Girl in a Rock Show

ARRGGGHHH! I clenched my teeth in blissful elation, lost to the music while holding Trixie's legs, jumping about to the beat as she goes off above me, all of us crazy kids screaming out lyrics along with Phil.

"...swing it high or swing it low...swing it anytime where you wanna go...more than you are, more than you are...more than you are now...more than you are, more than you are...more than you are now..."

The crowd is goin' fucken psycho, squashed in the pit, tens-of-thousand stinking sun-burnt kids, all jostlin' and jumpin', sweaty bodies bangin' into one another, and we yell out the lyrics at the top of our lungs. Several people crowd surfed, being handed around above the mosh, and me almost coppin' some fucker's foot to the face. In a very brief moment of clarity among the frenzied joy of the mosh, I noted with a smile how the owner of the foot has lost their shoe. Poor bastard probably never saw it again, likely one of the objects thrown from one section of the crowd to another, like the plastic bottles and cans, then thrown elsewhere, maybe even on stage.

Trixie waved her arms about above her head, clapping, dancing and singing above me, and I jumped about as much as I could. Lucky she's slight and light, so I actually jumped a bit, both of us really gettin' fucken off on the music. If I didn't know any better I'd say there was a wet spot on the back of my neck where her crotch sits. Maybe it's her, or maybe I was sweatin' there, amongst all the other sweaty kids thrashing about like mad cunts in the humidity and thirty-fucken-degree heat.

Next song up: Rock Show, one of my favourites! Oh, fuck YES! Too. Fucken. Good! This is going to be so fucken sick! I sucked in a deep breath, gritting my teeth in excitement, holding Trixie's legs as the guitar intro wah-wahs, the sound breath-taking, giving me goose-bumps all over, then the drums cut-sick, thumping the air, guitar wailing and grinding, distorting and feed-backing, and I couldn't help but dip my head violently with the musical shift, but Trix seemed to anticipate my move, kept her balance, and there's tens-of-thousands of us singing along with the Grinners at the tops of our voices.

"Would you like another pill? For printing out the dollar bill...in the end it's all the same, keep on lookin' at the weather vane..."

Guitars screaming, drums pounding, Phil singing, air vibrating, crowd yelling and jumping, me ecstatic, then Trixie pats me on the head, and when I look up, her face was directly over mine, long hair falling about me, and she laughed with a wicked grin and points to the front of the crowd, right there, metres in front of us. Without a word I know what Trixie wants. She want to go there, right up front, to the stage.

Fuck it, why not?

Some chick with long red hair on another bloke's shoulders goes off near us and she lifts her top, showing her tits to the band, while among the chaos another feral long-haired rat's jumped the barrier between the crowd and the stage, making a failed leap for the edge, keeping the huge security guys near the front distracted as they haul him away grinning to the side of the mosh with one hand in the air, middle finger up, saluting the crowd, leaving a significant gap in the security cordon.

Pushing through and we were at the front, me helpin' Trix jump the barrier and she leapt at the stage, along with another girl, who failed to make the grab and was caught by another security bloke. Trixie, however, grasped the stage's lip, hauling herself up and turned to the crowd, standing on edge, screaming something with a wild-mad grin, baring her teeth, one eye wide, the other hidden behind her mid-brown hair with its bright pink streak falling half across the left side of her face, down the front of her sweaty Spiderbait t-shirt with its cartoon tiger prominent, and she raised both arms aloft, index and pinkie fingers extended in the rock salute horns.

"YAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" I yell, my arms and index fingers fully extended in the air at her, and she looked back down at me with a feral grin, completely wild up there on stage; magnificently rock-and-roll, while the music reverberates through us, and band and crowd around me are all jumpin', except for lead-singer Phil who's stumbling about only metres from Trix, noticing her and giving the briefest smile, pointing in her direction before singing, "get in the rock show...there's another fine reason...kid in a rock show...there's another fine reject..."

With guitarist Pat rippin' out a mad squealing solo, a huge security dude with arms like tree trunks comes along, gesturing up to Trixie, and she went willingly, helped down off the stage by this man-giant, who then escorted her to the edge of the mosh. I tried to keep pace, pushing through the crowd, right up front and using my own considerable muscle to avoid getting crushed against the barrier, but copping another crowd surfer's foot to the side of the head in the process, and this time the foot wore a shoe, but I ignored the pain, anxious I'll struggle to find Trix again in the sea of jumping, thrashing bodies.

