31 Days of August

Day 8: The Concert

Day 8: Write a scene that takes place at a concert.

"You do realize that I'm the best boyfriend ever, right?" I sighed as Alice dragged me closely behind her. I honestly couldn't believe that I was here. With the three dads, five nine-year-old little brothers, a handful of other dedicated boyfriends, and twenty or so gay guys, things weren't exactly looking plentiful for the male gender at this particular event. In fact, you could probably count the dudes here on your fingers. Legit, this was not my scene.

"Yeah, whatever," Alice muttered back. We had returned to our seats (though, I wasn't really sure why they were called "seats" when we had literally done no sitting this entire time), after having gone to get Alice a few T-shirts from the merchandise stand things. She had insisted that we needed to get matching tees, so I for some unknown reason shelled out thirty-five bucks (crazy, I was fully aware) for a freaking T-shirt, and now we had matching T-shirts with the band (if they could really be called that) name and picture on them. Personally, I didn't exactly intend on ever wearing it, but I had a hunch that Alice's would quickly become her favorite item in her wardrobe.

I was about to sit down on the hard surface of the stationary seat, but Alice stopped me, sending me a look. "What?" I groaned. "Why can't I sit?"

"Because," she huffed, scowling at me. I rolled my eyes, and then allowed them to dully survey the venue surrounding us. It was like a sea of tween girls. As targeted ages went, Alice and I were on the very edge of the spectrum, if you weren't counting the three middle-aged women we had seen when walking in who didn't appear to be attached to a group of kids. They had gone alone. It was a little too creepy for me, but so was Alice at times, and I still dealt with that.

Anyways, there were a lot of girls here. Sorry, make that a lot of young girls here. Half were dressed towards the sluttier side, hoping that the members of the "band" would notice their non-existent levels of extreme cleavage and exposure, and then magically fall in love with them. Everyone else pretty much looked like Alice and I: idiotic.

Before we had left her place, instead of letting me wear a nice plain shirt with nothing on it, she forced (no, like, she physically forced it on my body) me to wear a previously white T-shirt that she had ruined with glitter glue and fabric paint. It had a bunch of inside jokes and phrases that related to the band, and she had written something on mine like, "She's my girlfriend, but she's yours if you want her." Honestly, I didn't really care. The second I had actually accepted the fact that I was going was when I gave up all my rights. 

Alice had put on a big black tutu, and asked if I wanted to wear one, too. I turned her down for that one, and she made me hold the giant sign that she had made out of neon yellow construction paper as a punishment. We both looked like complete and utter idiots, and she was making sure to capture the entire experience digitally so that all my friends could ridicule me for all of eternity when this shitfest was over. I wasn't exactly looking forward to going back to school on Monday.

I let out a sigh, and then felt a tap on my shoulder from behind. It wasn't Alice because she was right next to me, so I cautiously turned around, dreading talking to whatever lunatic I would inevitably be facing. When I saw who had tapped me, I realized that they were in the exact same boat as me--and it was sinking and drowning faster than the titanic. It was a dude, also wearing a personalized shirt, and his hand was captured by a girl's. We should've started a club: Boyfriends Who Dragged To Boy Band Concerts By Their Girlfriends (BWDTBBCBTG--the acronym was pretty long, but whatever). 

"I feel ya, bro," the guy joked, nodding his head in the direction of Alice.

"Ha, nice to hear that I'm not alone," I returned.

"She wanted me to spray my hair pink," he told me a recount of his traumatizing experience, gesturing to his girlfriend.

"I was asked to wear a tutu," I sighed, sending him a sympathetic look. This dude knew exactly what I was going through. In most cases that sentence couldn't be said, but right here, right now, I was positive that everything I was feeling that guy felt the exact same way.

"Rough," he shivered. "We definitely deserve to get laid after going through this."

"Agreed," I nodded my head eagerly. 

"She made me learn all of their names on the ride over here."

"I was forced to listen to her sing their entire first album without any music to back her up."

"We've taken more 'selfies' than I can even count."

"We had to buy thirty-five dollar matching shirts."

"No way, dude? Same!"

"Really?"

"Yeah. What color are yours?"

"Black."

"Lucky. We got the pink ones."

"Sucks for you."

"Hell yeah, it does!"

"We should, like, get paid for this or whatever."

"Babe, please shut up!" Alice said, shooting me a glare, her eyes glued to a giant TV screen. Her boy band wasn't even on stage yet. The only thing that was playing were commercials that happened to feature them, and yet, everyone was screaming like it was the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. 

I just ignored her, turning back to the other member of the BWDTBBCBTG club. "I saw a dad buying two cups or beer," my new friend said to me. "He had the right idea. I honestly don't know how I'm going to make it through this entire thing sober."

"Yeah," I snorted, "me neither."

His girlfriend then leaned over to him, and whispered something in his ear. He let out an annoyed groan, and then waved to me, going off wherever to do whatever with his girlfriend. I turned back to Alice at that point, and she was smiling like she had just won the lottery, even though all she was doing was watching a stupid ad for a new perfume line or whatever. 

"Alice," I began cautiously, not wanting to offend her, because let's face it, offending her favorite pop group was like saying I hated her religion, "you know that's not really them, right?"

"Shut up!" she snapped at me, punching my arm. I just shook my head, contemplating whether or not it was worth it to start playing a game of Temple Run. It wasn't. Alice would just snatch my phone out my hand, saying that I was wasting time when I could be watching the video screen of commericials.

Suddenly, the lights began to dim and screams belonging to thousands of teenage girls erupted. My girlfriend happened to be one of the ones shrieking, so I just closed my eyes, pretending that I was anywhere but here. It didn't work. An announcer's voice said, "Introducing--" but the name of the boy band got cut off as the boy band themselves stepped out, causing the screaming to maximize so much to the point that I thought I would go deaf. 

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! It's them!" Alice shouted, latching onto my arm as hard as she possibly could. I just stared at what was going on around me, and wondered how I had ended up here, at a boy band concert, with my girlfriend, wearing a shirt with glitter glue on it, as my sense of hearing became increasingly worse by the second. If this didn't qualify as an FML moment, then I didn't know what did. FML.