Why Be Such An Asshole?

Please, please, just listen to the music

Photo by Dmitry Vechorko on Unsplash

Isn’t it what you came for, what you paid good money for? In this case $75 to sit in the privileged era where you could be waited on, get a blast of cool air every now and then, and not have to carry your own lawn chair to the outdoor theater?

And for God’s sake, why did you have to choose a seat by me? And by my wife who for all her restraint is ready to make a scene if you can’t quit invading her space with your reeling drunkenness?

This isn’t a raucous rock and roll show either. We aren’t fixing to crash the mosh pit because there is no mosh pit and no one except you, apparently, thought there might be. We aren’t punks, Deadheads, or even that rare breed of fanatic who follows the band Rush all over North America and sometimes even to forgotten lands like Siam.

There is a Rush fan sitting to the other side of me, but he’s got long golden hair and knows when to speak and when not to, and he also likes Jason Isbell and the Drive-by Truckers, and so I’m biased toward him anyway, despite the fact that Rush never did anything for me.

The band in front of us, on the Amphitheater stage is Canadian, too: Cowboy Junkies. They do many original songs like “Misguided Angel” and they do covers of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane” and Neil Young’s “Powderfinger.” Their pace ranges from very slow to just slow, even on “Powderfinger.” When they say they’re going to do a faster song, they mean that the tempo will ramp up to Leonard Cohen raptures.

What I truly don’t understand is why you’re here, why you brought a brown paper sack with several Cowboy Junkies LPs with you and you seem to like them, and yet, song after song goes by, and your attention is only 1/3 on the stage.

Also, why don’t you pass that pipe our way?

Just kidding.

I don’t want to be like you.

Why do you keep standing on your chair?

Sure, you’re videoing the stage so that after you get home, you’ll be able to enjoy those parts of the show you missed while you were carrying on loud and meaningless conversations with the guy sitting next to you, the one who actually produces that pipe.

What really kills me is that you’re actually friendly. I hate that. Maybe it’s due to your being drunk and high, and yes, you do offer to move down a seat when my wife gets up to stand on the other side of me. But even if you slid down, I’d still hear you and you’d still bother me, and you might or might not know that you’re bothering me, and truly, which is worse?

I don’t know a lot of Cowboy Junkies’ latest records, but you apparently do, because when they drift into one of those tunes, you shout, you let out that piercing two-finger whistle, and I think,

“Okay, maybe he’ll be quiet for this one, because he’s yelled ‘YEAH’ so loudly that Margo Timmins must have heard him right as she intones “Anybody who ever had a heart.’”

But no.

Margo hasn’t gotten to the song’s second line before you have turned back to your friend, and now to one of the female ushers who seems to have gone off duty and who is participating with you in disturbing the rest of us.

Including the guy sitting right in front of me. He’s just below my eye level, given that my seat is a high-back and his is merely a normal folding chair. His head bothers me, but I’m able to lean this way and that and still catch Margo and her brother John whose guitar-playing, machine-like and steely, is more than enough to accommodate those $75. Even he, who is unaware of what his head is doing to my neck, is upset with you. Yeah, he’s wearing his Ray-Bans on top of his head, and he has badly varicosed veins in his legs, but still, I think he wants to throttle you. He’s not the only one who turns and glares at you, though you neither notice him nor anyone else.

You keep chatting, and I’ll never understand why you or anyone pays good money to attend a concert, especially a concert on the quiet end of things, and you have to socialize it all away.

I didn’t want to, but now I’m going to have to describe you. You made me do this, remember.

You’re clearly middle-aged, which still means that you could be my son. That freaks me out, because no kid of mine would ever have acted like you are.

So, maybe 50-ish, and you wear goggle-styled glasses, which would help you see the stage if you ever turned toward it. You have on Earth-shoes, or some knockoff, and long black socks that come to mid-calf, matched by your black shorts, which might have been cut off from some pair of trousers that no longer suited you. And…

AND

You’re wearing an Allison Kraus and Union Station tour t-shirt. It’s red and well-worn. How can you like these bands and pay this money and then not pay any attention to what they’re singing and playing so beautifully for you?

You have black hair, cut almost in skinhead fashion, but I suppose you just like to have your scalp open to whatever elements rain down on it. And one of those beards worn by people who either don’t like to shave (I completely understand this) or have had trouble ever since adolescence growing true facial hair that resembles what anyone would fairly deem an adult-worthy beard.

In other words, I’ve seen meth heads and…

And then.

You actually left before the encore. You didn’t hear them play “Misguided Angel” or their cover of Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” though now that I type it, I wonder if that song was meant for someone other than you?

Yeah, I’m outraged by your being next to me and by your leaving early. You’re old enough to know better (“so cry baby cry”).

I could have written a simple review of the show — 140 minutes of tranquil Cowboy Junkies’ tunes. I wanted to write that review, too, but you’ve gotten in my head; you’ve disturbed my psyche. I know you didn’t intend to, did you?

I’m so thankful that you weren’t at the Emmylou Harris show last week. Everyone there, or at least those around me, wanted to hear everything Emmylou sang, so I guess I should take that win and be happy.

But I can’t because now every time I think of Cowboy Junkies, I have to think of you. Believe me, I don’t want to, I don’t like to, but I have no control over this.

I mentioned to my wife as we exited that we seem to be cursed by guys like you. When we went to see Jack White a few years ago, a guy with a bulbous head planted himself right in front of us just as the show started. I wrote about that here. We almost fought when I asked him to move, and Jack White would have been proud, I know.

“Isn’t he just another Derek?” my wife asked.

Derek was a guy sitting two rows in front of us at an Eric Church concert way back before Covid. Derek is legendary, at least in my family, to all of whom attended that show with me.

No, Derek’s issue was that he truly LOVED the music, and he couldn’t understand why the rest of us weren’t as in love with Eric Church as he was. He kept looking around, so disappointed that we weren’t on our feet during every second of every song. I understand Derek. I appreciate Derek.

“No, Derek’s problem was that he cared too much,” I said.

“Yeah, kind of like someone else we know.”

Well.

The world would be better with more Dereks and less “you’s.” I am proud to stand in solidarity with Derek, though truth be told, I don’t care very much for Eric Church. But I love Cowboy Junkies, and so here I am writing about something other than them.

Is that what you wanted?

Are you happy?

Do you remember the show at all?

Do you know that I’m thinking about you now, writing about you, and that you’ll live forever here at Age of Empathy and all over Medium?

You don’t deserve it, but then, neither did I.

Thanks to Sally Prag and Age of Empathy for publishing.