I grabbed her hair and yanked it hard. She reeled out of her seat and lunged for me. Bitch slaps and karate blocks. A hefty shove and victorious shrug. Mine. Elegant, of course. The stunned audience applauds ….
Such was my fantasy last night at a Keb Mo concert at the hoity toity Villar Center, Beaver Creek.
2nd row seats. A date with my man. Keb cool as ever.
And two miserable cows behind us. Loud. Complaining. Incessant.
Beeatches! I wanted to yell “Shut the f*** up! Have some consideration! Leave! Ugly is as ugly does!” The sledge-hammer volleys of my indignations hurtled through my brain …and there remained. My stomach tied itself in knots….while my feet kept time to Keb’s rhythm.
What would you have done?
I did what most people do: turn and glare. Then, ignore it as best I could. I didn’t want to make a scene. Didn’t want daggers in my back for the rest of the show. Didn’t want to lose my cool.
But my cool was simmering….
It’s the dynamic tension of opposites that made the experience so rich, so visceral, so tantalizing. I was both angry at their insensitivity and joyful in my imagined super-efficient Charlie’s Angel–ish dispensation of kick-ass virtuosity! Sexy. I was enlivened by their discordance, amid the cosy blues of Keb and his band. He calmed me down. They fired me up. The oscillation of my awareness between the two created the story I’m now telling ….
No moral.
No ‘how to handle it’.
Just life.
Observed.