February 9, 2004

Hank Plays Palm

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Went to see Henry Rollins at the end of January at the Carefree Theater.

That guy is righteous.

Period.

It was but a short 50-mile drive through dwindling rush hour traffic to the small venue in Trendyville, Florida. Weave here, gas there. Not so stressful, all told.

I got to the venue and found my way to the ticket booth.

“Hook me up,” I told the ticket hawker. He fiddled just a bit and…

“I think you’re going to like this. The seat is right…about…here.”

His finger dragged along the seating chart, slowed and pointed to an aisle seat, ninth row center. The seat was close enough to spit on the back of first row heads, but not enough to hit the stage. I didn’t know how perfect it would be until I got to my seat about 10 minutes before show time.

She is brunette, tan, brown eyes and sat one seat to the left of mine.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” she replied with a becoming smile full of clean, white teeth.

I sat and leaned back.

She broke the slightly awkward silence by asking if the line was rather long, wanting to step out for a quick fag. She wasn’t talking to the guy next to her, and for some reason I just asked.

“So, you came alone, too?”

“Uh huh,” she answered, with a nod, and we introduced ourselves and got quickly acquainted. Just found out about Hank three days before her drive up from Miami, she’d told me, and, like me, had never seen one of his spoken word performances.

After a failed attempt to explain the abstract relationship between film speed, shutter speed and aperture without a camera in my hands to provide an example, she politely excused herself to grab a beer from the lobby vendor asking if I wouldn’t mind watching her bag. Of course not, I’d replied, and gawked as she walk away.

She returned with a fresh beer and Henry took the stage just as she sat down.

He ranted for three solid hours about the gamut of politics, his trips to northern Iraq and Afghanistan for the USO, doing a record with William Shatner – yes, Capt. Kirk – his catching a would-be burglar in the act, and a number of other things that had everyone hanging on his every word.

I concentrated hard on Henry’s harangue through my short attention span. It’s amazing what $24 can do as a motivator. I paid for the information, I’m damn well going to pay attention to it!

But the one constant through the show – other than just laughing my ass off, and cheering at the left-wing spew – was thinking of ways to ask this Latin beauty beside me for coffee, or bad diner food, or something somewhere, anywhere close by.

I’d stolen a glance shortly after the show began and saw a pair of small-framed, black, horn-rimmed glasses balanced on the bridge of her nose. She was oh, so sexy.

My conscience wrestled back and forth between ‘ask her out’ and ‘you just started dating someone.’ But before I could come up with a decent plan of action Rollins unraveled the microphone cord from his left hand, thanked everyone and dashed off stage left.

We inched toward the door with the mass of bodies at the rate of molasses, my conscience in the throes of its wrestling match. Small talk filled the void and as we got outside. She fished her smokes out of her purse and lit one. With her it was definitely something I was willing to overlook.

But my better judgment got hold of me and I walked back to my truck – thinking of someone I had the mistaken notion was special – for the lonely, late night drive back down south. I date one person at a time.

One.

Period.

Hindsight is so 20/20, and I now realize I should have pounced at the opportunity to get to know this petite, liberal, Latin beauty. But I’m still positive that I made the right decision to walk. Opportunity is one thing, but I expect the same kind of respect from others lest karma unleash its wrath on me thrice over.

- Rich