Sitting on the windowsill reading "Neverwhere," I'm one beer into the evening when Iven arrives. I open the gate for his truck and wait in my room listening to AWOLNATION while he parks, comes upstairs, and I offer him a beer and we smoke that pipe. Two beers. Three beers in. We listen to AWOLNATION and I figure out the lead singer was in the band Hometown Hero, who sang the song "Say Eighteen," an old favorite of mine. How neat. Then we watch an episode of Wilfred. We talk about our future apartment. Iven, I realize, is a key figure in my transition from Sacramento With Jenny to Sacramento Without. I pay attention to the way people enter and leave my life, usually during the most monumental of life's stages, and how they influence me, how they change things, how I change them, how the relationships evolve and how we help each other make sense of the world. So Iven and I are good and buzzed and it's time to leave for the show at Ace Of Spades, a handful of blocks away. Weather's perfect. Comfortably out of our minds, we wander down 17 to R, joking about I don't even remember what, all excited about the show and the future, being 24 and loving it. There's a gathering on the corner of R and 15 and an Ace of Spades security guard in charge of lining everyone up with AWOLNATION tickets along the side of Bernarndo's, preventing the sidewalks from clogging the other bars' entrances. It's a big crowd. Luckily, it's a quick line. We're inside between opening acts so we don't yet have to yell at each other and it's not too long of a wait to order Pabst at the bar. Nice venue. Spacious. Big warehouse ceiling with multiple levels of metal factory floor to view the stage from. Four beers in, I start looking for a good place for us to stand. I check upstairs only to find another bar. More people. I start admiring all the faces, all the outfits, all the strangers here to share this event, to drink and dance. Of course I also look for Old Soul customers. Then Tessa texts me: I am here. Are you? Iven joins me with the Guinness some guy bought him for watching his drink ("I don't buy Pabst," he says) and I reply: In bar. Upstairs. The second act begins. They're called Wallpaper and it's upbeat dub-step hip-hop that thoroughly impresses. Iven's dancing behind the low-hanging TV that's playing a soccer game while I watch for Tessa from the balcony. The dance-floor is already full. Everything looks full. This place is a goddamn crazy-house by now and of course I can't find Tessa, but whatever. We go back downstairs after Wallpaper's set and find our way across the crowd to an alternate bar to the left of the stage. A screwdriver for me, Tom Collins for Iven. Still no sign of Tessa. I text Jenny: Just use my name at will call. Currently at bar to left of stage. We finish our drinks. We can see the stage pretty well from here. Getting drunk now. Conversation, movement, time... It starts to become hazy. We find a place to stand near the ramp and AWOLNATION is starting to set the stage. A guy wears a shirt that says "Blame it on my ADD." I see Jenny walk by and rush after her. Call her name. Tap her shoulder. We kiss. Iven puts her drink and two more for us on his tab. I think. Maybe I stop drinking. Jenny has great spot-finding skills, so soon we're standing near the lower railing with a perfect view of the stage and the bobbing heads of the crowd on the dance-floor, everyone blue from the bright stage lamps. A young girl wears bright pink headphones while carried on the shoulders of her dad in the back of the room. I take a photo. On the way back, some drunk guy says, "Hey! Take a picture of me!" and so I do. Iven disappears for a while and buys himself and the bartender a shot. Somewhere around this time, Tessa shows up with Miguel, her date. We all hug and shake hands. The band arrives. The crowd goes wild. Guitars are picked up, the drum set is manned, the lights go dim. Their logo glows on the wall behind them. The music starts. I'm completely satisfied. I've become quite attached to their album and love every song and to hear them played so loud and passionately on stage was totally rewarding. Like seeing a book-to-film translation that doesn't suck. We're dancing and singing. They're dancing and singing. Everyone's dancing and singing. Cheering. Clapping along. Kill your heroes and fly. Jump on my shoulders. Great stuff. At some point, Jenny asks Iven if he wants to stand closer to the railing, to get a better look. He interprets this completely different. Tessa asks, "Where's Iven going?" and we see him walking down the ramp, his hands checked by the security guy with a flashlight to make sure Iven isn't smuggling beer out of the designated area. Jenny and I realize he's going for the Pit, so we hurry after him, not to stop him but the join him. Why haven't we been down there the whole time? We squeeze and push our way toward the stage and spill into an open pocket. Perfect. Dancing resumes, also with leaping and hand-thrusting. Sweat accumulates. A lot of sweat. The band finishes, leaves the stage, comes back and plays "Knights of Shame," which is their epic eleven-minute party basket of awesome and it's the one I was most curious to hear them play live. The show ends. We sneak out early to beat the crowds so we can get a table at Burgers and Brew a few doors down. Tessa and Miguel meet us there. Iven feels like the fifth wheel, but he has a good time. We get food. Drinks (not me, not this time). We're high and sweaty from the show and share our good experience. I see Jessica's friend Alexis and make awkward How's-It-Going conversation. Everything tastes fantastic. I finish someone's beer. Jenny and I split the bill and we all walk to my house where we hang out in the backyard for a while, smoking, talking about who-knows-what and this-and-that, until it's my bedtime and the night comes to a close on a high note.
Today, Jenny almost got hit on her bike by a car running a stop-sign at full-speed. It was some Final Destination shit, to be sure, because I luckily delayed us by about ten seconds by forgetting my bike-lock key in my room. Scary, sometimes, to think about how much of our life depends entirely on happenstance like that. I worked a fairly busy shift with Megan (always curious to see how much busier Old Soul is on a day when Meredith usually works) and we walked away with 35 in tips. She went to the Ganglians' CD release party last night. I was still wearing my Ace of Spades wrist-band, telling everyone how awesome the show was. Jessica and Peter came in, said they'd gone to my house last night for the bonfire only to find the backyard empty. Woops. There will always be more bonfires. I rode bikes with Jenny out to the Co-Op and ate lunch and we said goodbye and I rode home. Napped. Made plans with my family to go to Truckee this weekend. I was still in such a good mood from last night and it made work feel fun and fresh again. It does that. I guess tomorrow's pay day. Time flies.
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