As the show ended and everyone began to leave, Clayton asked me if I wanted to sneak back stage, grabbing me by my shoulders he fixed his eyes on a dark hallway of doors and said, “Follow me”.

We knew Thee Oh Sees were in town but neither of us had the money. We turned down going to a house party to drink in peace. Clayton doesn’t use social media and neither of us wanted to be around a bunch of sexually frustrated art students talking at length about shreds of ideas, about themselves through coke nosed redness waiting in line for the bathroom discussing the meaning behind their instagram’s. I didn’t want to answer any curious questions about what it is I do. I think it can be too much trouble going to house parties and Clayton isn’t one for small conversation. We find comfort in each other’s company; in the freedom we allow each other to speak our minds and in whiskey. We didn’t have any plans besides drinking and for Clayton and I that was plan enough.

We left my house and walked up towards Valencia Street with cash for trade and a thirst on our tongues. We walked past expensive taco bars and under construction apartment buildings. Past people out on their Friday nights free from a weeks work wearing their best denim, choked in black leather, walking the runway that is Valencia Street. Past diluted brains shouting terrors of times when they still had control over their memories, past gold painted gorillas playing Bach and Led Zeppelin. Past lesbian bars and trinket shops, past disillusioned bloodhounds sniffing out trends; from block to block, we walk. San Francisco is changing said the blind to the deaf man.

We see things different, Clayton and myself.  I cannot tell you how Clayton sees the world though I can say that, he has recently fallen in love and Katie, his lover, is able to convince him of things I never could. Clayton rolls his eyes when I tune the radio to NPR or when I talk about news articles I’ve read. Clayton sees the world as someone else’s problem, as something he had no hand in destroying and so he is not responsible to fix it. It’s not that he doesn’t have the mental capacity to discuss politics or news because he does, more so than most, he just doesn’t share the same discontent with the world that news articles require to gain your attention. He is the ‘I won’t step on your toes if you don’t step on mine’ kind of person. Clayton is a writer and so his views of the world are tinted by the reflection of himself. He enjoys the torment of his human soul. Clayton believes everything will work out as it should and I cannot blame him because I too have high hopes for the world.

I see people in costume. I see a city transforming its identity. I have seen great wealth and extreme poverty. I have seen men fight over a place to sleep and women sell themselves on the street. I see a city whose hospital beds have filled and whose patients lay in the street. I mourn their lives and Clayton writes their obituaries. Everyday I see people dying, sprawled out in front of the laundromat, tucked in between houses, a community of tents lining my street, moving as if it were a circus, because it is. I have grown cold towards death. Watching people slowly die is a sight that has stuck with me, something I am no closer to understanding, since the first time I saw a sun drenched man begging for money on the boardwalk of Ocean City. I see the world as one big play, each of us at the center of our own stage; characters in the drama of our days. I have known Clayton since the second grade and though we may see things different, we both see something in lights above the Chapel’s door, a sign that reads, ‘Thee Oh Sees’.

We looked to each other and knew just how much money either of us had, enough for a few drinks but not for a show; that was on us.  Roxanne, “A friend of mine from school works here, maybe she’s working tonight,” I said, “Maybe she can get us in?” She was and she did. She gave us hugs and wristbands and told us to come say bye before we left.

Now once inside the church of music we made a straight line for the bar. We smiled and drank out of our plastic cups sharing in the sweetness of chance and whiskey. We were thankful for my friend Roxanne and for our decision not to go to that party. We stood and watched from the balcony of the mezzanine as John Dwyer twisted and shook in a cloud of sweat, holding his guitar above his chest, yet no one seemed to notice. No one in the mezzanine could be bothered with such distractions. The band’s drummer was on the verge of having a heart attack; these people could at least enjoy it. The mezzanine is for people who have established lives; where the comfortable can rest on their balcony high above the chaos of the crowd below. These people cannot be bothered; these mezzanine watchers, grown boy scouts, taught from a young age to tie knots around their lives and in doing so have become slaves to tomorrow, bound by their responsibility to the world. Clayton and I did not count ourselves among them for we did not pay for the show.

We drank all our money and wanted to dance so we pushed our way through to the front of the stage until we found others who had done the same, if they even had any to drink, and surely would if they did. In front of the stage we were now in a place where manners and tomorrows are turned over in glasses of beer on the floor. Where no one cares about you or how nicely you’re dressed or if you have a good job or a girlfriend who is pregnant. Here in the front of the stage under the mist of a convulsing man’s sweat only the music matters, the hit of a floor tom, the kick of the bass drum, riding crashes of symbols and the deafening guitar in my ear drums, where only those who have not been tied down by knots of their own making are able to enjoy themselves.

The show ended and everyone was free to go. I followed Clayton down a dark hallway of doors, past the bathrooms and the bar. We tried them all until we found the right one and proceeded past people who looked like they knew where we were going, so we pretended too, and I’m sure they couldn’t tell the difference.

Once backstage, I wanted to go home. I began to feel stupid, standing there in a little room with the band sitting, smoking cigarettes, surrounded by friends, fans and women some of whom I recognized, but none of whom I’ve known. These skeleton women who were just there for the drugs they kept hidden from us. Women who go places just to make their lives interesting, who depend on others to have parties because without friends in bands, what would they be besides drug addicts and underweight mannequins.

In this little back stage room I began to associate myself with them, with these people who I can only imagine are here to feel something important, I believe they just want to be close to people they feel matter. But I’m not like them I tell myself, no, I’m not like them, I’m not back here to rub elbows with the band, I’m back here for the alcohol, the only person I care about here is Clayton and I already know him. We stood in the corner next to a table of food, which had three different dishes of potatoes, all cold at this point, and a six-pack of warm Budweiser. We stood and talked to each other fending off others who wanted to tell us who they were, trying our hardest not to hear them, keeping an eye on the door for people coming and going bringing with them alcohol.

We didn’t stay long. After watching the crew break down the stage from a private balcony, we left. With beers in our pockets and John Dwyer’s potatoes in our teeth we walked away with more confidence then we brought with us. We walked with ownership, with young excitement, and as the drunken shoppers passed we didn’t feel sorry for them but instead filled their carts with our cans. We howled at each other with wide mouths and open eyes, no longer did we smell the piss in the air or hear the clacking of heels in our heads. No longer did we give ourselves the chance to think. We weren’t stuck like the people blinded by their phones, frozen and cold, waiting for rides home. We cat walked around until we found ourselves back at my house, back where our night had started without any money left to continue on drinking, so we smoked a joint and listened to the ‘Mysterious Production of Eggs’, enjoying the peace we had promised ourselves. And that’s all that happened.