I watched Davey shovel food into his mouth. I was tired and hungry but Davey came and banged on my window and I figured, what the hell. I hadn’t even taken off my blood-stained shirt or bomber jacket. Davey wore all black, even his hair was dyed. Skinny as whippets, I was waiting for wrestling season to start but Davey did enough drugs to get an army battalion high. He knew how to carry himself too, a dangerous combination.
    “One last show of the summer, man. I wish I was there,” he said through fries, burger, and shake all in one mouthful.
    “It was worth the pain,” I said.
    One last show before my days would be regimented with bells and homework and wrestling practice. One last show and it would be impossible to convince my parents to drive me in their piece of shit car to see bands they never heard of but heard through my door late at night when I was supposed to be studying or sleeping. They never understood why straight ‘A’s came easy but sleep never did. They’d never been my age, it seemed. Even more of a stretch to think they’d produced me.
    “Sorry I couldn’t make it,” Davey said. He finished the food and shoved the tray aside and brought the milkshake to his mouth. Always focusing on the sweet.
    “It’s okay man, you were busy with Regina.”
    “Karen.”
    “Right. Sorry.”
    Though I was hungry, the artificiality of the place turned me off to the food. Usually we came here after shows, and I always ate except for wrestling season when I had to lose weight. It seemed like the worst way to end the night, when it had been so fucking good. The pissy yellow lighting, the grease smell, the bored employees, it all sucked compared to what I’d just seen. No heart.
    One last show.
    “Well, you gonna tell me about it or what?”
    At first I wanted to be home, but I couldn’t tell Davey that. He’d never let me hear the end of it, I’d be the biggest loser in history. I wanted to have the night be a memory, something I looked back on with pleasure. I wanted to see Enemy but home was safe and secure, without the threat of injury or the desolation of being alone in a crowd. It seemed like everyone could tell I was there by myself. They huddled and grouped and laughed and talked and I had no one.
    Come on, come on, I thought, waiting for the bands to start, give us something. Give us something to do, to take it out on. Give us something to go up against.
    When everything started it was exciting then tired, like watching old footage of atomic bombs exploding. The opening bands were Enemy rip-offs and I never understood why people booked opening bands who sounded just like the headliner when there were so many different types of underground music. Why just straight edge hardcore bands? Why not some old thrash punk? Even the musical underground liked to group things, instead of mixing them together like some artistic jambalaya.
    Good things were the same to me: Nietzsche, Joyce, Chopin, Brahms, Black Flag, Picasso…they all had the same heart, fought the same fight, but with different pulses and weapons. They were only different from the carbon-copy bullshit of crowded high school hallways and prime-time television, internet news and bright, plastic shopping malls. But the outsiders, they fought for something real. I wanted to be one of them but didn’t have the courage or talent, whatever it was. Maybe it was the fight that made them.
    Kids were packed so close their heads became a second floor by the time Enemy took the stage. While they tuned their instruments, something in my blood urged me to burrow to the front, directly to the stage, right into the line of fire. I wanted to be close enough to see the pockmarks in the singer’s cheeks. This is what I told Davey, who said the singer was uglier than I could imagine. Davey was always at the front, always getting hurt, and I thought maybe it would help me grow somehow.
    Hot, stinking air seeped into my lungs as bodies pinned me into place. Elbows poked, shoulders shoved, and hips checked. If I wanted to get to the back of the venue, it was too late now.
    They chugged the notes of the first song, instantly drowning even shouts from the crowd. My skin chilled, it was like someone dumped cold water onto me. The singer, Aaron, wasn’t onstage yet. A few more notes ticked by and all the times I listened to the song, before wrestling practice, during school, at night while restless, all episodes dropped away and I knew the best way to understand music was live and from the front row. Imperfections, idiosyncrasies, and passion broke it free from deadly monotony.
    Aaron took two steps onstage then ran, grabbed the microphone and dove into the crowd to match the exploding first line, “Shoot don’t talk!” He slammed into the side of my head. We fell but were immediately lifted. More kids dog piled as he belted the song. I got knocked down again. Two or three people piled on top of me and I shared the weight with people around me and it was only the first chorus of the first song.
