To the Cottage: Take a drink

At the cottage now. The water here has to run a while before you can use it. When you turn the faucet on in the kitchen the pungent bite of sulfur assaults your nose like a nail gun put one through your nostrils. It was as though someone ate a bunch of eggs and let one loose in your face. I was thirsty, but not that thirsty.

***

This morning I took a shower, the shower smelled the strongest sulfur I have ever smelled. It reminded me of Bumpass Hell trail in Lassen National Park, where there are all those steaming yellow sulfur vents. I wanted to take a shower, but I didn’t want to smell like an eggy-fart incarnate all day. So I waited for the smell to die down. Loo scolded me for wasting water here, of all places, and I jumped in the shower when it was the least egg fart smelling.

Everyone else thought that I was in the bathroom stinking up the place because of the smells that leaked under the door. They tried not to bring it up for awhile but finally Loo had to ask if everything was OK with me intestinally this morning.

“It was the shower. It has that sulfur smell, got to let the water run awhile to clear it.” They agreed it was a strong smell. I wasn't sure if they believed me or not, but I didn't say anything more.

***

I took a nap and after I woke up I started writing in my own room. Loo just came in here and started punching me in the spine, starved for attention. All I do is be grumpy and be anti-social she says. I thought about it, how I look to her right now, in my room typing alone. Maybe I am being anti social now, but she was text messaging people for a long stretch of time, so I left to write.

“What are you writing about?” she asked.

“Here, the cottage, the trip. I wrote about dandelions, and Coyles, and the sulfur shower.”

“Dear Diary, Beyo here, yesterday I walked into the cottage and looked at the ceiling, it was white. The end. I mean, what could you write about? We haven’t done anything yet.”

“I never been here before, there is plenty to write about.”

“Nobody is going to want you to review their food or hotels or anything.”

“Why is that?”

“Cause you’re painting a negative picture of the place, the cottage is cool.”

“How cool is the sulfur shower?”

“You could say it has a fresh mineral water feel.”

“That smells like the eggy farts of a hundred dudes trapped in a sauna?”

“Leave that part out, and maybe put a positive spin on it, even if it was bad.”

“Like ‘the sweet fragrance of sulfur greets you in the shower,’ something like that? Stop punching me in the spine.” She started punching me in the shoulder.

“No, sulfur stinks.”

“Yeah. I know. Can you stop punching me, please?”

“You don’t do anything.”

“I'm not your monkey. Stop punching or I’ll punch you back.” She didn’t stop. So I punched her in the leg.

“Why do you got to punch so hard!?”

“Told you to stop,” I said. She left. I felt like an idiot. Way to be the adult Brian.

***

After we made up, and I gave her a massage to make up for the punch we went for a walk. I got very tired suddenly and we had to go back and I fell asleep within a minute of me walking inside the cottage. I slept for a couple hours. The kayaking for six hours must have tired me out.

I eased into consciousness slowly and gradually I became aware of doors opening and closing.

"I don't know Gammy, where did you have it last?"

"I don't know Laura."

"Did you leave it at the Kayak guy's office?"

"Oh Goll. I just dont know," she said. Her phone rang, it was Ma, Loo's mom and Gammy's daughter. Gammy explained how she lost her check book, misplaced it, and was just beside herself about what to do. Loo and Ma offered suggestion after suggestion. Call the places you used your check book at, ask the kayak man, check the car, retrace your steps. I was unaware that she had been searching for it for the last two hours.

I took my time waking up, stretching, and finally getting up. I wasn't that excited to make my awareness known to her lest she make me search for it too. I walked out my room, too fast, and got lightheaded and saw black. I leaned against a wall and waited for my vision to come back before I felt thirsty and wanted a little bottle of water--that is to say a bottle of water that didn't come from the cottage, water that smelled and tasted like eggy fart.

I walked into the sun room and grabbed a water. On the ground next to the water was a checkbook. I picked it up and walked over to Gammy's room. As I wiped sleep from my eyes I handed her the check book.

"Is this yours?" I asked.

"Never mind Ma, Bear found it," Loo said and hung up the phone.

"Where did you find that!?" Gammy asked, her eyes locked on the checkbook.

"In the sun room," I said and drank some water. She took the checkbook and hugged me. I hugged her back and she hugged me harder. Then she stopped and placed a hand on my right arm above the elbow and stepped back.

