The concrete seating made my ass hurt. Most of the people around me wisely brought seat cushions, but the only padding I had was the kind I packed on myself. Too many nights of poor choices in food following poor choices in drink can do that. Unfortunately, cushions made of ass fat also contain nerve endings so they are not nearly as comfortable.

There had been both kinds of bad decisions the night before. After some immoderate drinking at Iron & Gold, Becca and I stopped by McDonald’s on the way home. It had been years since I’ve been there and I regretted it even at the time.

I spent much of the next day lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and feeling two kinds of poisoned. Becca headed off to Berkeley early so she could be first in line (or near enough) for the Interpol show. I was free to show up whenever, as long I arrived by the time the doors opened at six.

I made it out the door sometime after four and arrived at Berkeley BART around five. From there, it was a mile hike uphill through the UC campus to the Greek Theater. It was warm out, in the upper 70s, and I zigzagged to take advantage of every bit of shade along the way.

When I got there, Becca was there with her Interpol friends (whom she calls “Interpals”) near the start of the line. They were dressed in black and eager to get in. I was sweaty and eager to sit down. In my defense, I’m old, over twenty years older than most of them.

My job when the gates opened was a simple one. I was to carry Becca’s purse and deal with any delay from its being searched for contraband while she made a beeline for the front of the stage. The plan went as expected. Becca secured her spot at the railing. I handed back her purse then went off to buy an energy drink and find a seat in the old-people section.

The first of the opening bands had yet to take the stage so the crowd was still sparse. I found a spot one section over and about 30 feet left of the soundboard. As one could guess from the venue’s name, the place was laid out like a Greek amphitheater with a semicircle of tiered seating in front of the stage.

There was also an open area for people to stand. I don’t know if that’s part of a traditional amphitheater. My knowledge of ancient Greek is limited to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and I only know about that because of the Tom Lehrer song.

The first band, Sunflower Bean, got on stage and started playing. They started with something pretty Joan Jett-esque. The rest of their set had some songs I enjoyed more than others. Overall, I liked them pretty well, as was the case with the following acts, The Kills and Interpol.

When I really the music at a show, whatever else is going  on in life seems unimportant. I get into my bobblehead, knee-bend dorky dance and I am immune to worry. A rocking Dave is a bulletproof Dave.

Oddly enough, there is a similar effect if I really dislike the band. Then I focus all my mental energy on inwardly heckling the act. I sneer at a band member’s resemblance to some D-list celebrity, even if the resemblance is slight at most. I mentally rewrite the lyrics so the songs are about something violent and/or degrading. This activity creates a sort of Kevlar against what might be bothering me at the time.

If something is bothering me, going to a show where I like the music just OK is problematic. The tunes are neither engrossing nor off-putting so they fade into the background. That leaves the brain free to wander into unpleasant territory.

The territory on that day was particularly unpleasant. It was not the usual work-related paranoia or agonizing over some idiocy of mine from decades ago. This was something more tangible and dire.

My landlady had sent me an email saying she was going to inspect the back deck. Seeing the kitchen was less than wonderful, she announced that she would be inspecting the rest of the place. How bad is bad enough to merit an eviction? I wasn’t sure. I made arrangements for a junk-removal service to haul way years of accumulated crap and hired a house cleaner as well. Would that be good enough? Would anything be? I knew that being in a rent-controlled unit, I was paying way below market rate. It was not in my landlady’s best interests financially to cut me any slack.

Thinking about this had kept me up much of the night before. As drunk as I was when got home, I told myself, parking myself further back would allow me enough personal space to relax and put my worries out of my mind.

What I failed to consider when I first sat down was not everyone shows up at the same time. More and more people arrived before and during the opening act. As the amphitheater filled, a design flaw in the seating plan arose. There was no set width of an individual’s space allotted, but that’s not what bothered me. Some folks are fatter than others and I’m OK with that. The issue was there was no set boundary how far you could sit back and how much legroom you got on the tier in front. I found myself wedged between one person who sat way back and another who liked to stretch his legs.

I tried to shrink away, but the more I did, the more my neighbors fore and aft took advantage of the space made available. I looked to the side of me to see if the person next to me was in the same predicament. He was playing air guitar and seemed to not to have a care in the world. How I envied him.

After the show, I moved to the front as the crowd dispersed and found Becca. She said that she and her friends were going to stake out the exit and hope to spot one or more members of Interpol. I wished her the best and headed back toward the BART station.

I moved briskly through the campus so I could make the last train back to the city. The charge on my phone was all but dead so I had to make the trek without use of the Google Maps app. It turned out I didn’t need it. To reach my destination, all I had to do was keeping going downhill.