Obsession

Ch 2 - Going All Out

From Traci: Would it be weird if I said I liked 5SOS Ashton?

That was the first text I received from Traci once I made it back home the day following the concert. I laughed out loud over the way she clarified him as "5SOS Ashton," as opposed to my son, Ashton.

To Traci: Not at all! I'm the one who likes the weirdo, remember? But I thought you liked Calum???

From Traci: Well, I can't really make up my mind yet. LoL

We basically spent the rest of the day sharing links to videos. I knew at that point we were hopelessly head over heels.

We had only been testing the waters of our newfound fandom when 5SOS announced that they were going to be performing at the B96 Jingle Bash in Chicago. At the time, there were no other 5SOS shows scheduled anywhere near us, so we knew this would be the only opportunity to see them again anytime soon. Not that Chicago was anywhere near us, because we lived in Alabama and Kentucky. But it was closest, and we weren't opposed to traveling.

We often traveled together out of Nashville because it was a midpoint between us. So that's where we met up to fly to Chicago a couple weeks later. Of course, it was snowing in Chicago, so our flight was delayed a bit. But we finally made it safe and sound. Conveniently, we found out that the guys were flying into the same airport. We landed six hours before they did, but we didn't know that it would be that long at the time. We landed around 9:30 a.m. and sat down to figure out a plan. Our conversation went something like this:

Traci asked, "We're not seriously waiting around for them all day, are we?"

I replied, "I don't know what to do. I mean, there's nothing on Twitter about them leaving LA yet. So who knows when they'll get here?" After a few moments of silence while we thought it through, I offered a suggestion. "Okay. How about this: if they're not here by noon, we'll go ahead and leave."

Traci considered my suggestion and nodded slowly. "Well, okay. All we have to do before the show is check into the hotel. So we can wait until then."

We saw pictures on Twitter of the crowd waiting downstairs. There had to be 200 girls. It was crazy. And there we were, inside the terminal, just us two lucky bitches.

Noon came and went, but we stayed. We'd committed and there was no sense in leaving if we had nothing else to do. We were bored out of our minds until they finally landed around 3:30. Several other fans had trickled in by that time.

Then, just our luck, security wouldn't allow them to stop for any of us. We were literally within arm's reach, but all we got was a wave in passing. So that really sucked. But it was something, at least.

Even though that time was a bust, we had such a great time at the show, we knew we'd never be happy if we didn't go to one (or four) of the Rock Out With Your Socks Out shows. It was their first headlining tour, and how could we call ourselves fans if we didn't go?

The problem was that we'd missed out on tickets because our infatuation didn't start until after all the shows were sold out. So we were forced to buy our tickets from resell sites, which was crazy expensive. But we'd already sold our souls to this group and no longer had any shits to give. We settled on two shows in Chicago, plus the last two shows of the tour in Tampa and West Palm Beach. We'd always thought it would be fun to go to the last show of a tour, because they looked like they were so carefree, fun, and full of energy. So we were finally making it happen.

We splurged on first row for the first Chicago show, and second row for the second night. Then for Tampa, sixth row, and third row for West Palm Beach. Yes, we went completely overboard. But YOLO.