Totally baller

My friend Mitch is obsessed with POS, an up-and-coming rapper from the nine-piece family of Doomtree (whom I saw back in July with Flobots). He and I both first heard of him on Subterranean. The video for Drumroll started to play and we just sat there, enthralled. This was rap like we'd never heard it before. Better, faster, stronger. And then, Mitch caught wind of the POS show at Kilby Court. Of course, not until after he'd gone insane and listened to every song accessible, read reviews on Pitchfork Media, read the Wikipedia articles and all the biographies he could find. He came to me through Messenger and said, "POS IS COMING TO KILBY." And I said, "Alright. Are you going?"

The answer was yes, yes he was. So the day came, and Andy and I went out to meet Mitch at the small garage venue, our bellies filled with Burger King fries and Coke. He said it was packed inside, filling up fast. This was so incredibly true it made my head hurt. When we got in, the crowd was already stacked to the door. I said to Andy, "I know we need to get in there, but I'm not that strong of stomach." I'd never seen Kilby so crowded. Not for my band or for any others. But eventually, we wrung through the phalanx to snag a spot about three heads back from the front, where sometimes, if you stood on tiptoes and looked through the shoulders, you could see the DJ.

It was insane. Mitch stood on one side of me, Andy's friend Harley stood on the other, and Andy stood behind, keeping both me and the camera safe. It started to get more and more crazy until Andy said he had to go to the bathroom. It's hard to find at Kilby, so I said I'd take him to it. We weaved our way back out and then through the thistles and thickets to the bathroom shack.

Well! Little did we know, there's a special sort of "green room" in that shack for when big performers come out, with NOT A BATHROOM taped onto the door. We happened to go into the shack at the same time as some college-age guys, who opened the door accidentally and then said, "Oh! Sorry, man. We're super stoked for the show." And then closed the door, and it became immediately clear that behind that door was him, POS, the man we'd all been waiting for. I took a seat on one of the couches in the shack while Andy went to the real bathroom. I was saying something to the college-age guy about the minivan seating upon which I was, when the NOT A BATHROOM door opened, and POS came out and just stood there. There was this awkward silence. None of us knew what to do. I thought for a minute he was going to flip out and ask us to leave. But then he started talking to this girl next to him, and then! and then! He turns to me and says, "I like your gold Lame shirt." "Thanks," I said, violently searching for something else to say in reply. "I like your bomb shirt." (He was wearing a shirt with a bomb on it.) "It's... the bomb." I said. The college-age kids moaned. "Puns!" They said. "I liked it." Laughed POS, and I melted into a puddle on the floor.

When we went back into the concert, I tackled Mitch, who had begged me to get something signed for him when he thought he couldn't come. "GUESS WHAT!" I yelled. "POS LIKES MY SHIRT." Mitch then hugged me big and gave me a high five that resounded throughout the room. As the show went on, the crowd started to push more and more into the back of us, and more and more people squeezed past, snickering later like, "Look how clever we are to get in front of these kids."

The show was awesome. Everyone was sweating and jamming, a religious experience of music and hipswinging, lights, beats, cheering. It finally ended after a gracious encore. Onstage, POS proclaimed that anybody who wanted one could get a high five from him right outside, next to the merch room. A flood of people spilled out, Mitch and all of us navigating towards where he might be, shouting in each other's ears how great it was. We were all so very thirsty. Then, we saw him again. He was standing right where he'd said he'd be. And he was taking pictures with people's camera phones, signing tickets, giving high fives and handshakes. He shook mine and Mitch's hands both.

And then, I dug out a poster from my bag, the only thing I had that I could think of to have signed, and I asked him to sign it. It was a Samson & Goliath poster for the upcoming show at Avalon. Mitch said to him, "She's in a band, too, it's really cool, uh, can you sign this?" And I'm sure POS was thinking to himself, "What the shit? What is this?" as he signed it. He handed it back and said, "See who else is playing?" and he laughed before signing somebody's shirt, while I stared down at the poster in my hand, which now said "and POS!" under the list of bands playing.

I went home that night giggly off of adrenaline and sleepiness. Andy and I, our ears ringing, couldn't tell how loud we were talking and so probably shouted every word we said. Then, when we got home, I showed my mom the poster, and told her about the shirt, and told her everything, while Andy sat and tried to figure out the Rubik's cube on my desk. That's how I want to end every night; blissful and excited, sharing conversation and stories, and nuzzling somebody's shoulder.