    Aaron was tossed to the stage and I watched him scream, red-faced, into the mike. He threw himself around like a man possessed by half a dozen demons. It looked like someone had told them it was going to be their last show.
    Light-headed from fighting the crowd for equilibrium and shouting along, I had to catch my breath so I mouthed the lyrics instead. There was supposed to be a connection to those around me singing the same thing, but I didn’t feel it. My energy didn’t come from the crowd. I couldn’t tell if it came from watching the formation of music, or if the music matched my own energy.
    “Thank you Berkeley,” Aaron said when the song finished. “It’s good to be back in the Bay, we’ve been away for too long.”
    “Shut up and play!” someone shouted.
    “I bet you talk a lot of shit on the internet, too. Anonymity is empowering, isn’t it?” Aaron said. “We can take your abuse. This one’s called, ‘Bloodlust.’ “
    They tore into their second song. I turned to watch the circle pit, whipped to speed by the snare drum and guitars. Hard and fast, they formed a human tornado, banging around and off of each other. The song slowed and the pit broke apart and the kids did their violent little dances.
    Time was measured by verse, chorus, and breakdown. Seconds and minutes were artificial constructs and I couldn’t tell if the songs performed took the same amount of time as when I listened to them alone or if they were faster or slower. I was in a musical wormhole where time distorted and twisted.
    If I didn’t know all the words by memory and by heart, there was no way I could decipher what the singer was saying.
    During ‘Oh Negative,’ someone dove into the crowd and kicked me in the face, bloodying my nose.
    A thin girl dressed in black flipped from the stage and her hip slammed into my collarbone during the breakdown in ‘Do Not Resuscitate.’
    Someone crashed into my back, then another stage-diver knocked me down. Two people fell on top of me and I was sure a bone would break or an organ would rupture. What would my parents say if I called from a hospital bed? They’d really never let me go to another show, instead of just threatening me when I got in trouble for staring out of windows during class, or making jokes with Davey. My life would become a perpetual sneaking away. What did they know about live music? They went to stupid pop concerts for fuck’s sake.
    After only seven songs, I’d amassed an entire season of wrestling injuries. My blood flowed and stained my white t-shirt. I was the only one at the show wearing a white t-shirt. Everyone else wore black and gray.
    “Okay you guys this is our last song,” Aaron gasped, as tired as anyone in the crowd and shirtless, showing his tattoo-covered torso. “You’ve got one more chance to show me what you’ve got. Let’s see some heart. If you swing hard enough with both fists, you might get to where you want to be in this world. Remember that always. Make yourself proud and fuck everyone else. This song’s called, ‘Death Rattle.’”
    Preachy words from a frontman who Davey complained was too preachy. When I told Davey about Aaron’s speech, he gagged on his milkshake and I had to wait for him to gather himself before I continued.
    “I hate being told what to think,” Davey said, smearing some fries into ketchup.
    “He’s not telling, he’s just saying. That’s just your reaction to authority, Davey.”
    Aaron used his position for good. No one wanted to say anything inflammatory that might upset things, except for people who were already upset and wanted to burn the world. Not like teachers and parents and cops who spoke only to hear their eternally monologue-ing voice bounce off of someone.
    “Anyways,” I said.
    The song started slowly while Aaron paced like a caged panther. My chest tightened and shot cold adrenaline into my arms, making the hair stand. The tension built and built, the song going faster and faster until the kids jumped up front to shout the opening line, “One more time!’”
    Someone leapt onto my back to get a better vantage point from which to sing, buckling my knees. I pitched into the guy in front of me as two more people dove from the stage, knocking the kid from my shoulders.
    Chaos and pain distanced the words and I wanted them to be closer. I hunkered down between two bigger guys to avoid people kamakaze-ing. Sometimes they ran from the stage into the crowd stepping on heads and shoulders, taking three or four steps before they sank as if into quicksand.
