So last night I got down to the Kelvingrove Bandstand to see We Were Promised Jetpacks, a band that I had been waiting to see for months. I had their last album on a constant loop during NaNoWriMo, and I was pleased as punch when they fired into loud, jerky, passionate riffs that helped me type out those words last year. I’m quite chuffed for going now.
The gig gave me and Anna a good opportunity to people watch. We saw the various bad clothing decisions for the cold Glasgow summer night, the varieties and similarities in beards, and watched as an eccentric looking man inched closer to a beautiful young girl who tactically inched further away. There were a few people that caught my eye during the set especially though.
A group of kids sat a few rows in front of us, and two of the girls were in floods of tears for about half an hour. Well, they weren’t kids. They were probably anywhere between seventeen and twenty, but for some reason my mind is lumping them into the kids category. I won’t argue. Anyway, there were a bunch of kids sitting in front of us, talking and drinking and having fun like the hundreds of other people around them, and then on the outskirts of the group two of them were crying. They sat, hunched over, bodies shaking with sobs as they collapsed into each other, all to the soundtrack of roaring guitars and guttural drumbeats. The reason behind these tears were a complete mystery to me and mine, and we sat there enthralled at the breakdown, watching the twisted metal of their emotions dragged off to the side of the road.
And then, from no where, one of their friends reaches over and starts taking pictures of the crying couple.
It was brilliant. This puff-jacketed, curly haired, pierced boy started snapping pictures of these two bawling their eyes out, as if it was an event, as if he was going to tag them on facebook. My friend leaned over and stage-whispered “What a dick”, which is probably true, but then again is it? What made this kid, with one ear sparkling with too many piercings, want to take pictures of this calamity of riverrun mascara and soft, heartbreaking wails? It was a new mystery, and one I’ll never know the answer to.
It’s why I enjoy writing though, because I’ll never know what those two girls were crying about, and I’ll never know why that boy whipped out his phone to record the sight, but one day I might decide to give them a reason. I might decide that the two girls hadn’t seen each other in years, or that there was a death in the family, or that they were hopelessly in love but held apart by life. I can come up with a million reasons why these two girls chose a rock band to crumble in front of, and I can think of a million more as to why the guy taking the photos is a dick about it, or not a dick, or not even involved.
But still, I’ll never really know.
Preemptive Retaliation 
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