show me show me show me (the unquenchable lust)

2004-07-30 - 2:55 a.m.

i was excited to see the cure, don't get me wrong.

when i saw them all those years ago in boston i didn't yet own all of their albums and there were quite a few songs that i didn't know during the set. but it was fun and i enjoyed myself. he played 'in between days,' and i was happy.

so i was excited to see the cure again, now owning all of their albums (except for 'top,' expensive import fucker) and hoping that ol' rob might be in a better mood this time. (the concert last time was very depressing, and i heard a rumor that robert was having fits with his wifey.)

but i was ecstatic to see interpol.

i never thought that they would play anywhere near enough that seeing them live would be possible. i figured that i'd have to wait until my big move to the cool city of ______ to see great shows from smaller bands like that.

i was wrong. blissfully wrong.

the night that my sister called and told me that interpol and the cure were playing together i think i almost shat myself. actually getting tickets to such a show, and fuckin' amazing seats to boot, well, my brain just about imploded.

so special k, my older sis and i got all dolled up and hauled ass for 3 hours (seeing as how we left a mere 1 & 1/2 hours before the festival began) to make it. we didn't really give a crap about mogwai, the rapture, or any of the second-stage bands, but i was freaking out at the thought of missing interpol. when we stopped at a mcd's to relieve ourselves i called the box office and begged to know if we'd missed interpol. nope, in fact, they weren't due to perform until 7:45. marvelous! it was only 5:30 and we were less than an hour away!

after much fiasco with parking on a hill, walking around the entire venue, fishing for my i.d. in my boot, and sis's manbag being 'too big for entry,' at long last we all three got inside and got to our amazing seats. lemme just tell ya: stage, then small mosh pit, then three rows back, us. when sis got those tickets, she done gooooood.

we killed some time looking at merchandise, buying shirts and cotton candy, then chilling in our seats.

then. then then then. somewhere around the 7:50 mark, the boys came out. and i saw carlos. and i was smitten.

pictures do not do him justice. he's tight and lanky and sculpted and beautiful. he had all of the boy-accoutrements that drive me absolutely wild: leather wrist cuff, button down shirt with rolled-up sleeves, dressed in black from tie to toe, modern slicked-over mohawk-ish black hair, bass held right at penis level. he was also wearing some sort of suspender-ish bands around his shoulders, almost like a gun holster without a place to put the gun. and that was fuckin' hot. then he lit up a cigarette and dangled it from his lips, and even though my tiny cricket voice was yelling, 'oooh, smoking is so bad, it stinks, it causes cancer, it does not make someone sexy' that voice was subsequently squelched by the overwhelming neurons coursing through my libido. smoking is not sexy. but carlos d. smoking is.

true, carlos caught my attention (and much more than that) from the get go, but the entire band was mesmerizing. they opened with my favourite upbeat song on the album, 'obstacle 1,' and when i was singing it in my car today as i drove to work i couldn't help but sing the phrase 'oh she's baaaaaad' just like paul sang it in concert, which was a slight variation from the album.

i knew that they would play 'nyc.' they had to. yet when they did, even i wasn't prepared for what i felt. i knew that i would probably tear up, if not outright cry, because it is one of the most beautiful songs i've ever heard. but right before it began i thought, 'well since i'm expecting to cry i probably won't.' and i handled it just like any run of the mill fan hearing their favourite song would, listening, watching, nodding my head, occasionally mouthing fragments of lyrics. but when the music crescendos, when daniel started playing that amazing guitar part, when paul sang 'it is up to me now, turn on the bright lights,' well, words fail. i just can't even explain. my heart, it just, it lifted, it felt full and heavy and light all at once. jesus, i'm tearing up just now thinking about it. there's something right there, right at that moment in the song, that connects me to the way i wish i could feel all the time.

and yes, i did shed a couple of tears. it's the inevitable side-effect of moments like that, when your heart overflows.

ooooh, interpol. those are the boys. those are the exact boys that i would date if i were famous or if i lived in new york. they're well-dressed and beautiful and pretentious and funny. and they smoke and drink waaay too much.
carlos d., especially you, my blossom.

