Fairies Wear Boots

On my fifteenth anniversary a friend in recovery and I went to see Black Sabbath in concert.  When I was drinking I liquidated a lot of my scant resources on tickets to see heavy metal bands like Sabbath.  After I got sober I found I had trouble listening to their kind of loud, hard, frantic music for a while.  I could pop in an AC/DC CD from time to time but there was no way I trusted myself to survive a live performance.  The roar of the amps from the warm up band, the smell of the dope wafting through the air, the sense of impending mayhem was too much for me.  I didn't place myself in those situations for a long time.  The thought of that onslaught made me uncomfortable and I wisely stayed away.

My buddy and I bought tickets from a music consolidator.  Good seats, fourth row.  I noticed right away one of the benefits of sobriety: I had a job and some money in my pocket because I wasn't spending everything I had on beer and pot so I could afford great seats.  But on the day of the show I began waffling, and I actually called up John and said: "Dude, I'm bailing.  I don't think this is the right thing for me to do."

He said: "No, we should go.  We'll be OK.  We're going together, and this isn't your life anymore.  You'll see."

I'll always remember walking through the gravel parking lot and into the outdoor venue.  I forgot how loud it was; the air was physically vibrating, the bass a steady jolt in my breast bone.  I went to a Jethro Tull concert once and was in Row One right in front of a 90 foot high bank of industrial speakers.  My left ear rang for 3 months.  It's still not right today.  I patted the industrial ear plugs I had in my breast pocket.  I never go with out 'em.

What I saw in the concession area was this: a group of men, mostly, many of them my age, at a Black Sabbath concert on a week night.  I got to see what I would have looked like if I had never stopped doing what I was doing.  Not only was it not attractive or compelling, it was sad.  I saw a lot of thousand yard stares.  I could have walked up to any one of them and said: "You don't really have too much to do tomorrow, do you?"  I wasn't tempted to drink or use.  I was reminded of why I no longer did.  I recoiled as from a hot flame.

Anyone, I had a blast at the concert, which I remembered.  I had also forgotten how I usually mistimed my high so that I was ready to crawl under my metal folding chair and pass out about half way through the show.  And the peeing, all the peeing.  I held it until I was ready to detonate because I was never sure I could find my way back to where I was sitting, or squatting, usually.  I never timed the peeing too well, either.

Ozzy didn't look too good anymore.  He was either yelling: "C'mon, make some fucking noise" or "Show me your fucking hands" or "I can't fucking hear you."  He didn't look like he had much longer to live.  He didn't have any other things to yell, although he seemed to know most of the words to the songs.  He tried to run around the stage a little but it was more of a fast shuffle than anything.

Funny thing: we were so nervous about being there that we totally forgot where we parked.  We wandered around until the parking lot was nearly empty.  Got home at 2:30 AM. 

Ears were ringing.