    Protected by the taller guys on either side of me, the band was in focus and the words came back. There was nowhere else I wanted to be and I made sure to tell Davey this but he only nodded and motioned for me to keep going. Fine. He only wanted action.
    The song reached the final sing-along, the last chorus. Aaron fell into the crowd and was swarmed upon. The dog pile grew. I was buried a foot from Aaron who sang the final words, over and over: “Fight for your life. Fight ‘til your death.”
    The words resonated somewhere deep and made me feel like a grumbling volcano. It was live-savingly big, a feeling present long before I became conscious of it, waiting to show itself. I was ready to start, but didn’t understand the race. I didn’t tell Davey this; I kept it to myself. He wouldn’t get it and would make fun of me for being just as preachy as Aaron.
    After a good show there’s a feeling like everything negative has been knocked from you. I didn’t feel tense and whatever happened was going to happen. I never felt like that, not even after winning wrestling matches.
    “So it was a good show,” Davey said. “Now I’m really bummed I missed it.”
    “Yeah, but that wasn’t all.”
    My mom was nowhere in sight and I waited for twenty minutes and she never showed up. My cell phone broke, probably when I got knocked down. The face was shattered into a dozen tiny, asymmetrical versions of itself.
    I showed Davey and he said it looked cool, like something artful. Huh. Fractured Communication by Sean Kelly.
    I borrowed a phone from a kid and called home but it rang and rang until I got voicemail, so I left a message reminding a machine I was stuck in Berkeley without a ride. I laughed at dependence on a machinated culture I hated. We couldn’t do any work ourselves anymore and got fat and lazy and wanted more machines to make us less fat and lazy. Plug in, turn off, and think we’re getting somewhere.
    I chewed a nail and looked across the street at the Pyramid Brewery and got hungry and wanted to get home even more. It was a quick walk to North Berkeley’s BART station. I’d take a train then walk home. I was alone and left the Gilman with three dollars.
    I’d call home one more time.
    At a convenience store, I waited behind a big, biker type guy who was arguing with the clerk. The biker had on a leather jacket with a huge tequila worm on the back and he smelled like tobacco. A black and gray beard draped around a small mouth, showing two front teeth with a gap between them. He had a deep voice and every word had knockout power behind it.
    “Look man, I’m just trying to buy some beer. It’s not even one lousy buck. Help me out.”
    “I can’t. I’m sorry,” the clerk said, looking like he’d heard the line a thousand times before.
    “Bullshit. You’re not sorry. You don’t give a fuck that I had a hard fucking day and I just want to drink a few beers with my old lady. Help me out.”
    The last part was a statement and we all knew it. I thought the biker guy might pull out a gun or a knife and take the damn beer.
    “Ask your old lady for a dollar,” the clerk said.
    “Here,” I said, tossing a crumpled bill on the counter.
    They looked at me as if I’d materialized from nowhere. Biker guy laughed. “Get on little brother!” he said. He showed a grin I never would’ve expected, and my counter-smile felt too small. The clerk rang up the beer.
    “Mind if he keeps the change?” biker guy asked, indicating the clerk. “Tip and all. Good service should be rewarded.”
    “I don’t mind. Can I use the phone?” I asked. Biker Guy left with the beer.
    “No, business calls only. The one out front is broken, just so you know.”
    The asshole smiled at me.
    “Fuck you and your broken phone,” I said. I left as Biker Guy squeezed into a battle-scarred truck too small for him.
    “Where you headed little brother?”
    “BART.”
    “Hop in!”
    A squibbling part of my brain told me not to do it, but my options were limited and I was getting more tired by the minute. My ears and head rang, my body and nose ached, so I got in.
    Davey gave me a big-eyed look when I told him this, but he didn’t say anything. Actually, for Davey to have been as quiet as he had been was nothing short of remarkable. I praised the events, not the teller, as captivating.
    The truck smelled like dead cigarettes. Biker Guy’s old lady slid into the middle seat. Seatbelts were out of the question with the three of us shoehorned into the cab. She introduced herself as Tina.
