BANISHMENT 12: Standing in Close Proximity to Strangers

Tonight, thanks to Handsome Thunder’s Valentine’s genius, I had the very special experience of going to see the Avett Brothers at the Murat Egyptian Room in Indianapolis. If you are the kind of person who drinks obscene amounts of coffee, loves mandolins, pipes, and very skilled whistling, you are probably sitting in front of your computer right now seething with jealousy. The Avett Brothers are better than being an eight-year-old and getting a snow day due to potential onslaught of seriously cold flurries. In other words, the Avett Brothers are wonderful. They are classy. They are the kind of men who wear bowties and look like they should have been born in an English library. Their beards are fantastically well groomed and could beat a King Charles Cavalier at Westminster.

And while the Avett Brothers are the bees knees, the Murat Egyptian Room is not. Rather, it’s kegger land for Indie kids who grew up eating unhealthy amounts of corn. There are no seats, five bars, and at least 12,000 good reasons to continually be applying hand sanitizer.  Handsome Thunder and our group of really fantastic looking friends showed up decently early. We got a spot in the mass of humanity, roughly fifteen rows back, and were pretty pleased with our body-to-Avett-Brother-distance. The only problem was the conglomerate of Intoxicated Indianites to our left. They were egregiously tall men, hobbit like women, and continually full hands of beer. I immediately wanted to decapitate them.

Unfortunately, as my father and mother did pass some morals on through the genetic line, I didn’t decapitate the Intoxicated Indianites but rather stood beside them and looked at them as one might a peculiar monkey that has started growing bright fuchsia hair on its bum. While I’ve seen numerous people act in numerous fashions, I am somehow still always shocked to see what some people consider to be socially acceptable. Appalling, my dear Watson. 

The Avett Brothers finally appeared and in this drunken swaying mob of mandolin loving hipsters, we were standing by the most severely indiscrete assholes that had ever entered the Egyptian Room. Whenever songs began, they transformed immediately into bobblehead dolls that pumped their fists in the air as though this weren’t a folk concert but a UFC fight. They sent their hobbit sized girlfriends on beer runs who always came back, squeezing their way indelicately through the mass, and always leaving their smell on my corduroy jacket. They sang obnoxiously loud, requested songs that didn’t even exist, and blocked everyone’s vision within a 10 mile radius.

While I love the Avett Brothers and Handsome Thunder for getting me tickets, for lent I entirely give up standing in close proximity to strangers. In particular, Intoxicated Indianites. They smell rank, dance weird, and are unpopularly tall.