BY MICHAEL GATLIN
The music permeated the arena. The walls shook with thumping bass and pounding drums. Everyone was cheering. The guitar stings vibrated through the huge amplifiers. The singer was shirtless and screeching to the heavens for love and freedom and answers to questions he knew better than to ask.
It had been two years since concerts were allowed. Social distancing was mandated by the local authorities. Venues shut down. Tours cancelled. Masks were required indoors. Few places were open to the public. Carefully they allowed us to open grocery stores, gas stations, and some federal offices. A respiratory illness had swept the world causing panic and fear and over a million deaths.
Some thought the virus was a hoax, a tool to keep people in fear. The same folks who refused vaccines for the same reason, hoarded toilet paper, canned goods, and fully automatic assault rifles, ammunition, and bulletproof blankets. These people worshipped a White Anglo Saxon Protestant god who considered parts of his created planet holy land, and its people chosen. Scientists on the other hand were paid for by the liberal elite in a conspiracy to undermine their belief system and turn them into satanic child molesters who start wildfires in California with giant lasers from space.
A real divide had grown in the two-party political system. This, of course, is the goal of the corporate oligarchy; civil unrest, a diversion from their obvious plundering. Why worry about the trillion dollars in billionaire profits in one fiscal year of full pandemic when you can blame a libtard for voting for gun control, or a redneck for not wanting to murder babies.
Everyone needed to cut lose. The roaring twenties were pushing against the boundary of the recommended social gathering limit. Underground raves were being busted up in every major city. The fecund teenage future senators and bankers were showing their skin and ignorance on the beaches of Florida. They were none too shy to speak their mind on camera, undeterred by the film crew and journalists in face masks or the eerie lack of responsible adult for miles.
Finally the vaccine took hold. People lined up like obedient livestock and took the dose. Some died. Some shouted conspiracy! But without proof they may have been proselytizing the saving grace of another drunken messiah. There would be herd immunity, and it would be good.
It was a warm October evening; most of the New Englanders were still in short pants and skirts. There was no gender assigned to clothing anymore, so there were women in kilts and boys in poodle dresses and bobby socks. It didn’t matter to me. I have never been bothered by another human’s choice that caused no one any harm. Exercising one’s will is the only true art. I considered that then in short skirt and no underwear. Did it clash with the camouflage jacket and derby pimp hat? The gold and red feather reached from the brim just long. What else should you wear to the first show in two years?
The lead singer of The Bloody Matadors, Bobby Mentor, gave the world what it wanted. He ripped out of his leather pants and threw them to the crowd. Luckily I was on the other side of the concert hall drinking a barely bubbly gin and tonic out of a flimsy compostable pint cup. The bartenders were eager to pour. The show was sure to be superb.
Bobby had them in the palm of his hand. He reached out to the audience. Everyone in the first eight rows reached back. It was a real display of need for connection.
Bobby’s lyrics were outstanding. He sang in a deep animal baritone,
“I want to be the one who is no more than you are
Please be the one who is no more than I am
We could be so much more than you are
We could be so much more than I am”
The human spirit had been deflated and needed some hot air all over and in its soulful inner-tube. Bobby was an existential threat to undeveloped teenage minds all across the country. He sang with such confidence and grace. He raged and raged. He tore off his underpants and stood naked in army boots on the stage, exposing what I could only assume was some sort of prosthetic device on his penis.
Suddenly the music slowed, and the lights slowed, and dripped, and crawled around the dark venue. The lights slithered to the floor and crept towards me in sweaty anxiety. (Well I hadn’t gotten burned). Time to take a deep breath and remember who you are. These are the moments that introduce you to the crossroads. Down one road is a broken loop of regret and fear to do more. Down the other road are fire and blade, guts and storm. One road has more laughter, but less safety. The other road has more insurance but less value.
It was with this ridiculous analogy blossoming in my head that I witnessed Bobby Mentor transform in lycanthropic fashion into a mythological beast. His head swelled four times and took the shape of a bull, with long wild horns not symmetrical but battle-tested. His body doubled in size and his enormous bull-cock receded some into pouch covered by hair.
He grabbed a guitar from against the stack of speakers. It was small in his hands and he shredded the instrument. The speakers shot blue peacock sparks from the walls. Bobby the wild matador shouted lyrics and spat blood. Chunks of red gravy splattered all over the audience. It was an unholy sight of contagion. The thin veil of confidence had been lifted. Some of the audience suffered from post pandemic depression, and began to panic. There was a mass exodus.
The music was deafening and bold, soaring guitar solos and wild drum blasts. But it was the lyrics that stuck in my head. I sang his words over and over again, for the rest of the evening, and most of the following morning, when I finally past out on the sofa, dreaming I was awake.
For months after the concert, I could not shake the lyrics. They stayed in my head, a filthy earworm I could not shake. It was a viral menace, like language, like ideology, like jingles.
There would be no more shows for awhile. Another Virus is now sweeping the nation like a teenage dance craze. They say it too is animal in origin, possibly bovine. I wonder if Bobby used cow’s blood at his shows or synthetic prop blood? Little wonder humans evolve so fast with their incest, necrophilia and bestiality. It’s unbelievable we’re all not immune to everything by now.
It will be some time before the next show. The roaring twenties will have to wait, until the large pharmaceutical companies can pump out another vaccine and charge the governments a hefty some. Meanwhile the real viral menace was Bobby Mentor’s song. I could not get out of my head.
“I want to be the one who is no more than you are
Please be the one who is no more than I am
We could be so much more than you are
We could be so much more than I am”
The End