"You help me out so much," she said with quivering lips and tear filled eyes, "thank you. Truly."

"You are welcome," I said surprised by her tears.

"You fixed the cottage door, and the screen [I forgot to mention that, pretend I told you that earlier] and now this. Thank you."

"My pleasure. I'm sorry I didn't wake up sooner, I could have saved you some time and stress," I said and I meant that. She smiled, teared up more, gave my arm a final squeeze and mouthed a silent thank you before leaving. After saying the wrong thing to her all the time I had finally said the right thing.

"Nice job Bear, she was flipping out so bad I think I was losing MY mind."

"You're welcome."

"This will endear her to you now, you know."

"It's about time. I was getting tired of messing up every one of her games and saying the wrong things. You think she'll let us stay in the same room now?"

"Are you kidding? Not a chance."

"So we better leave now and pretend to be platonic while under her gaze."

"Yeah, gimme hug and then scram. No funny business now."

"Kay," I said. I hugged her. She grabbed my butt and gave it a squeeze before laughing maniacally.

"Ahh Loo, how I love you."

To the Cottage: Arrival

After that we reached the cottage. Yay. Loo and I talked the days coming to today about canoeing out there because they had a canoe at the cottage. It had been a long time since I got my canoeing merit badge, but somethings you don’t forget, you know? I was ready to canoe the wild blue yonder.

We opened the garage up. And there behind everything else was the canoe. Loo and Gammy started doing the, “Oh gosh I don’t know if you can get to it,” thing. Followed by the, “It’s late in the day,” thing and the, “It’s windy, you need your paddling arms for tomorrow when we go down the river,” thing. And finally ending with the, “we can come back to the cottage in the future,” thing.

It bummed me out. We don’t have lakes we can splash and paddle in close by in Cali.

***

But Today is the next day, and we are going to a place to rent a kayak and go down the river for five hours, so that should be cool. I made a sandwich and Loo packed the water. We should be ready to go. I’ll try to take pictures and write about it.

***

What an experience that was. First the top memories, the ones that stand out. The owner had a Rottweiler named Lucy. She was a pretty girl and friendly and reminded me of Nina back home, mom's Rottweiler. I have a soft spot for rotties, my mom loves them and our first two dogs were Rottweilers, one of the greatest dogs we have ever owned, which is saying a lot. My brother learned how to walk by clutching Eva's fur and both of them walking one step at a time. There isn't a dog I relate to, respond to, understand or enjoy more than a Rottweiler, having grown up around them, I just get them. And I like them, and I saw that Lucy was a sweetheart, wagging her whole body and her little nub.

But Gammy didn't like her. She doesn't like Rottweilers, "Because they are vicious, mean dogs and can't be trusted," she said shaking her head, disgust plain on her face.

"Right cause all Rottweilers are the same," I said. She didn't say anything, but wore a guarded face. I think she understood my comment to be a sardonic one about her stereotyping rottweilers, but she didn't want to show it. At least she was aware of her prejudice.

I made a show of calling Lucy over and rubbing her all over and patting her flanks like I would on Nina (or any big dog) and said, "What a vicious and mean man-eater you are. Yes you are. You can't be trusted can you? No you can't, any minute now you're going to bite my face off." Lucy licked my arms and

neck before going down and rolling onto her back so I could rub her tummy. "Yes, this is all a ruse to lure me in for the fatal bite, what an evil dog you are. Yes you are." Gammy left quickly. She went to talk to the owner while Loo and I took turns hugging Lucy and taking pictures. Like this one of Loo hugging this godless killing machine. She is so brave. Can you see the evil/hate in that dog's eyes?

The trip down the river was nice, through heavily wooded areas, and some people's backyards. I saw animals I had never seen before like beavers and muskrats. There were a pair of deer drinking from the river as we slipped by, although I was the only one who was interested in them. Deer out here are a nuisance, dangerous, disease ridden animals who need to be hunted to keep their numbers in check. Different than seeing deer in Cali, which would be considered a rare treat, you'd be lucky to see one. For the residents seeing a deer in Michigan is like seeing a ford Taurus, who cares?

I had to share the two person kayak with Gammy who was very unadventurous. There would be an island that split the river to either side, and one side looked a little quicker, or less obvious than the other and I'd start steering towards it.

"Where are you going? We need to be going left."

"Don't you want to be adventurous and go right? Who knows what's back there."

