“You’re going to have to take that back to your car. That pink thing,” the surly bouncer said as he shined his flashlight into my purse.
My first thought is, “I don’t have a car.” I consider telling him that I took the public transport here. But what good would that do? I succumb to panic. I run through scenarios in my head of turning around, wandering the streets of Seattle, finding a place to dispose of this thing that is withholding me from my basic human right to see Max Bemis perform within spitting distance. I can’t believe I was going to miss the show for this.
After my thirty-second episode of neuroses, I realize that I could just throw it away. So, I hand the bouncer my pink pepper spray and my ticket, get a stamp on my left, no, my right hand and walk into the club. Seeing Max Bemis is worth the slightly elevated risk of getting murdered.
Being at the show reminded me of the shows I went to in middle school with my friends. Only now, I don’t have to make sure that it wasn’t on a school night, ask my parents’ permission, find a friend to go with, and figure out which of our moms was going to drive us to the show.
Seeing Say Anything live has been the stuff of my twelve-year-old emo girl dreams. Though Max was performing sans band tonight, it was just as well. To me, Max Bemis was fucking “it.” He has been the paradigm to which I hold every emo boy who’s ever wanted to venture the corpse-littered path into my heart.
Nobody else seemed to care that the rest of the band wasn’t there either. Some even wore cheeky shirts that read “I went to see Say Anything and all I got was their lousy singer.” Max, though, seemed genuinely surprised and moved by the size of the audience and our enthusiasm, saying that this was the most fun he’s ever had playing by himself.
I will say that he has the most hardcore fans of any show I’ve ever been to. We sang along to every word of every song. I have never sang/shouted that emphatically in my life. I was struck by how emotional the performance was for me. It totally reminded me of the pain of being in the seventh grade, dealing with a mean stepdad and boys who thought I was ugly. It occurred to me that most of the people in the audience were all around my age and were probably experiencing and remembering a lot of the same things. I found that sense of collective nostalgia of pain beautiful and poignant. In the seventh grade our crushes made us feel like shit, our teachers thought we were dumb, and our allowance was never quite enough to put together a look from Hot Topic with any sort of cohesion. We had nothing but the prophetic lyrics of Say Anything to sustain us. Being at the age where nobody valued our opinions, we said nothing, and they said everything.
And now we’re all here together, heads back, eyes closed, shouting, “These are my friends, this is who they have been for always,” safeguarded by our valiant emo heartthrob.
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