The Grass Was Wet and I Stayed Anyway

June sixth. The show started at seven-thirty and I got there at seven and stood at the edge of the lawn for a few minutes trying to figure out where to put myself, which is a thing I only do when I'm alone. In a group you follow the group. Alone you have to actually decide, which turns out to be its own small pleasure once you stop overthinking it. I picked a spot about two-thirds back on the left side, sat down on the grass, and within four minutes discovered the grass was wet in the way that summer grass is wet, not rain, just dew and evening, and decided I did not care even slightly.

I have gone to shows alone before but usually with a reason attached, like a specific band I had to see and no one else wanted to, the kind of thing you explain apologetically. This was different. I went alone because I wanted to go alone. Simone asked last week if I had plans this weekend and I said yes before I even thought about it, which is how I knew it mattered. The set was good, that unhurried kind of good where you stop tracking the songs and just let it be sound. I had a plastic cup of something cold and I people-watched in the comfortable way you can only do when no one is waiting for you to say something.

the part of the night where the sky went purple and the set was still going.

The photograph from Carol has been sitting on the windowsill for a few weeks now. I've been thinking about what it means to go somewhere alone when the version of you that came before, the one in the photo, younger, squinting at a camera she didn't ask to be in front of, maybe didn't get to. I don't know if that's actually what I was thinking about while I sat in the wet grass with the stage lights going orange in the dark. Probably I was just listening. But I keep noticing that the things I choose now feel like choices in a way they didn't used to.

I stayed through the whole set. The denim jacket came on around nine. I walked back to the car after with the particular feeling of having been somewhere fully, which is different from just having gone. It was a Friday. It was fine. It was more than fine.