I made it into the gates a little too late to hear Girls close on what had to have been Hellhole Ratrace before walking over to Beach House before Tokyo Police Club before taking a breather from the stairs in VIP while Coheed and Cambria closed with the USC marching band (little trite) by playing Welcome Home (Bone Rattling) before a blast of Hot Chip and MGMT before I stacked up to the 5th row to see Muse.
This was my first time going to Indio for the festival. Music absolutely moves my world, but something about all the people and mess and being stuck for three days in the middle of the desert had never worked for me. There were bands I wanted to see this year, lots, but since I'm an in and out kinda guy, I figured the best way to approach this monster would be to see the boys and let 'em ignite my soul before I take off and then take off. That's what I did. Everyone I saw was good, really damn good. MGMT was way more polished and potentially iconic than I thought they were capable of and Hot Chip surprised me. Beach House was perfect. Muse ripped a hole in the earth, as usual, it's just how they play, and you can tell people over and over that they have to see it and that it will change their lives, but until they do, you're just spitting words...
I feel like this has been the last thing I needed to get out before leaving this city for a good, long stretch. If I didn't go, didn't see this, didn't do this, something in me might have felt unsettled. Muse finished and I didn't want to be waiting in the parking lot until 4 AM so I said good bye to a couple friends, made a move, got in my car and got out of the festival. Then I stopped. I got some gas and some neon worms and was ready to hit the road when a girl sent me a long, long text. A Girl...
There was a party happening at some airport hangar 10 minutes away, Neon Party. I was going to get on the highway before I had no choice but to turn around. I think it's a fair statement to say that I have an incredible amount of love for this Girl. We were out last friday and she pulled me aside to tell me something almost exactly like, I have been around the world and know the world's incredible people and in the time I've known you...if I had to count them all on one hand...one of them would be you. Fuck you, her words. Her words. I took them and smiled, pretended I had never even considered something so far fetching and berserk on my own, which of course I pretty much do every day. She talked about meeting me around the world when I leave and seeing each other before I go and I think it's a fair statement to say that she has an incredible amount of love for me. Do I need to mention that love can mean a lot of things? So...
When I showed up at this party, I was told to go find a woman up front, tell her my name, and that I was friends with Girl. The woman looked down at her clipboard to the top sheet and the only name there was mine. I was my own list. Inside, the place was a carnival. No, really, a mini carnival. There was a ferris wheel and bumper cars and a super slide and dollar games and one of those rides that makes people puke (awesome with an open bar!), and these, breakdancing...
...at a tucked away airport in the middle of the desert. It was brilliant, fucking brilliant. I got there sometime after midnight and found Girl shortly after and ravishing, so damn ravishing that thinking back on it means this is as good a time as any to explain the depth of my personal evolution...
I'm not sure at what point it happened, but I bet I can guess who it was a result of, probably the one you can find on here around the day of my 27th birthday. I had a lot of love for someone in the world and absolutely lost them from my life. They didn't die, they just became dead to me...or I became dead to them - whichever of the two means I was the one who got spit out. That. I think I've spent a lot of time in this world feeling misunderstood, and because of that, I've spent a lot of time over the past year and change wondering how I can let someone who has had a profound impact on my life, someone who I thought could understand my life, escape my life...post being lovers. What I'm going through now is something new, and a lot of it is coming through my head because of this new Girl, because I now have to face this and the reality that I haven't been moved enough to confront this in myself since...well, since the last time a Girl cut me up.
I used to be attracted to someone and have a need to take them to bed, right then, like it was the only satisfying force in the world. Now, when I find someone I have a real connection to, I don't want to jeopardize it with anything that even approaches a sexual relationship. Sounds a little fucked up and a little cowardly and probably also has something to do with the fact that I don't want to get mixed up in anything before I leave. The idea behind all of it sounds noble or like the kind of thing that someone could lend support to if they were trying to be supportive of me. Anyway, because of all these factors, I now in this moment have an incredible girl who floats around in my life every now and again and we started out on fire and good and now it's morphed into this hilariously tragic thing where we're both highly suspicious of each other. It's terrible or I'm just being dramatic. She's the kind of girl that has guys pressing up against her all the time, everywhere she goes. The first night we were out, I saw this clearly and told myself that I would never, ever be that, because I understood it, because all I wanted was to preserve a connection. I didn't want to lose another one because one of us tried to take that extra step. Now, here comes important growth and this is tremendous for me to say, but sex is hardly important. Hardly. Hardly. Don't get stuck on that...
Bridges started to form between us at some point, and because of that I started to worry she would think I was trying to be the one thing I didn't want to be...and I think she started to worry that her kindness might be leading me on. At some point, one of us closed up...closing the other one. I bitch a lot on here about damage sustained over the years and I have to guess that this Girl could tell some of the same stories and tout the very same wealth of pained emotion. I have a feeling. So now when I see her I'm kind but curt and evasive because I'm trying to be courteous and not drive us any further apart, which is naturally driving us further apart. And still, we're both going absolutely out of our way to put ourselves in the same places at the same times, I think because we share a common faith for the ideal that we can and should know each other well for the rest of our lives. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm after. It doesn't take me long to realize that about someone when someone turns me. Last night, I stayed at this party until sometime after or around 4 and at some point, maybe on the drive home, I realized my situation's fatal flaw. I fuck women. Clearly I can't be trusted to mean these noble things I'm saying. Clearly all I can be is cunning and eventually damaging and potentially regrettable. Even though I never made a single play, even though I never had any intention of making a play, this thing between her and I that I was going to so carefully preserve is about to be gone. I'm not here to force and I'm not going to fight and I'm not going to repair. Maybe that's passive and maybe that's cowardly too but I just don't have the time or especially the desire to be convincing to anyone but myself. You're either on or you're off and I give a fuck but honestly...I can't. So I don't.
Look at me now. Absolutely one of the nights of my life. Absolutely.
