and away from the fight in mayhem as most of the teenage girls back up to the outer walls. There is grunting and heavy swearing and scuffled thudding until young men start to emerge from the pile with ripped open t-shirts and red burning faces. The guido guy is all blood in the eyes and flying elbows before he is again thrown out of the shack. Then Ed takes the microphone shaking handed and says, "Hey you testosterone motherfuckers! Chill it the fuck out or I'm gonna close this shit down right now!" He is pleading and I think he is going to cry - maybe just in anger. But the sound system is going dead. So no-one can hear. Then someone lights off a bottle rocket and the fighting goes on in the parkling lot. The bystanders are all getting into their friends cars and leaving. "Hey man," William says. "This is over. It's time for us to leave, too."  And so we get into our cars and pull out. And we decide to leave town just like that. It's way past over. We just should have seen it before.