"Uhh. No." She said this in a way that made my question sound ridiculous, like I asked her to go cliff diving or something. We spent the rest of the time paddling in the center of the calm river, like a long pond. I got bored, and a little annoyed at paddling by all these places that could be explored. I think Loo saw that in my face and steered her Kayak into ours, bonking the plastic kayaks together.

"Goll, Laura. Watch where you're going," Gammy said looking away.

"Sorry Gammy, I'm new to kayaking," Loo said. Maybe Gammy believed her the first time, but we bonked kayaks quite a few more times and that excuse stopped working. It probably made her doubt the first explanation too. It broke the monotony up though and I thanked her.

We saw ducks, and geese and birds and some fish. We ate lunch on a tiny island in the middle of the river, which almost didn't happen because Gammy wanted to eat on the sand bar (she had been down this part of the river before), but Loo quickly pointed out that we didn't know where along the river the sandbar part was.

Parts of the river were totally devoid of human activity, and I started to think, "Wow an untouched little pocket of the forest. The birds are sing--" Just then a train sounded its air horn. It ruined the fantasy that the place was untouched by man. I wanted the fantasy, but after hearing the reality I preferred it more than the fantasy. Nothing says nature was here than a woodpecker pecking at the same time as the train blew its horn.

***

To the Cottage: Lunch break

We are closer now, there are fields of dandelions here, acres and acres of them. More dandelions than blades of grass, growing wild. If you were here you could see the parallel lines in dandelion growth caused by riding lawn mowers that fail to thwart the might of Mr. Dan D. Lion. Rawr!

Why is it called DandeLION? What is the etymological root of that word? I’m glad you asked.

dandelion |ˈdandlˌīən|

noun

a widely distributed weed of the daisy family, with a rosette of leaves, bright yellow flowers followed by globular heads of seeds with downy tufts, and stems containing a milky latex. • Genus Taraxacum, family Compositae: several species, in particular the common T. officinale, which has edible leaves.

ORIGIN late Middle English : from French dent-de-lion, translation of medieval Latin dens leonis ‘lion's tooth’ (because of the jagged shape of the leaves).

Who knew? I didn’t, and because you asked me for it neither did you.

There are more open fields here, this time full of wild mustard, an identical color to dandelions, but with smaller, tighter flower buds. It makes the yellow field more uniform, there are shades of yellow and green here, rather than spots of green in a mostly yellow dandelion blanket.

We just passed a campground and Gammy asked me if anybody was camping there. I had to remove my iPod because all I heard was “…camping there?”

“I didn’t catch that, what?”

“anyone camping there?” she asked. It sounded like, “you wanna go camping there?”

“Do I want to go camping there?”

“Anyone camping there?”

“I can’t make sense of what you’re saying,” I said. She had repeated herself three or more times with the same tonal inflection: this slightly nasally, slurred, manner of comfortable/familiar speaking she had been using for the last 70 years or so. I wasn't use to it and couldn't understand her, also she was talking into the windshield and I was behind her.

"She is asking you if anyone is camping at that campsite," Loo says as we approach the campsite.

I look into the campsite and don't see anyone camping. Why was this important?

"I don't see anybody camping now, no," I say wondering why she was asking me. I was humoring her, the way you do with old people when they ask some question and rather than talking to them like someone else you say, "Gosh, I'm not sure. What a GREAT question," like they are retarded but you don't want to let them know about it.

"You're supposed to guess before we get there," she said slumping her shoulders in disappointment. Whether she was disappointed from my patronizing tone or my inability to read her mind I am not sure. She shakes her head. "You can't say how many are there when we get there. You are supposed to guess BEFORE we get there. Before you can SEE." Evidently this was a monumental failure on my part, though I don't know why. I need to know why though, it's my nature.

"Why do you want to guess how many people are camping before you can see them?"

"It's a game that [Gramps] and I used to play. We'd guess how many are camping, closest number wins. We use to do it all the time on trips to the Cottage." She was quiet for awhile.

Was this the first time she had gone to the cottage since his death? It was. They had been coming up here for more years than I had been alive. A force of habit then, had caused her to ask the only man in the van how many people were camping up ahead. And being unaware of the little game had not answered the way she had grown accustomed to in the decades of trips up here. I felt guilty at first, if only I could have known the game. But the guilt shifted to something else, something far from guilt, something a little less than indignation, but not by much. It was unfair of her to get all worked up over my ignorance of their game. And rather than bring that up to her I'll put my ear buds back in and continue typing, I don't need to remind her that her husband of 60 years is gone.

