The other day there was a silly little festival in my college town. I obviously went because I desperately needed friends and I thought I might as well explore the town a little too. I got dressed as "alternatively" as possible. Big eyeliner, black lips, spiked collar, Bad Brains shirt, the whole nine yards. I put on my headphones and walked the half hour to the festival.
It was on the Main Street of the town and there were tons of stands and a couple stages of live music. It spanned maybe 3ish blocks. It was pretty hot and I was definitely feeling the heat after walking there. At first I walked the whole thing up and down before I really started to look around. I just wanted to get a scope of it before. I went into the record store and bought a rocky horror poster and asked if they were hiring (they weren't). Then I went into this used bookstore and bought a Franz Kafka and a Jane Austen book. After that I must've walked up and down the festival 4 times.
I didn't buy anything else or get anything to eat because there were just so many people at every stand. It was hard to even walk through the sidewalks (they didn't close off the road for whatever reason and there were stands on both sides of the street so it got pretty annoying). I only had a few short exchanges:
1. The really tall girl in the Demonias who had on funky sunglasses who was walking around with a much much shorter girl with a hello kitty back pack. My dad would have described them as "rawr XD". The tall one complimented my make up and I complimented hers. Nothing more came of this.
2. The they/them. I didn't actually interact with them but I had passed them twice and thought "ok if I see them one more time I'm going to talk to them" and then I didn't see them again. They were wearing the most average queer person outfit ever (white wife beater, black shorts, doc Martens).
3. The old black guy who was wearing a Jerry Garcia shirt who told me he liked my Bad Brains shirt. The interaction went kind of like
"Bad Brains???"
"Bad Brains!!!!"
and thats it.
4. The guy at the environmental consciousness booth that was placed between two barbecue food trucks. He stopped me when I was walking by and said "hey I know Bad Brains!" and was telling me a story about how he used to be in a band in the 80s and the bassist of Bad Brains performed a riff for one of his songs. This guy was pretty cool but at first he asked me to name the band members (not maliciously he just couldn't remember his name for the story) and of course I blanked and probably seemed like a huge poser. I thought about this a lot for the next 5 minutes but then forgot about it as soon as I saw the lemonade stand.
5. The guys in battle vests. I didn't talk to these guys either but I did stare at them for like 3 minutes trying to get up the courage to talk to them about music. I couldn't tell the bands on their vests because I was standing too far away. I walked away and told myself I'd talk to them when I passed the spot they were at again. They weren't there the next time I passed.
6. The two older guys standing outside the tattoo shop smoking. I complimented the one guys Cramps t-shirt and he just kind of grunted at me. I kept walking.
I had been there probably 2 hours and I decided I should just call it a day. I had walked to the top of the festival and was defeatedly making my way down when I heard punk music coming from one of the stages. I hurriedly pushed through people to try to see what was going on and lo and behold there was a band playing. The band had a stupid name that I'll tell you if you ask me and the lead singer was in a maid outfit wearing cat ears. I didn't really like them, they were a little too gimmicky for me, but I was just glad to be in the presence of some live music that was adjacent to what I liked.
