"People tell me I haven't changed at all, but I don't feel the same."
Duran Duran concert epiphanies. Blanks to be filled in later.
I will have more to say when there is time and tenacity. Beulah and I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures. We were in the very front. Pressed right up against the retaining wall. Strategically positioned at the feet of John Taylor, who gave us more pleasure than two girls with their clothes on could possibly have hoped for.
I had hoped to avoid having to tell the concert tale on account of being on a visit to the cocktail wasteland, but I'm not unsober. Just tired. We laughed a lot, though. We sang along and cheered and had quiet, naughty thoughts and then caught each other having them. And we came close to kicking some asses a few times. But no one was harmed, and Beulah and I are in love. With each other as much as with John Taylor.
I am also in love with Ima Robot.
Beulah and I are going to see Billy Idol in a few weeks. There were flyers for his show on windshields we passed. I yanked one and waved the photo of his face in front of Beulah. She snatched it from me and rubbed it on the crotch of her pants. And I laughed and laughed.
I wrote in November of 2003 about seeing Duran Duran for the first time with my sister Sarah. I wrote that it felt like it changed my life. I suppose it did. If only because things seemed so grim and unlovely for me at the time, and singing and cheering and wishing and remembering and catching the eye of the first guy who ever adorned my walls in poster form -- it all made so much of that go away. It took me out of everything. It took me back. And I remembered a time when things were not so hard and dreams did not seem so pointless, hopes so wasteful. I remembered being a young girl who believed she could marry John Taylor one day. If the circumstances were right. A young girl who could fashion a betrothal on the thrill of seeing a guy run bare-chested through the streets of Sri Lanka in a white suit.
The concert tonight was not a retelling of that same story. It was just other-worldly and wonderful. I had not been to the Sports Arena for a concert in a long time. Not since (I think) I went to see Weezer open for No Doubt (and didn't bother to stay for No Doubt, because I am a snob, and I am not impressed with Gwen Stefani, even though I am jealous of her recent dieting results) and nearly got moshed to death. And driving down there at night felt foreign. Like maybe I had never really lived in this town.
And I was tired from a long week of work and out-of-town guests and hard-to-place feelings about hard-to-reach people. So maybe I've just got my head in the clouds. And maybe they're just low-hanging fog-type clouds and not the fluffy cumulus variety that one thinks are meant when the idea of having one's head in clouds is suggested. But for the hours I was there, that stage held all that was fascinating to me in the world.
I'm no idiot or anything. We made fun of Simon's trademark way-affected stage moves and disapproved of Andy's hair. We noted that Roger looks like Kato Kaelin these days and that the sequined patch pockets on Simon's jacket were not the best idea ever. I've still got standards. But I also know the words to every song before the Thank You album and a few that came after that. I was a Duranie before I was a bra-wearer. Or very soon after anyway. And I would not feel at all slighted if John's interest in me was purely physical.
There is something dank and sad and dismal about the Sports Arena. No amount of luau-themed or Chinese food concessions can distract from the squalor of that place. The private club is less swanky than an older Carrow's. And there was a fragrance of garlic and mildew in the stairwell to arena seating. But I was amused to see the Filipino Staff Pros rocking out to Wild Boys and Rio, and I was glad they did not hassle us about being up and out of our seats. Some things bring people together even in the foulest of places.
Beulah and I shared a room in our house in Guam, and apparently she used to kiss that poster of John, too. You connect the dots.
And I bet you've had that feeling, too. You can't laugh all the time.