The following is a harrowing, possibly exaggerated account of the writer's day as a beer server at Syracuse's "K-Rockathon".
I pulled into the State Fairgrounds at 9:40 am, the air ripe with the smell of decaying human intelligence. It took me several tries to find the VIP/Vendor parking lot, and I was briefly delayed by a gibbering drunk behind the wheel of a Toyota Tundra, screaming at his mother over the phone. His vascular neck and overall complexion made me grateful for the numerous medical tents set up inside the Fairgrounds, as his day seemed destined to end in either a vein-bursting fit of apoplectic rage or a vomit-spewing episode induced by crippling amounts of bottom-of-the-barrel $5 lager. It was eighty minutes before the gates were set to open, and already the chain link fences were groaning under the mass of jiggling black-clad flesh pressing against them in anticipation. Cries rang out left and right, an ad-libbed discordant chorus accompanied by the honking of truck horns--"Hail Satan!" "Three Days Grace Rules!" "Ooooaaa-a-a-a-ahhhhh!"
I hustled from my car (a recycled-plastic Saturn Ion adrift in a sea of pickup trucks old and new) and through the gates, exchanging a nod with the uniformed officer guarding the crosswalk as to say what we were both thinking--"Yes, these people exist." I felt like a Christian being led into the Coliseum early in the day, before the raving spectators and lions arrived. My nerves jangled all the way to Beer Booth #1, where I faced the prospect of trying to slake the unquenchable thirst of this teeming horde of flesh. As I approached the Booth, I was hailed by a passing roadie pushing two speakers on a dolly. His black shit-kicking boots, green cargo shorts, and stained brown tour T-shirt showed plainly enough that he would have been here an hour early even if he wasn't being paid to.
"K-Rockathon twenty fuckin' thirteen, am I right buddy?!"
I gave a curt nod and half a smile as I made to move past him, but this non-reply was clearly unsuitable.
"Lineup's gonna be sick, brother!"
Feeling the weight and ugliness of the day already setting in, I decided on a different tactic.
"Sure will be. Not sure the crowd's going to be to my liking, though."
"Hell, my man, you scared of a little moshing? I lost two teeth in that pit last year and I'll be right back innit again, you bet your ass."
He peeled back his upper lip to show me that he wasn't joking.
"Oh, I'm not scared of it," I said, "Just not sure I'm gonna like the shade of it. Paper said they're expecting a record turnout of blacks this year. Mexicans, too."
"Aww, you're shittin' me, brother."
"Can't say I am. I guess it's been a terrible growing summer in the south...too much rain when they only need a bit, no rain at all when they could use downpours. Never know what it's going to do from week to week. So they're all hanging in CNY for the summer hoping to get work. Berry farms, Finger Lakes wineries, that kind of thing."
"Naww! Well shit, this ain't their scene! Whoever heard'a a crowd like that comin' out to bang around to Sevendust? Or mother-friggin' Chevelle??"
"The internet is a powerful force. Bands are spreading their tour info and music videos like never before...Just last week my buddy Jose told me that Flyleaf is the best thing he's heard in years. Times are changing, amigo. No one says you have to like it though, God knows you've still got the right to dislike it."
"Bastards! That shit-eatin' Cuomo is probably eatin' all that right up too! Let me tell you somethin' about our precious gov-nor, you got a minute?"
"Actually I don't. The crowds will be in any minute, gotta get a table of cold foamers ready for 'em. Wouldn't want anyone here having to stay sober, would we? But hey, keep your head up in that crowd..."
I gave a last nod and ducked under the Beer Booth's restraining rope. I watched my weather-beaten roadie friend shuffle off pushing his speakers, spitting through the hole in his front teeth more pensively now, and occasionally giving a shake of his head as he pushed. I thought I could hear a faint muttering..."Mexican bastards..."