    “You get in a fight or something?” Biker Guy said, looking at the blood on my shirt.
    “I got kicked in the face.”
    “Gotta watch out for that.” Biker Guy said, laughing. “I’ve kicked and been kicked so many times I lost count before you were born. My name’s Yogi.”
    “I’m Sean. Your name’s Yogi? Like the Indian priests?”
    “Like the bear. They called me ‘Bear’ in prison and there’s always a guy named Bear so I changed it. You scared of a big guy like me that’s been to prison?”
    “A little. I think it’s cool you chose your own name though. Self-made and all.”
    “Don’t be scared, Little Brother. You tossed me a dollar and you didn’t even know my damn name.”
    He drove slow but I didn’t mind because it sure as hell beat walking. Yogi showed that crazy, big smile again. It put me at ease.
    “I did all my bad things. I was a bank robber and a junky. I was only good at being a junky because you only have one responsibility. Know what that is?”
    “Get junk.”
    Yogi laughed. “Get on! I robbed banks because it beat a day job. Want a beer?”
    “I don’t drink. Thanks, though.”
    Yogi and Tina clinked their cans and slurped their beers.
    “You ain’t missin’ nothing. Find a better way to blow off steam.”
    I thought I had. Davey interjected that fucking was also a good way to blow off steam. We pulled into the BART parking lot and Yogi parked. Silence. What now? Should I keep talking with Yogi? I didn’t know what time it was or when the last train came by.
    “You helped me out so I’ll help you,” Yogi said. “I’m gonna tell you something that took me years on the inside to figure out.”
    I was listening and worrying about the last train.
    “You have to respect yourself and treat folks with respect. They don’t respect you that shit’s like an insult. You can tell if someone respects himself because he has a look in his eye like he can take the world. You don’t have it, but I bet you’ll get it.”
    I wondered if I would and how I would get it. Was it pleasure or pain that brought it on? Maybe it was seeing through one to the other, balance. Maybe it was the ignorance of both. With time I’d learn that it was something else, something deeper.
    “Sean, the nicest guys you’ll meet are the toughest guys you’ll meet. They know just how badly they can fuck you up.”
    “Makes sense.”
    “Respect don’t come like beer. You gotta work for it. I mean, self-respect. You work on that, Sean, you’ll be fine. Got it?”
    I did and I told him.
    “Okay. Get on.”
    Yogi nodded to the station and I got out and looked at the pair. They were already kissing each other, like teenagers in heat. Yogi broke from Tina long enough to give me another smile before he took off. That pair wasn’t something I’d planned on seeing, but was damn glad I did. Dumb luck.
    I only had two dollars, just enough to get a ticket. I’d be able to get on the train, but I wouldn’t have enough fare to get home. I’d have to jump the turnstile and I was already freaked out about getting caught. My post-show calm was fading, overtaken by my worrying routine. It was cold waiting for the train.
    The last time I was on that platform was with Davey, and it was the first time I got drunk. Davey had a pint of peppermint Schnapps, and we shared it after a U.S. Bombs show.
    “I wanna look like that guy when I’m older,” Davey said, sipping from the bottle. His breath smelled like chewing gum. He was talking about the singer.
    “He looks like a zombie, Davey.” I said, finishing the bottle. “Why would you want to do that to yourself?”
    “Self-destruction is the only way to find yourself,” Davey said, flipping open a butterfly knife and closing it. I watched it open and close: out, around, back. Out, around, back.
    “There’s got to be a better way. Society builds you the wrong way, but you can tear it down without drugs and alcohol,” I told Davey, who was entranced with the flipping knife and not paying attention to me.
    “There has to be a better way,” I said to the flipping knife. Alcohol made my friend as solipsistic as everyone else, unwilling to engage.
    Later that night I got so sick my stomach was sore for two days. I told Davey I didn’t want to drink, which was true, but I was looking for another way to tear things down. The world had sunk its claws into me and I needed pliers.
