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.