Still on edge, I knocked over three sleeves of cups immediately upon entering the booth. I hastily began rearranging boxes on the floor to make it seem as though I knew what I was doing and that I was supposed to be there. The booth manager called for the taps to be turned on and the first wave of cups to be filled. It wasn't a moment too soon. The gates opened at exactly 11 am with a whoosh, the same sound Pandora must have heard upon opening her fateful box. The crowd descended like a cloud of bats, and the losing battle to keep the supply in line with the demand began.
A quick word about how the average Thon-goer was supposed to go about getting his half-hourly allotment of alcohol: First, he had to stop at the ticket stand and pre-purchase beverage tickets to be redeemed at the booths. This 'drastic' measure was enacted in the aftermath of K-Rockathon 2009, when a wild stampede of metal enthusiasts crashed through the tables at the beer tent--foaming at the mouth, frenzied with drunken greed, they made a run on the cash boxes and made off with an undisclosed sum. Several off them made off anyway; the rest went down under the force of the meaty fists and pepper spray of event security. I'm told the brown cloud hung over the Fairgrounds for days afterward, and all beverages served for the remainder of the concerts smacked of Habanero chilis.
For the remainder of the day, I learned what it felt like to be the proverbial sailor dying of thirst while adrift at sea. Company policy forbade us from drinking on the clock, and I needed the $100 too badly to risk being sent home. By 6 PM the smell of Shock Top had so thoroughly permeated my nostrils that they felt caked in orange peels and coriander, with a dusting of wheat, and still I resisted the temptation to throw one back. I give myself extra credit for this feat because no one subjected to 12 hours of the kinds of ranting, screaming gibberish spouted by K-Rockathon's so-called 'bands' should ever have to do it sober. I passed the time instead by imagining what the studio practice sessions for the members of these otherwise-unemployable groups must sound like. It's difficult to picture the Beatles, while recording the White Album, turning to each other..."That take was pretty good, mate, but it could use more noise. And your vocals were far too comprehensible."
As morning wore on into evening and evening became night, the stream of faces at our counter steadily seemed to roll themselves into one fuzzily-outlined Face. The Face had red-rimmed eyeballs and multiple neck tattoos...beneath the Adam's apple the body seemed to be breaking down like a mud hut in the rain. The rivers of humanity had overflowed and left this mass, this Face, awash on the fair shores of Onondaga lake. In the fleeting moments that my eyes were able to focus themselves on individuals rather than their collective mass, I saw pairings so strange that Noah himself might have abandoned the Ark and left mankind to be swallowed by the flood. Aseptic, sexless women with the arms of twelve-year olds and shirts taken from the Hot Topic bargain bin being pawed, groped, and led around by men so large and fleshy that their skins appeared to be attempting an escape from their frames. Spray-tanned girls with fake breasts and irredeemable facial flaws holding hands with diminutive men in trucker hats with barbed wire tattoos. Shirtless yokels, more redbodies than rednecks, whose chins seemed to vanish into their chicken-thin upper bodies, tongue kissing girthy women in halter tops that contained 1/3 of the fabric necessary to render their appearance socially acceptable. At no point could I single out a heterosexual couple from the crowd and say, "Now, there's a smart match."
Despite the rain that came off and on throughout the evening, I had the sweats. It was sensory overload...an assault on the eyes and the ears. The clock struck ten and I dizzily signed out from the hours sheet, a doctor's scrawl brought on by fumes and fearful haste. I dashed from the Booth, trying to beat the insane traffic...in the distance, the sounds of car horns and curses rang out. Ah! A perfect coda to an exhausting day for the ears. Faster now, almost to the gates...I collided with a heavyset bald man wearing a t-shirt that read, "Save a Fuse, Blow an Electrician!" I couldn't bring myself to consider why he might be wearing red-lensed Oakley sunglasses at this time of night. Finally, to the car, out onto the proud highway, as the heavenly I-690 chorus of squealing tires and police sirens sung me home...
