Going It Alone: The Bad

Being without a significant other means that I no longer have a built-in person to bring along when I discover that Vicious Vicious is playing at the Entry in a few hours. The challenge of dating was finding things to do together, but now that task has reversed into finding people to invite to the things to do. No-one was without plans so late on a Saturday evening and, while I prefer to be able to share my show-going experiences with others, I rarely allow the lack of a companion to deter me from hearing a band I like. Especially when they are as reclusive as Vicious Vicious. I decided to go on my own.


This was nothing new to me. I quite frequently ventured out alone when I lived on other continents, whether it was to visit a museum, watch a Liverpool match down at the pub, go on a wine tasting tour, or listen to a trad session or poetry reading. Nothing especially untoward ever happened, and I almost always talked to some interesting people. 


The individual I met at the Entry that night was, well...interesting in a different way. Some people in front of me went to refresh their drinks after the opening band finished, and I moved a little closer to the stage. This was a rather large mistake, since it put me next to the person who was to put a damper on the rest of my night. He saw that I was holding an empty beer bottle and asked if I needed another drink. I said no but decided to chat with him anyway. 


During the course of our brief conversation, he revealed that he was nearly a decade older than me, told me he hated jazz after I said I used to play saxophone, referred to himself as a poindexter, extended his driving-gloved hand for me to shake three times and forgot my name. Finally his friend, who had been at the bar, returned and started talking to Driving Gloves. I took advantage of the diversion by inching imperceptibly away from him while feigning great interest in some old text messages. I carefully avoided any further eye contact until he reached over and took the empty bottle from my hand. I smiled a thanks at him for relieving me of that burden but did not engage further. 


At long, awkward last Vicious Vicious took the stage. I honed in on the lead singer/guitarist because he was the furthest away from Driving Gloves and there could be absolutely no mistake about where my gaze was resting. After the first song, Driving Gloves shouted, "Free Bird!" No one laughed or acknowledged the joke, and I cringed for both of us. I cringed again when someone in the crowd had to ask his friend to stop flailing so much because he had clipped an innocent bystander. I doggedly continued to avoid glancing anywhere near their direction, and I thought Driving Gloves had taken the hint.


Up to this point, my encounter with him had been nothing more than a slightly uncomfortable bit of small talk, much like any conversation you might have with someone with whom you just can't connect. But about three or four songs in, he reached across the people I'd allowed to squeeze between us and extended his outstretched pointer finger into my peripheral vision. This juvenile method of drawing attention to himself worked: I looked at him. But since I don't respond well to vague threats of being poked in the eye, my response was probably not what he'd hoped. I glanced over only long enough to shake my head and say, "Don't do that." Then I promptly resumed ignoring him. At least outwardly. It was hard to regain much focus on the music, and I'd lost much of my initial excitement about being at the show. 


Surprisingly, that was not the first time a man has attempted to garner attention by pointing his finger in my face. When I was studying abroad in London, I took a side trip to Barcelona with one of my fellow classmates. He began to annoy me less than a day into the four-day holiday, and we very, very narrowly avoided a bus debacle that would have caused us to be stranded together for another night. I was quite ready to keep to myself and write in my journal by the time we boarded the plane back to London, but he had other ideas. When he wasn't putting my tray table down repeatedly, he was hovering his finger an inch or so away from my body without actually touching me. I suppose that pointing experience was more troublesome than this more recent one, since I wasn't trapped on a plane with Driving Gloves.  


I soon learned that being with a friend or boyfriend at the Entry probably wouldn't have saved me from unwelcome advances. Soon after the finger-pointing incident, an extremely drunk guy came up and started loudly hitting on a woman standing behind me. His pickup line was, "That girl's not wearing a bra, is she?" referring to the backup singer on the stage. Eventually the poor targeted woman's boyfriend started talking to Drunkety Drunk, who told Boyfriend that his girlfriend was wonderful, amazing, and he was going to go find someone who would get effed up with him. When he left, Boyfriend remarked to Girlfriend, "I guess he didn't notice I had my arm around you the whole time."


I didn't wait to see if the band did an encore. I squeezed through the crowd as soon as they'd finished their main set, periodically checking to make sure that Driving Gloves wasn't following me. He didn't, and I'm sure he was harmless. I hope he keeps going to the Entry, taking chances and initiating conversation with people. I hope he chats up someone who will let him buy her a beer, laugh at his jokes and connect with him over a mutual hatred of jazz. Most of all, I hope he's not reduced to having to point his finger in her face.


Next up: Going It Alone: The Ungainly