We have reached a place called Coyle’s. Loo is excited. Got to go eat, bbl.

Coyles is a buffet with animals heads on the walls and wood carvings of elephants and dolphins. Both of which are probably equidistant from here. The food is country style broached chicken, taters, gravy, meatloaf, macaroni, and Frog Legs. GROSS. I kept frogs as pets when I was a kid until I was in high school, I can’t eat frogs. Talk about different strokes.

To the Cottage: Almost There

We just passed a river. Muskegon river I think is what it is called. As we passed over it I had an urge to go into the water, and explore the river. The color of the river was a mix of sky, forest and riverbed, a blueish-greenish-brownish color that was clear enough to see fish in, fish that let the river carry them downstream, effortless.

I want to get on a boat and go from the river start to the river end. And while I know full well it has been done by somebody else--whom charted it, shared it with a cartographer who added it to the US survey maps, who used that still to calibrate satellites that mapped the river pixel by pixel to be viewed by me at my leisure using Google Earth—it just hasn’t been explored by me. I like exploring things. I recall some fond memories of lava tubes I explored in northern California at a place called Lava Beds National Monument. I want to go back. Explore the ones I never saw, and the ones that were reserved for experienced spelunkers only. Memory is a funny thing. Here I am riding in Gammy's Toyota Sienna over a river in Michigan and I get memories of exploring lava tubes with my family in California.

The memory is of a Biblical-swarm of flying beetles diving head first into our fire pit and popping a second later--for hours. It started as a single bug flew straight into the fire we were all gathered around. My brother snorted and said, "Stupid bug." and we all agreed. Then like the start of a rain storm, two more, than it started pouring, pouring hard, heavy, beetly, hair-and-face-exploring bugs. So thick were they that the light of the full moon was lost in their number. Aimless, they flew to their deaths in the pit of the bonfire. The next morning we saw that the fire pit had been filled to the brim by these bugs.

My inquisitive family tried to explain what had happened based on our understanding of nature shows and insect books, but no hypothesis was offered that we could all agree on. Someone suggested we ask the Park Ranger. It was probably mom, but it could have been dad; it is much too rational to be my brother or I, we were too smart, and too busy figuring it out to ask someone else. Eventually, our desire to know the official story that would explain this phenomena overcame our desire to seem smart. On our way out we asked the Park rangers all about it. They didn't know, but promised to write a letter explaining it to us after some considerable research. We were bummed. I know I wanted an answer right now! But we wrote our address down anyway.

A couple weeks later that park ranger, whom I was certain had told us to leave our address and go so we would leave her alone, did write us back. The two pages explained the bugs were called midges, a mostly aquatic insect that lives in the water of Tule lake, not far from Lava Beds National Monument. 99% of their life is spent under water as little mosquito larva-type bugs and then they grow into beetles with wings and fly up in clouds to mate, this is their only purpose as they are without mouths in this form. The males die afterwards, and the females lays the eggs first, than die leaving the larvae to feast on their nutritious bodies, as well as save the edible food for the larva. That is the bug, how they ended up in the fire is as follows. The smoke of a nearby forest fire had blown across Tule lake, and the water's temperature pulled the smoke right across the surface where the midge orgy-swarms would have been, but they couldn't perform in the smoke so they flew away, disorientated and like many bugs were drawn to our exceptionally large fire, which they might have confused for the moon, which is how most bugs navigate in the night.

The memory was of us, the family, siting around a bonfire and being pelted by beetley bugs, like June bugs. The memory is short and it gets cut shorter because inside the Toyota something strange is happening.

Gammy is humming. She does this. Loud enough for me to hear over the tunes playing on my iPod. (current tune: Dvorak’s Moldau/ Smetana Sherzo Molto Vivace). Loo looked to me as I pulled one of my ear buds out, and then looked to Gammy and asked what she was singing, and she started vocalizing her hums. Some song about yanks and sending the troops over there. I didn’t know it, but it reminded me that the civil war was fresh in their minds in this area (civil war shops are plentiful).

The roads here, they are mostly straight and cover hardly any vertical distance. On either side of these two lane roads thickly wooded forests hug the shoulders. I look into them as we drive by, seeing a large area within that make me wonder if anybody has ever explored it. All I know is that I haven’t and I want to, as we drive by.

