“Well, I mean, I’d like to bring YOU. But if you think, Whoa hey, this rock’s too a-rockin’ for me, I totally understand.”
This is a common and blatantly obvious trick men pull to kick their wives out of certain activities. I’m gonna go to this thing, but totally feel free to not come. I leave that option to you because I am sweet and kind.
“I’ll go,” she said.
“Okay. You sure?”
“Sure. Sounds fun.”
“Double sure?”
“Yeah. Why? Do you wanna go with someone else?”
“What? No. That’s crazy. Who better to share an evening of music with than my one true love?”
“Oh, please. Invite a friend.”
So I did. Turned out none of my friends could go. But my wife still could, so off we went.
The seating at Merriweather Post Pavilion was broken in two. There were actual seats at the front, which were protected from the rain and which I could not afford. Behind those seats was a wide swath of grass where general admission folks could lay down a blanket, crack open an Igloo cooler filled with gin-and-tonics, and dance around like dirty hippies. We got to the lawn and virtually every available blade of grass was already covered. What’s more, the two of us represented the smallest party going. Around me, there were groups of ten, twenty, even thirty people, already shitfaced and overly enjoying themselves as if they had been ripped right out of a Bacardi Silver commercial. I didn’t know it was even possible to have that many friends, let alone so many friends orbiting you all at once. My wife and I found a tiny space to wedge ourselves into and we quickly realized that, even when you’re a couple, you can feel a terrible collective loneliness. It’s a kind of shared loneliness that grows even more pronounced once you’ve isolated yourselves with live children.
I’d like to take a moment here to let you know that first-time parents are fucking idiots. Part of the joy of being a veteran parent is watching new and prospective parents monkeyfart their way through the process for the first time. They’re stupid. Understandably stupid, but stupid all the same. We were no different back then. We bought all the wrong shit for the nursery (an electronic paisley swing? SOUNDS ESSENTIAL). We felt compelled to take every hospital class even though hospital classes are useless and often feature disgusting video displays of colostrum leaking out of a decidedly nonphotogenic breast.
And we were far more overprotective of the fetus than we needed to be. My wife knew so many people who had experienced miscarriages—real, true, awful tragedies—that she was terrified of having one herself. I acquired that terror in turn. Hit a speed bump too fast? MISCARRIAGE. Divulge potential names to your mother too soon? MISCARRIAGE. Get in an airplane? YOU BETTER BELIEVE THAT’S A MISCARRIAGE. So when we arrived at this concert, we both were still on High Miscarriage Alert. But we managed to calm ourselves down and get excited about the show. I was into my fourth tall boy and very pleased that I had a designated driver for the evening.
Then Jet took the stage and set their amplifiers real, real loud. This was fine by me because ear pain lets me know the music is working. I started nodding my head like a good white person and then I looked over at my wife. She was traumatized.
“Oh my God! This is loud!” she said. I think she said it. All I saw were the lips moving.
“I KNOW! SO GREAT!”
“No! It’s too loud!” She looked down at her belly, terrified that the guitars would somehow rawk the fetus right out of her. I rolled my eyes.
“Oh, come on. Really?”
She gave me the stink-eye. I immediately regretted the eye roll.
“What I meant to say is, you’re totally right!” I said. We left the blanket and fled to the concession area, where the music couldn’t get to us. “What do you wanna do?” I asked.
“I’m just . . . I’m a little scared.”
“Well, do you wanna, like, leave? You don’t wanna leave, do you?”
“Maybe I could call my doctor,” she said.
“That’s a great idea. You should call her. That would set your mind at ease and then we could enjoy the concert . . . TOGETHER.”
“She might get pissed at me for calling.”
“Screw that,” I said. Doctors go to great lengths to guilt-trip every patient into not calling them outside of office hours. They have the whole trap set. They have that voicemail message that tells you to call 911 first. Then it says, “Well, if you really have to talk to the doctor, leave a message on our answering service.” They give you every opportunity to feel like shit for bothering the poor doctor during dinner. It’s a process designed to weed out the faint of heart. I refused to be cowed. “Don’t feel bad about calling her,” I said. “You pay those people hundreds of dollars every visit. Call the shit out of them.”