And suddenly at the edge of the mosh Trixie was in front of me, her face still wearing a wild grin and we slapped each other's hands in high-five, laughing and yelling in elation, and she hugged me, and I picked her up in my arms, my eye's locked on hers, both of us grinning...and she kissed me, smashing her lips against mine, there on the edge of the mosh pit.

Not a perfectly aimed or gentle kiss, but perfect nonetheless, and though she took me completely by surprise, I kissed her back with vigour as she held me tight; two eighteen year olds in the sea of sweaty, jumping joyfulness, the band playing on, their music pumping through the giant speaker stacks, and then hand-in-hand and grinning, we re-joined the fray of the mosh with all the other mad cunts, rockin' on and singing at the top of our lungs. "...get in the rock show, there's another fine reason...still the same show...still the same reason...get in the rock show, there's another fine reason..."

Our Big Fucken Day Out! Fuck! Yes! Best! Fucken! Day! EVER!

~0~

My sister Jodie's boyfriend, Eric, scored our Big Day Out tickets. One of Jodie's friends, Miriam Fletcher, was also going, so Eric offered us all a lift from Brisbane's north-western suburbs down to the Gold Coast for the festival. Miriam's younger sister was Beatrix, a girl from my year in high school, who I'd known since year eight, but who I'd hardly ever spoken more than a few words to during our five years at high school together.

And now we were hanging out at Australia's premier music festival, lost among the sea of sweaty punters, Trixie enthusiastically dancing close with me to Basement Jaxx, laser lights flicking and strobing frantically here and there in the large, crowded hot tent known as the Boiler Room, where electro dance music was played. We had no idea where Jodie, Eric or Miriam were, but we didn't care, because we were together among the sweaty, heaving masses, glow sticks galore, dancing to Red Alert.

And the music keeps on playin' on and on...

"Hey, Trix!" I yelled over the thumping throng.

"What's up!" she yelled back, leaning her ear close to me to hear over the smashing beat, still dancing with a grin on her face, hands clasped above her head and moving her lithe body in ways which made me mentally kick myself for the umpteenth time that day for not making an effort to get to know her at school.

"I'm fucked, ay. Dry as a nun's. After this I gotta get a drink of water." Before we'd arrived I'd sworn not to drink any alcohol during the hot day, but not an hour ago Eric tempted me with two pre-mixed tinnies of Jack Daniels with cola, one on top of the other, and being the eighteen year-old dickhead I was, I'd downed them both fast, like sweet nectar, despite not having any water for over an hour or two previously. Now I felt dehydrated and desperately needed to guzzle some H-two-O.

"Yeah, okay, I do too."

Basement Jaxx were eventually done and we pushed out of the tent, ears seriously ringing, throats dry, and people about us dancing along to the beat pumping through the atmosphere from some band rockin' a nearby stage. We found a stall selling bottled water and guzzled, sitting side-by-side on the ground for a while, our backs against a warm concrete wall, just chillin', watching the crowds walk by.

"Miriam can't find Jodie and Eric." Trixie was looking at the text message on her Nokia. "She said to meet her over by the main stage before the Fooey's come on."

I laughed, checking the text my own sister sent to my Motorola. "No chance of finding her once the Foo Fighters are playing. Jodes and Eric reckon they'll be up front in the mosh too, so we probably won't see them again till we meet back at the car."

"Miriam's gonna be upset she's lost me so I'll tell her to come to us."

I turned to Trixie, watching as she typed her text economically as possible, fitting in as much detail in as few characters. I smiled to myself in disbelief, again wondering how I'd hardly paid Trixie any attention throughout high school. Like, I'd known her and stuff, but she'd flown under my radar, hanging out with other kids among the two hundred or more students in our school year, while I hung out with my mates down on the oval, playing football almost every single lunchtime for the past five years.

I couldn't help but keep mentally kicking myself. Trixie was really fucken cute and way fucken cool. When we'd picked her and Miriam up in Eric's car earlier in the day, she'd jumped in the back, sitting in the middle, next to me, shyly saying, "Hi, Brett." But after no time at all we were chatting like best mates once we'd discovered our musical tastes were very similar, wanting to see most of the same bands.

