From last weekend’s sweaty, flailing mosh pit at the Crank County show, I still have quite a few huge bruises. Generally, if you’re the sober one in the pit, somehow all the rubbery, bouncy drunks fall on you–they leave unscathed, you leave looking like you’ve been beaten with a lead pipe.
I have a huge bruise on each arm. I have a bruise on my left shoulder. I have a bruise on my right boob, and I remember the exact moment of it, because after that smashing blow to the cleavage, I had to request that the gent in question stop heaving himself into my decolletage with such force. He complied, thank goodness, or I might have a matched set of cleavage bruises today.
I’m not complaining, mind you. I could’ve moved out of the crazy action and into a tamer zone at any time, but I chose to stay in and had a really great time.
The collection of bruises got me thinking about bruises from shows past, and the best bruise ever. The runner up bruise(s) come from a Vic Crown show at Stella Blue where I threw myself in the pit not so much to rock out but as sort of a referee. Someone was going to get hurt if someone (someone sober) didn’t yank the drunk people up off the floor…so that’s what I was doing when I got nailed by some airborne flailing guy. The next morning, my right arm was purple from the shoulder all the way down to the elbow; it was so horrific I had to hide it at work to avoid the inevitable questions.
The winning Best Bruise of All Time comes from a Ramones show that I went to in Atlanta with Barton and Wiley (Barton, by the way, has gone on to do some good musical things of his own). Where were we? Some warehouse of a venue. Social Distortion opened, and very few people seemed interested in them, but I sure was, so I went down front and there I stayed, front and center, hand on the security rail that kept us off the stage.
And then the Ramones came on, and suddenly that vast warehouse was full of people, all of them pushing forward, all of them wanting my spot in particular. I absolutely lost Barton and Wiley in the crush of people. There was one guy determined to pull me loose from the security rail so he could have my spot; he kept reaching around me and trying to yank me backward. So I bit him, and he stopped. My shirt was halfway off, but I wasn’t letting go to adjust it. If I ended up topless, I was going to be topless front and center during the Ramones’ set.
People were crowd surfing all over the place. It was so packed in there, crowd surfing was easy to do, there were no holes to fall in, just people everywhere. One doofus got pushed all the way to the front, and he kicked me in the head. I pushed him along, and he was back moments later, carried by the crowd, and he nailed me in the ear. Last but not least, on his final pass through the front, he nailed me in the back so hard that I hit the security gate, momentarily losing my breath.
After the requisite post-show meal of waffles, I drove us back to Swannanoa. Wiley and Barton slept. I crashed fully clothed as soon as we got back, dead tired.
When I woke up the next morning and pulled off the remains of my shirt and the tatters that were once a decent bra, my back sang out a painful tune. I approached the mirror, looked over my shoulder and saw in living color, angry purple, the perfect imprint of a Doc Marten on my back; I would guess it to be a size 10. Best Bruise Ever.
Rawk on!!
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