As we drive by I see forests

places I’ve never been.

Places I want to go

but will never see again,

As we drive by.

To the Cottage: The road up there

On our way to the family Cottage we passed Grand Rapids, a big city in Michigan that was absolutely worth putting my book down, they all agreed. And by all I mean Loo and Loo’s grandma hereto referred to as Gammy. We passed a large brick building that was close to the expressway--in Cali we call those freeways. It was shockingly close. It had to be some trick of the brain, of the eye, of something. Nobody in their right mind would put a building that close to a major freeway/expressway.

This building we passed was so close I had to look at it twice and Gammy said, “That building there is the closest building to an expressway in all of America.” This warranted another look--total looks for the building now: three. The building’s corner was so close to the freeway that I bet if someone stopped their car, got out, walked over to the edge and reached out to the building they could touch the bricks.

As we approached in the new Toyota Sienna I saw that they were pink bricks, scoured by the wind of passing cars and semi trucks. I bet someone could have touched it from the freeway.

I wanted to be that someone. To be that man that walked out on that country freeway and reached out and felt that pink brick, the pink mortar, and those rectangular holes where bricks use to be before they fell. I wondered how often they fell, and if anyone was hurt.

I wondered how a building got to be so close to a major freeway. Would anything like that happen in Cali? No, our reinforced concrete buildings are far enough away from the freeway and isolated from the vibration of passing cars with their own freeways exits. Didn't American civilization start on the east coast and grow towards the west. By the time it got there some planning was done to build the new cities and their skyscrapers equidistance from one another and the roads. But on the east side of the USA you can find brick roads, strangely paved streets and randomly placed old buildings. Like when I was driving around the low-cost houses around Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, they all seem to be different: different layouts, different heights, different colors and different materials. In Cali a low-cost house is around $250,000, the equivalent of a Michigan mansion. It would be sandwiched between other identically colored, textured, sized houses which have two or three different internal layouts. The lawns would be the same size, the garages too, and the backyards for that matter. It’s just different. I prefer the diverse houses peppering Kalamazoo for a quarter of the cost of cookie cutter Cali houses. In fact as I drive by I am always looking at them, into them, and find it amazing that next to that house is another differently styled house, maybe made out of stone, or brick or stained wood, or painted green, blue, yellow or pink, with a porch with Hellenistic columns, or not, with a garden full of tulips or a giant rusted anchor.

We just stopped at a Meijers gas station but there was no meijers store attached to it. I went inside the little kwik-e mart attached to it loking for a composition book because I forgot mine and wanted to jot some things down. Loo wanted to come too, like we were going to go on an adventure. We marched with purpose into the little mart and walked its internal perimeter once, but before I could walk the second Loo said, “Bummer Bear (the nickname she has given me, long story that has nothing to do with being furry) Looks like they don’t have any.”

“Yeah,” I said and kept walking, I wanted to be sure.

“They don’t have any, come on little bear.”

“Hold on let me check this corner.”

“I looked already they don’t have any.”

“Will you let me look?”

“They don’t have any, come on.”

“Alright already,” I said as I followed her out the door. It annoyed me on a level it shouldn’t have.

I took a breath, put myself in her shoes and looked at me, this tall writer boy on a mission to find a composition book in a gas station. How fruitless it would be, it isn’t an item they sell at gas stations. How she must have looked in the places I hadn’t, found nothing and asked me to go back to the car before Gammy finished filling it up. Had she heard the whining in my voice? Had it given her pause, my reluctance to leave, to be sure that this gas station was without composition books? Had I annoyed her with my childlike whining? Her repeated statements to leave were more motherly than annoyed, like I was being a little kid. How is it that women have the ability to use that mother-like tone and say something and have an effect on me so that I simply acquiesce to whatever she is saying. Maybe it’s a role thing, because I’m being a whiny kid, she has to be the unaffected mother? Didn’t I read somewhere that men seek out women to marry who are just like their mothers? I did. Who wrote that? Where did I read that? I can’t remember. Random memory: Mom saying, “Men want to marry virgins, while they play the field. How do they expect to find these virgin women I wonder?”

Tell me about Detroit: The Pit

Anyway, we walked up and watched the opening bands. I don't remember any of them, so they must not have been very good. I remember one band was from Kansas and they said there was nothing to do there so they started a band. I liked that for some reason. Loo tugged my sleeve and nodded her head towards the stage.