We were teenagers of the 90's, growing up with massive doses of 'alternative' 'indie' rock and electronica played on Triple-J, the Australian national youth radio broadcaster, and on Rage, the TV program for music videos, and also the Recovery TV program too, where our favourite indie bands played live every Saturday morning. We were excited to be attending the biggest music festival in the country, with both minor and major local and international bands, and once through the festival's entrance gates, Trixie and I spent the entire time in each other's company, moving between the various stages where some of our favourite bands played, sometimes hand-in-hand so we didn't lose one another in the crowd.

She finished her text message and turned to me, catching me staring and gave me a funny, perhaps uncertain smile in response. I smiled back, wanting to ask, where have you been all my life? But she'd been there right in front of me for the last five years and I'd missed the memo. I said the next best thing which entered my head. "I can't believe you made it up onto the stage through the Grinner's set. Fuck, you were mad! So good."

Trixie laughed. "It was so fucken good, ay. Like, I was famous for a moment! You should have seen the crowd from up there, Brett, jumping like a wave from front to back! It was sooo fucken sick."

"Hey, get in the rock show, Trix...get, get in the rock show," I sang, bumping my knee into hers, and she smiled, her grey-blue eyes leaving mine and looking down at the ground between her legs for a moment. Perhaps she was blushing too, or perhaps it was a little sunburn. Or both. I gave a little chuckle and swigged some more water and tipped a bit over my curly head for good measure.

"There you are!" We looked up at Miriam, who'd gently kicked Trixie's shoe. I'd known Miriam for years, since she was one of my sister's friends, three years above me through school, and she was cool and I'd always thought her quite cute too. However, I'd never interacted with her too much, other than saying 'Hi' when she was over at our place visiting Jodie, and I'd never thought to get to know her sister Beatrix in my own year at school.

Fuck, I must have been blind. And stupid. And a complete fucken dickhead for being so blind and stupid. Because they were both similarly cute, and there could be no mistaking Miriam and Beatrix were sisters, with the same long mid-brown hair, same grey-blue eyes, same sharp ski-jump nose, same smile and both having sharply angled jaw-lines ending in distinctly cleft chins. Both were slim, with skinny legs poking from Miriam's faded and ripped denim shorts, and Trixie's short blue denim skirt. They could easily be mistaken for twins, and apparently sometimes were.

"You missed Trixie up on stage with Grinspoon," I told Miriam, grinning up at her. "She's a fucken BDO legend. World-fucken-champion now."

"Were you the girl who made it onto the stage, Trix? I saw but was too far back to recognise you! You're a fucken mad bitch aren't ya!" Miriam said it all with a laugh.

"Yeah. Where were you?"

"About mid-way back through the crowd. Too far away, but I saw you. Fuck, Mum'll love it when she hears what you did!"

"Mum'll be spewin', more like it."

"Nah, she'll love it. Remember all her stories, back in the day? Anyway, let's get a good spot for the Foo Fighters."

Miriam, Trixie and me stayed together through the Foo Fighters, singing along with Dave Grohl to songs such as My Hero and Monkey Wrench. Absolute fucken classics. Trixie and I were deep in the crowd of many tens-of-thousands, jumping about or swaying, and then belting out the lyrics to Everlong at the top of our voices.

"...If everything could ever feel this real forever...if everything could ever be this good again...the only thing I'll ever ask of you, you've got to promise not to stop when I say when...she sang..."

The song gave me goose-bumps, as it always has and always will, and I looked at Trixie next to me, catching her eye, gaining a smile, and I slipped my hand in to hers, and she gave my hand a squeeze, naturally as if we'd been dating, like holding hands was something we regularly did. And for a moment in time, among the thousands, Trixie was the only one in the crowd who mattered. The only one in the world I even cared about.

The Fooeys set went for an hour, and I swear Trixie and I held hands for half of it. They finished up by smashing out This is a Call, and Miriam, Trix and I went crazy, frantically throwing ourselves about, moshing like rabid animals, and afterwards Trixie and me grinned at each other, excited and letting out involuntary laughs, our bodies bumping together, close, our hands seemingly finding one another again, fingers interlocking. Miriam noticed what was going on, because she gave us a smile, causing Trixie to genuinely blush and look away, smiling coyly too. Nothing could have wiped the smile from my lips either.