    Davey was bored, drumming his fingers on the plastic food tray. More action.
    The train came from Oakland and I got on. The car was empty except for one black dude. He moved closer to me as soon as I sat down. So this ghetto-looking guy with gold teeth kept moving closer to me, with no one around. Every station he got closer and I tried not to stare, but every time I looked he was staring me down. I didn’t have any cash to give up if he mugged me, and didn’t know if he’d believe me or not.
    At the Bayfair station, the black guy got up and I tensed for a fight. We both jumped a little, like kittens startling each other. The guy looked at me, winked, and said, “Hey, Daddy, calm yourself. ‘Sides, looks like somebody already got the drop on you.”
    My bloody shirt. I wanted to apologize but he was gone, out the door before a word slithered into my head. Me and my dumb mind. I laughed, thinking of how, in a weird way, the gold teeth matched the lisping voice. Davey thought this was pretty damn funny.
    “It would’ve made a good ad for something,” he said.
    “Like what?”
    “How the fuck should I know? Just something.”
    At my home station, I approached the exit gate slowly. The lady in the glass booth had to know what I was about to do. Maybe she’d already called the cops or maybe there was one waiting just beyond the entrance. Then I’d be arrested and would have to call my parents from jail and they’d never let me go out, just like Davey’s sort-of-girlfriend, who kept getting in fights at shows. Everything would be lost and it all came down to this.
    My heart tripped and my hands shook, but I vaulted the turnstile easily and ran like hell. She didn’t yell or anything and I didn’t slow down until I was two blocks from home. Probably didn’t even care. It wasn’t her money, right?
    I was shaking with hunger and adrenaline as I made a meal from leftovers. Tempted to eat the food cold, I couldn’t let the fantasy of a hot meal to go, and nuked it.
    Yogi and the black dude were fresh in my mind as the food warmed. Respect and a false threat. What was a real threat? What was worth my fear? Lack of calories and working hard physically all night had put me in a cheap trance.
    I took the plate from the microwave with an oven mitt but it slipped when I closed the door and fell on the cold, shiny linoleum, splattering all over like an edible Rorshach. All that wasted food and empty promise. I almost cried.
    “What happened?” Mom asked, wearing a faded pink robe and blinking at the light.
    “Dropped the food. Sorry.”
    “How’d you get home?”
    “BART.”
    “The car died again.”
    “I called.”
    “I must’ve been outside. And I didn’t check the messages. I figured your father would do that.”
    No. No one fucking checked.
    “Is that your blood?”
    “Someone hit me on accident at the show. I’m fine,” I said. “I’m going to sleep.”
    “Glad you’re home safe.”
    She didn’t even ask how the show went. It was one of the best, craziest nights I’d had in months and I couldn’t talk to her about it if I wanted to.
    In bed I was grateful for my humming ears and solitude. My limbs felt wooden and I wanted them to feel as soft as the sheets warming me. It was softness that brought sleep, which I wished would come easily for once. Coiled tight, I knew sleep would come hard, and that was when Davey knocked on my window.
    “I’m glad you got up front,” Davey said, standing. “I thought you were scared to be that close. You grow some balls, finally?”
    I didn’t know how to explain it. It looked crazy from the back of the room, but once I was there, things fit. He pulled the lid from his shake and looked at the bottom like my answer was there, consumed as easily as some pop-culture television Yogi.
    “Life is War will be here soon, that’ll be a good show,” he said, his voice hollow from the cup in front of his mouth. “At least I got laid tonight,” he said.
    We left and got into his van. I looked at the cushion, already covered with stains, where the material wasn’t ripped out in yellow chunks.
    “I think I got some blood on your seat,” I said. I didn’t think an entire bucket of blood would be noticed. “It might actually be an improvement.”
    Davey gave me a funny look: disappointed and angry. “Dude, don’t fuck up my van more than it already is.”
    “It’s just blood, Davey. Grow some balls, why don’t you?”
    I laughed but he didn’t. He’d already started the begging ritual, during which he had to coax the van to start. I watched and waited.