Loo wanted to get close to Flogging Molly, so we did. We got real close. And they walked on stage and everyone cheered and quickly piped down with the lead singer's hand gesture. They played a song that starts off slow and abruptly gets punky. (Rebels of the Sacred Heart)

I told myself that I didn't want to be in any mosh pits this time around because I just didn't want to. I wanted to watch the music from a safe distance and enjoy the experience of seeing them play and to see how others were moved by the music.

"It would be a cool thing to write about later," I told myself, "To be the observer of others moshing in the near distance."

I looked around to spot the mosh pit starters. You know, the tough looking guys that look like they came here to kick some skulls in. I spotted some a ways back and made a mental map in my head and made sure that whatever happened I wouldn't go that way.

In front of the stage, standing-room-only, were probably a hundred or more people. I want to say 200-ish, even though I dont know what 200-ish people look like. The music starts and everyone is gently swaying to the soft part of the song.

"This is so cool," I tell myself. "I like this."

Then the soft part ended and jumped to the punk part about a minute into the song.

Standing-room-only became moshing-room-only as 200 people become a pit of rhythmic flailing bodies. People from behind rushed forward elbows first crushing us against the front of the stage. Crushed against the back of the person in front of me, which happened to be a man with long black hair in a pony tail. He used the same hydrating curls shampoo as me. We pushed back demanding our own space, as though their forward push was a sneak attack that demanded retribution. After we pushed them back we became an open sea of people, of bodies, twirling currents of humanity moving to the whim of the mob mentality set to music. And it wanted to move. Needed to move. I tried to refuse to let it carry me to the other end of the stage, but it didn't matter. The chaotic will of a sea of 200 mosh-piters will only cease between songs.

I kept my eyes on Loo, to make sure that if she fell I would be able to catch her, or protect her from the pervs that like to grope girls when the lights go out at concerts. The pit had other plans, however.

The tumultuous human sea fought to go in conflicting directions until it split down the middle, parted by Music. Half the people in front of the stage, including Loo, flowed left while the back half that I found myself in flowed right. Someone stepped on my shoe lace and I tripped, and fell onto someone else. So close was this person that I was able to lean against them and yank my foot back at the moment whoever was stepping on my shoelace lifted their foot.

I lost Loo in the undertow of wild bodies.

The two conflicting currents pooled on either side forming two open areas for people to mosh around, pushing, flailing, falling, punching, kicking, head butting and generally rocking out to punky pan-pipes and guitars.

I was cut off from the familiar. Forced from my comfort zone, my woman, and my preferred proximity to strangers. People I had never met and will probably never meet again rubbed against me, bouncing and jumping, men and women, soaked with sweat and dry as chalk, clean like Irish Spring soap and nasty like a week's worth of whiskey sweat in the same set of clothes. Nothing had gone right. It was completely opposite what I wanted, and yet I could not repress a smile.

And then I joined them. I became one of them, bumping into someone else, another blogger perhaps, blogging this very hour about how a tall guy in a green flannel shirt smelled of tires and rubber and fell against him, or her it could be a her.

Everyone was doing their own thing. Some people punched the sky, others punched one another. I crashed into one of the mosh pit starters and he fell down. Then he covered his face amidst the stomping feet. I reached down to pick him up as fast as I could, but everyone else beat me to it and lifted him up. A crowd of helping hands. I wanted to apologize to him. To tell him I didn't mean to crash into him, to knock him down, that someone behind me crashed into me and I was like a billiard ball. But he bounded away without a glance in my direction.

It was then that I understood the purpose of a mosh pit, or thought I did. I was totally missing the point. The mosh pit was a place to feel the music, or express the music. To take the sound in, let it move you, and then redirect that feeling in a physical way. This wasn't a place for social mores or niceties. If you got punched, stomped, groped, pushed or pulled it was all part of it, as regular as breathing.

After the song there was a pause before the next song, I took this time to get my bearings and find Loo. I found that throughout my moshing the two pits on either side had switched positions. I ran through the people toward the other pit--a skill I picked up from high school cross country. Near the front of the stage, stood Loo surrounded by guys. I pushed my way through them until I was against her back and the guys accepted it and gave me space. She must have thought I was some random pervo because she pushed me away. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it twice. She spun around and saw me. She smiled. The next song started.

