Of Wasted Summers from Yon Past )Part I(
You should have seen the way she held his hand and firmly led him around the festival ground. A fluttering of not-quite-unpleasant aches swelled inside him as the cacophony of the distortion from the opening bands plundered the eardrums of those who were not quite sure which band was coming after whom.
A pleasant mid-May afternoon, and already the cherry blossoms were signaling the turn of the season — the high sun casually burning the young, restless people loitering or canoodling about the park.
“Did you bring any sunscreen with you?” she inquired after settling on a high spot on the ground, a safe distance from the thick of the crowd but close enough to feel the thumping speakers vibrating and shaking the air around them. A comfortable spot, he hazily surmised, lying beside her on the soft mound.
“Uh…what?” He was still feeling the bitter aftertaste of whatever he had shot earlier on the tip of his tongue and on the roof of his mouth.
“A sunscreen cream. It’s fucking hot. Wow.”
He didn’t. He didn’t even bring his bag, come to think of it. Well, be that as it may, he rested his head on the grass as she fished around her purse, evidently looking for a tube of cream to protect her pale skin. So fair, he caught himself thinking, and let a smile loose.
The clean, late Spring sky loomed overhead as strands of cirrus clouds harmlessly swirled on the periphery. Then, silence. Distant screeches from sea gulls swooping towards the ground and fighting over bits of hot dogs and buns punctuated the still, murmuring atmosphere. I wonder who’s coming next, he wondered. Is that a banjo? No fucking way.
“I need a smoke so bad.” she said, quite earnestly, after watching a bunch of roadies disassembling and assembling the equipments onstage.
“I thought you said you quit.”
She stared at him bemusedly and shrugged. “Only on special occasions, natch. Hey beautiful, can I steal a drag from you?”
A girl sitting about three steps away from them glanced at her laughingly and more than happily obliged. “Thank you so much. You look really, really hot.”
They all laughed and exchanged pleasantries: the “what faculty”, “which quad”, “how long”, “where from”, the “oh my god really? All the way from Kootenays? That’s so awesome!” and the “hey, you know a Jeff from so-so went to this high school my cousin’s ex la dee la dee das” — then silence, again.
She decided that it was about time they sauntered towards the crowd and “y’know, let’s dance.” OK.
Wait, what? He maybe a little buzzed, but he wasn’t inebriated to the point of flailing his arms around and embarrassingly beleaguering himself with the frat boys. He didn’t care much for the frat boys: the “bros”, the guys with the Birkenstock sandals on slightly frayed, fatigued cargo shorts with their over-sized aviator shades, their meticulously tousled coifs and their propensity for gratuitous exclamations, their AXE deo-sprays and lastly, their fucking popped collars. Who the fuck does that? Why would anyone do that? He didn’t really, really care much for the frat boys.
