i intercepted Otto on his way out of the house to the park because it was one of those days when i didn't know how to be alone. he had brought a blanket and we each read our books in a parallel sixty nine, like my grandparents used to sleep during winter when they shared a bed to save heating. i had written to Zed to say let’s have beers in the sun and he had replied he’s frustrated over his banjo-playing so he needs to go skate to blow off steam but i could join for a concert later if i felt like it. i felt like it, but delayed my arrival and had some beers as i was reading leaving atocha station, stumbling over this one sentence over and over again, “had the effort to prolong my adolescent experimentation indefinitely shaded imperceptibly into fearsome if mundane dependency? had mythomania become methomania?” i laughed out loud because i was, all at once, a true liar who was pretending (or do i want to say trying real hard?) to be some casual spring/summer collection version of herself, who just wants to be friends and to have fun (which was true & loud enough that i could hide behind it my feelings for this boy Zed, a new kind, not the boombox type, not the fascination fling, but an earthy-sort-of-wanting-to-get-to-know-him that i was willing to sit on and wait for to crack), while simultaneously trying to extend my adolescent experimentation beyond what i felt was appropriate, as evaluated by the import of authentic societal voices in my head, who wore ties to look serious and then used them to perform autoerotic asphyxiation when no one was around. why would i allow them in my brain, a fucked-up fragment of a fucked-up world, i have no idea.

i left the park, took out a hundred krona at the ATM, fifty for a beer or two and fifty for the entrance to the place for this punk concert and then felt like i was ready to shit in my pants. i wasn't nervous, i meant this absolutely literally. so i hurried to find this place, i remembered there was a library on the same street that could save me from annihilating shame but suddenly there they are: the concert- goers, sitting at tables outside. i met hisZed’s eyes, froze but somehow kept going, said ‘hi i got to pee’ and brushed past, all in a supreme confidence that can be synthesized only from such deep embarrassing discomfort. the graffiti on the toilet door said ‘er det det det er?’ and i read it with such joy, is that all there is? almost palindromic in danish, a little victory of words in this constant ‘failure of language to be equal to the possibilities it figures.’ a little victory entrance for me, too, at least by appearance, which was enough, my only goal (besides that of hanging out with this boy) was to feel cool and calm and able to integrate and penetrate all make-belief strata of different music scenes.

after i sat myself on the bench beside him. surrounded by friendly punk concert goers, i was in my element without belonging to it, without committing to it, i didn’t care whether or not i would be identified as a fraud, because i was openly one, and i was also genuine about my excitement of attending this thing. he was chatting with some folk, didn’t pay much attention to me, which made me feel at ease, i could do my own thing, which was observing and also smiling to myself when our legs accidentally touched under the table. 

every third person sitting or standing around there, outside this dirty punk place, smelled like piss and beer, but in a friendly way, one that went along with their outwardly, overall inclusiveness of non-punk-normative-looking-folk such as myself, and if this isn’t true punk i don’t know what is. 

by the time Katinka made a spliff, i had finished a couple of beers, and when she handed it to me i imagined hearing the little beep beep of approved! that card terminals make and my relief was actually joy, just like when you buy something not knowing how much money is left on your account but you hear it and see it: approved! feeling that way and unaware of the strength of this spliff, i may have had one- too- many puffs,pushing adolescent experimentation well into that monday night of my thirties. when the concert was ready to start, i asked Katinka to lick her stamp and clone-stamp my wrist, which she did, laughing, and i, in spite of never having even tried to pull this off, just walked in, with such a trail of where-the-fuck-did-it-come-from-confidence behind me, that when i got asked to buy a ticket i showed my wrist schlepping this sloppy, vague trail of a stamp, the guy nodded and i was granted passage as well as, sorry bands who were playing, 50 extra krona to buy more hancock beers. which i did, placing myself autonomously in that space, sending Zed the look of totally awesome when our eyes met over the room and i felt like his were asking me if i’m ok. i was more than awesome actually, i was the ruling planet of my monday night, all these fast riffs made my total transition into dedicated enjoyment, already re-familiarized with punk as i was from the previous week, when i had dropped by the hardcore festival, with my post-house-warming group of acquaintances-turned-friends. we got in for free because it was so late, and as we were slightly jumping and dancing someone announced there was some japanese hardcore band playing in the other hall so we all rushed out. this other room was huge and packed with people, and without aiming for it i caught sight of zed’s silhouette and went straight to him in a giggling frenzy, pulled his hair from behind, then i ducked and walked around him behind people only to appear on his side and pinch his cheek, catch his annoyed look, give him my warm regards naughty smile, receive his and then disappear into the crowd to Elena, to whom i announced my descent into the mosh pit. i was in it for the whole show, which probably wasn’t so long, but enough to allow me to have this birds-eye view of myself, complete with an intervention from the tie-wearing-voices saying who-mosh-pits-in-their-thirties, you kook? but i took out my middle finger to them and to me, and emerged from that ebbing group pogo session with a straighter back and a joke to keep me smiling till today: i was having so much fun out there in that crowd of jumping and shoving because i’m so good at pushing people away.

and when that monday punk concert was over, i followed the group dynamics outside, new hancock in hand, drunker than i knew, so drunk that after five seconds of sitting next to Zed and unintentionally ignoring his question about my state of being, i stood up and confidently made my way again to my bathroom stall, where i carefully and maturely emptied the contents of my stomach for that post-vomit lightness. i returned to the crowd, sat next to him again, answered his question coherently, and listened in on the conversation, only to repeat step one ten minutes later. this level of going all the way on a monday night was a new peak, whichever way the gaussian curve goes, and when Zed announced he was going home i raised myself, grabbed more bags than i owned and said i’m coming with cause we’re going the same way.

for the whole ride home i pestered him to let me ride his skateboard to show him what i had learned but all i got was no, it wasn’t safe, i was drunk, it would be stupid, but i continued to beg and insist, some mechanism i had mastered in childhood to get everything i wanted from my mother and, inebriated as i was, forgot it is wildly inefficient, if not detrimental, in any forms of human interactions. we had a cigarette on his stoop before each going our own way, and even though he was earnestly annoyed with me and i was still enjoying this one-to-one, there was some kind of chemistry, imagined or real, who can tell, that i had enjoyed around him since we had met. i got safely to bed, took off all my clothes and put myself to sleep as any respectable adult on a monday night that contained loads of unreasonable fun and also some frustration: you know.