We took the opportunity to rest through Nine Inch Nails, popping out to take a pit-stop in the filthy, stinking festival portaloos, before pushing our way back into the crowd for the The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. They came on stage late in the evening and went totally berserk; Flea shirtless and slappin' his bass and bangin' like a total madman, and Anthony holding the microphone to his lips, belting out, "Should've been, could've been, would've been dead, if I didn't get the message goin' to my head...I am what I am, most mother fuckers don't give a damn...oh baby think you can, be my girl, I'll be your man..."

Guitars screaming, drums thumping, air vibrating, the band jumping, crowd bouncing, crowd surfers pushed about above our heads, and some sunburned drunk munter spewing on the ground next to us, then instantly skolling down more beer before tossing the can far into the crowd, the remaining beer spraying about above everyone.

The crowd surged, pushing into us, knocking both Trix and Miriam's slender bodies forward, so I put myself behind Trixie, placing my hands on her waist, squatting down and lifting her to my shoulders. She felt so light, or I'm strong. Or both. I stood behind Miriam, pushing back at the bloke knocking into us from behind, while Trixie wriggled on my shoulders and started air-drumming above my face, the Chilli Peppers smashing out, "Kiss me, please pervert me...stick with this..."

"...is she talkin' dirty..." Thirty or forty or probably fifty-thousand of us all sang it at the top of our lungs.

At the same moment Trixie tapped me on the head and leant over, her hair dangling down around me, and she sang loudly at me in the close space between our faces, "Give it to me sweet sacred bliss, your mouth was made to suck my kiss!"

The angle of our second kiss was awkward, since she was above me on my shoulders, lips back to font, her chin squashing into my nose. Our kiss was sacred and blissful all the same, and her lips lingered lightly over mine as both of us broke into upside down kissing smiles. Pure. Fucken. Sex. Magik! ARRGGGHHH!

I kissed her lips again; just a light peck, and we grinned before getting back to moshing, dancing and singing. The Chillis' set was fucken incredible, and then after another hour or so, they finished with a big encore, smashing out The Power of Equality, the entire crowd goin' in-fucken-sane!

Afterwards, with our ears ringing and our bodies buzzing, we moved like sheep towards the exits with the rest of the crowd. Euphoric, excited, pumped, many people yelling and letting loose with ear-splitting whistles, some with glow-sticks in their hands, and others tossing glow-sticks away, high into the night sky. And everyone with happy, elated smiles and musical memories to last a lifetime.

Trixie stayed on my shoulders, singing, "Give it away, give it away, give it away now...give it away, give it away, give it away now..." and clapping and dancing in the warm night air, and I saw Miriam about to be swallowed up by the crowd, so I reached out, taking her hand, and she let me pull her back to us. It's odd, but we walked like that out the gate and up the road, until the jubilant crowd thinned a little, Trixie on my shoulders singing and clapping and swaying, and the wrong sister's hand in mine, gripping each other hard simply to keep us together.

We finally met up with Jodie and Eric at his silver Toyota Corolla, and piled in, getting caught up in the post-festival traffic-jam exodus clogging the streets for many blocks. It didn't matter, because we were all fucken buzzing, Eric driving, his cigarette flaring up red-orange in the darkness, then flicking glowing ash out his open window, chatting animatedly with Jodie in the front passenger seat about how fucken amazing the Chemical Brothers' set was, which Miriam, Trix and I unfortunately missed.

I sat in the back behind Jodie, and Trixie was squeezed in the middle, between Miriam and me, our thighs rubbing against each other. Windows down in the hot, humid night, stereo playing Pulp's album Different Class, then we finally made it to the brightly lit Gold Coast Motorway, swinging right and flying down the entry ramp, speeding north towards Brissie at one-hundred-and-ten kilometres-an-hour into the night, me pumped and howling out the window like a wild dog.

"AAAHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!"

~0~

"Do you all want to come back to my place?" Eric asked us, I'm fairly certain because he didn't want to drive the additional five kilometres to take us all home, then drive back to his place. His parents were away for the weekend and he wanted to spend the night with Jodie, and she no longer lived at home with Mum and Dad and me, so Eric wasn't going to drive her halfway across Brisbane to where she lived over near the university either. "We can all chill out by the pool. Like, have our own little after party."

Eric's parents earnt a bit of coin and were showy with it, living on a sloping acreage down the side of a hill. Their house was split-level, with a levelled entertainment area and in-ground pool adjacent to the bottom story. On the lower floor of the house was a rumpus room with a full-sized pool table in the centre, plus a lounge in the corner, and there was a guest bedroom at one end, and a laundry at the other.