The two pits merged into one giant one and we moshed together. Some guy tapped me on the shoulder and yelled something to me.

"What?" I yelled back

"Will you help me up?" he yelled back. I thought about what he was asking. I didn't understand. Than he pointed upwards and I got it. I laced my fingers and knelt down, he slipped his foot into my hands and looked upward before he vaulted himself on top of the crowd. There cheering hands held him aloft while he laughed towards the front of the stage, where the crowd handed him to the bouncers who took him down. I couldn't see where they went, but I saw the same people crowd surfing throughout the night.

Someone crashed into Loo, who crashed into me. I stayed up but Loo was tossed aside like a little kid smashed by a college linebacker. I picked her up, by blind luck though because a crowd of helping hands darted down at the same time as me. People also pushed others away from the fallen. It was a strange social dynamic, someone falls, others help them up, others try to move people away from the fallen so they don't get stomped, and then encourage everyone to resume moshing once they are up.

I lifted a lot of people up that night to surf the crowd, and lifted the fallen. But suddenly I felt unbearably hot, smothered under quilts and electric blankets during a SoCal summer heatwave. Every breath I took in didn't seem to contain any oxygen. I panicked. I felt like vomiting. Over the course of a few songs 200-ish people had breathed all the air and we were now sharing each others breath. The music seemed to be less crisp, like I was further away. The bright colored lights dulled and I couldn't tell the difference between them. I stopped moshing/dancing/flailing and used my cross country breathing techniques to remain conscious. Mercilessly the song ended and Loo suggested we get some fresh air, which was good because that's where I was going.

I grabbed two pints of Guinness on the way out and we drank them in the frigid Detroit air. For the first time I can remember I was thankful it was so cold.

Tell me about Detroit: Coat Check

We ate our food and waited for the line to get inside the concert to die down before walking out of the bar. We had to wait in line anyway and get our ID's checked. I got the, "You're a long way from home, California," line a couple times. As though California is my name. It's a cool name, I think, and in the absence of my native state, and the familiar, I will take it.

Walking through the threshold I take note of the locations of coat check, male and female bathrooms, exits, and the bar so I can forget about them later when I need them.

I wait in line at coat check to check my sweater behind a pair of drunk 28 year old Detroit-native girls. They smile at me before one of them says, " You're tall!" This seemed to be an important observation from a five foot seven girl in high heels to a boy of six foot four.

"I sure am. And you're drunk," I said.

"I am not," she said.

"Yeah you are Sammy," said the other girl. "You are drunk out of your skull."

"He doesn't need to know that," Sammy said in a slur.

"But I do," I said.

"Where you from?" asks the other girl, her name was Debbie. I found that out later, because I'm going to skip that part of the conversation.

"California, socal."

"Oh Cool! California. Can I hug you?" she asked as she hugged me.

"Sure," I said. I didn't have any time to respond. Drunk girls, in my limited experience have a tendency to hug at exceptional speeds. Also her question was more of a vocalization of her intent, which is nice when people do that, I think. Her friend took this opportunity to hug me too. They agreed I was tall.

Then the coat check guy looked at them expectantly because they were next.

"What do you want?" Sammy asked defensively.

"Coat?" the guy said.

"Oh Yeah." They took of their coats, joined their men fresh from the manroom and waved good bye to me. I waved back and handed the coat check guy my purple zip-up sweater and made small talk about drunk girls and if he checks sweaters at his coat check window. He smiled, said he would check just about anything.

"In fact, some broad asked me to check her purse with a dog inside," he said as he handed me a ticket and pointed to the paper by the window that said, "Don't lose your ticket. No ticket no coat. No exceptions." I made sure to tuck my ticket somewhere safe so I wouldn't lose it. I made sure it was so safe that it was even safe from me. At the end of the night I couldn't find it, and only because of my incredible ability of total-recall was I able to recount to the coat check guy the 2 minutes we shared when I gave him my sweater: the hug-happy drunk girls, my purple zip-up sweater, and the woman that tried to check her purse dog.

"Wow that was impressive. I normally don't remember stuff like that, but I remember you." I gave him five dollars in the tip jar.

But that happened at the end, later, and it was much more stressful because I saw people walk up without a ticket and get turned away by the coat check people pointing to the paper: No ticket no coat. No exceptions.

I was an exception.