Anymore, when something like this happens, I just assume my body is finally in the throes of releasing my poor, idiot soul from this mortal coil, but I was only a kid then. So when I smelled what I guessed to be my brain cooking and felt the subterranean rumble of something huge lurking outside my sleep, my first instinct was not to say a Sh'ma, but to jump out of bed and see what was happening.
Goddammit.
What I'd smelled was asphalt bubbling under my bedroom window, a scruffy Charon in a hardhat riding this tarry Styx in a steamroller while three or four imps in reflective vests stood off a ways and watched. They were repaving the road. On that day of all days. It was easily the most exciting thing to happen in Black Creek that summer. And while normally it would have been a good excuse to grab a lawn chair and a lemonade and stare at all the hulking technology making its way through my sleepy stretch of Route 305, I had bigger plans.
Chuck's dad would be giving us all a ride to the Warped Tour in Buffalo - Chuck, his cousins, Dan and Meghan, and myself. We were supposed to leave in half an hour, and they wouldn't be able to get to my driveway with a boiling moat of asphalt in front of it. I had to move quickly. I grabbed the 25 bucks on the corner of my dresser, money my mom had given me to buy a bunch of key chains meant to support our high school football team, and ran out the door.
Sorry, mom.
I was a chubby 15 year-old and couldn't move that quickly, but I trotted the mile as fast as my thighs would churn, past two cornfields and the abandoned taxidermy shop, to my grandparents' house to bum a ride. I was afraid Chuck was calling my house while I was chuffing that mile, and, when I didn't answer, they would leave without me. It was a long jog and a longer drive to Chuck's, past the Amish, over the bridge, and up Tibbetts Hill. I didn't wait for my grandfather's truck to stop before I opened the door, said "thanks for the ride!," and bolted up the driveway.
Dan and Meghan were noodling around with the guitars in Chuck's basement when I got there, nervous about missing Millencollin - their favorite and the first band of the day. We'd have to hurry, though it was out of my hands now. We could only pray - or holler up the stairs to hurry up, anyway.
After Chuck's dad had finished eating what must have been the longest sandwich in the world, we piled into the van and coasted down the hill. This was it! We flew over the bridge on a divine punk rock mission, past the Amish, past the cornfields, and over the black work of those helmeted, steamrolling bastards. We were free!
The drive from the top of Tibbetts Hill to Buffalo takes an hour and twenty minutes, and I swear it took us a week. When we got there, LaSalle Park was crawling with people - on the side of the road, crossing the pedestrian bridge over the 190, all drawn to the mass of humanity swarming inside park itself. We had arrived. "Keep an eye on your wallets. We'll be back at five." Sure, dad, sure, Mr. Dockey, okay, Uncle Dave, and we didn't wait for the van to stop before the four of us bolted out the door and into the gates.
We missed Millencollin, but that was soon forgotten in the swirl of mud and people and noise that stood in front of us. This was my first concert - I'd never seen so many human beings in one place. I was awestruck. My friends, on the other hand, were no Warped Tour virgins, so I followed their lead and wedged myself into the crowd waiting for Anti-Flag's set. As soon as the band mounted the stage and the music started, it felt like I'd been swept up by the enormous, sweaty hand of God.
I was no longer in control.
This was Heaven.
We spent the day between the main stages, listening to the Suicide Machines while waiting for NOFX, Good Riddance leading into MxPx, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones before Green Day.
And Green Day. Oh, Green Day.
Once upon a time, I lived and breathed that band. I had the tapes, then the CDs, the shirts, the pins. I wrote an urgent letter to whoever was running their website, begging them to play a small show for us in Olean, New York, "no press, no tickets, just punk rock." I joined the Green Day Idiot Club. Membership came with a newsletter and a signed band photo, which I would rip into 365 pieces, write "I love you" on each one, tape them to the squares of a calendar, and present it to my high school girlfriend. At the time I couldn't imagine anything more romantic than to destroy something sacred in the name of "love;" and I couldn't imagine anything more sacred than Green Day.
I was a boy obsessed. I was an Idiot.
I screamed my ass off when Billie Joe brought a fan on stage to strum a few chords of Op Ivy's "Knowledge." It didn't matter that I'd never played guitar in my life. "Me! Pick me!" And when it came time to call one lucky soul forward and hawk one in her open mouth, I screamed again. I wanted his loogie. Back home, I was the Green Day Kid. But here, I was one of a thousand. I stayed in the crowd.
When those first few chords of "Geek Stink Breath" rang out, I thought I'd died. I'd left behind the hayseed mundanity of Amish buggies and roadside cornfields and come to this holy place to see my heroes make noise. And when the set was over, after the last note of "Good Riddance" had been played and the drums burnt as an offering to Whatever Lives Up There, I died again. A little piece of my soul broke off and still lives in that day, in that mud-slick pit.
Like all things on this earth, it was over too soon.
Back in the van, floating toward home, I popped the One Man Army album I'd bought with mom's money into a portable CD player and hit play. Between tracks I heard Chuck say, "watch out for those kids playing with the ball, dad."
"Good eye," he said, and drove on.
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