looking at him, i realized for the first time in my life, for the first time, how girls can forget to have protected sex. all my life i've thought, 'how can some girls do that? how can they not insist on the guy wearing a condom, or have sex when they're not on the pill? what's with that?' i could never understand until that very moment when i first saw carlos, and then it hit me. and it hit hard. he was so incredibly sexy, so amazingly beautiful, that i felt pure, unadulterated lust. i didn't want to date a boy like him, i wanted him. i would have had that man's baby, risked contracting god knows what, just to be with him for a short while. and though i've joked about groupie-ism before, what frightened me was that this time i meant it.

carlos d. is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful man.

later on, just before the cure came on, a group of guys sat down in our row, and the one at the very end looked suspiciously like carlos, while one in the middle looked strangely like paul. now i can not say for certain, because seeing someone one a stage and then seeing someone sitting on the other side of your friend can be very different. and they were in different clothes, but of course they would be, because how could people not notice those dashing black suits? and now, having read an interview in which the question asked pertains to sharing a stage with the cure, and paul said that it was like a magician, you wanted to be in the audience watching, not sharing a stage with him... i think that there's a very strong possibility that interpol sat beside us for a good deal of the cure show.

i tried my best to be subtle, not to stare. i would pretend to look up at the monitor, then quickly let my eyes drop down without moving my head. it's just so damn hard to tell. i think the fact that they came in just before the cure came on, then left with about a third of the show to go, shows points in my favor. who else but a band actually on tour with the cure would leave a cure show with a whole third left to go?

of course, this excited me to no end, and even without the black suits i got quite a tingle. but i wouldn't approach them, because i'd either be that annoying fan (and really, what would i say to the first man to inspire such volcanic lust in my bones? i'd probably just drool) or i'd be completely and utterly wrong. and i hate being wrong.

the cure show was phenomenal. robert was indeed in a much better mood. he was gracious and smiling and shrugged sweetly when walking on and off stage, as if the applause and shouts were all too much for him but he appreciated it anyway. they opened with 'plainsong,' which, right off the bat, melted my heart, so once again i was tearful and blissful and floating. they played at least one song from every album, and this time i knew them all! even 'shake dog shake' from 'top,' that imported bastard. he played 'in between days' and 'just like heaven' together in a row, and i was off on the moon. my sis said that seeing my face when he launched into 'just like heaven' was worth it all. i literally screamed when they played 'push,' one of my favourite songs from what is probably my favourite cure album. when he did 'lovesong' i sang along with him (as i did with most of the songs, actually) sighing and smiling. then, at the end of 'a forest' robert launched into a wicked guitar solo. i was madly impressed. just as he finished i thought, 'wow, i think they've played something from every album except for "boys don't cry."' literally at that exact moment the band went full-out into 'boys don't cry' as their final song of the night. then robert leaned into the mike at the end of the song and said, 'thanks, you've made this day fucking great. see you in november.'

it was a great fucking show. i was a little afraid that he'd focus the whole show on the new album, with one or two old hits thrown in for encores and the like, but no, it was an amazingly well-rounded lineup. i was overjoyed. what a show, from two of the bands that i love the most in all the world!

when we got back to the car someone had written 'icp' and drawn a weird squiggly flower thing on the rear windshield in the dew. i'm still not sure what that was about, but i took it as a compliment for my bumper stickers. after waiting in a line of traffic for a while we finally approached the gates leading to the road. it was there that we looked over and saw none other than carlos d. standing outside one of the buses signing autographs. part of me wanted to ask special k to pull over, but still more of me knew that an autograph just wouldn't cut it, not with lust this powerful. we were three hours from home, and their bus would be traveling six hours or so in a short while to the next city, so i did all that i could do, really. i leaned over k and yelled out the open window, 'i love you!' to carlos. he looked up, i grinned, and we sped away. maybe he thought that i was drunk, but at least now he knows. it was the best i could do, given the circumstances, and sounded a bit better than 'you've inspired me with unquenchable lust!'

even though we know that is the truth, dear reader.