Hey, remember that time I partied with Hellogoodbye?
Wait, back up. There's a story here.
ACT I
To set the scene: Allegheny College, November 5, 2011. Cold outside; warm inside. Saturday night, Shafer Auditorium in the Henderson Campus Center. Ace Enders, lead singer of not-dead-just-hibernating band The Early November, opens with an incredible acoustic solo performance. However, a restless crowd of young adults isn't in the mood for a wistful singer-songwriter, even one with such self-deprecating charm. A foot from the stage, a 5'1" girl with dark hair pulled back into a pragmatic ponytail frowns and hopes the girls in front of her will stop loudly expressing their shock that the 29-year-old musician onstage with the face of a teenage boy is married with children, at least long enough to let him play a song or two in peace.
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| Ace Enders and my friend's guitar. |
Cut to a wide angle shot of a fully lit stage featuring three men whose hairstyles alone exhibit more diversity than the average liberal arts college student body. Seated behind the drums, sideswept dark hair that definitely required some styling wax and careful pre-show arrangement to get it just right; stage right, a curly-headed beanpole bassist with Woody Allen glasses and a Woody Allen smile; front and center, the short-haired, spectacled star of the show in flannel and loafers. They play mostly new songs, though they concede to some old: Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn rouses some interest from the audience, but not even Here In Your Arms can break the twenty-somethings' resolution not to look too into music they listened to in high school. It is nearly impossible not to notice the one girl's ponytail bouncing haphazardly as she throws concern for social censure to the wind and dances alone in the crowd, unwilling to let the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pass by with her arms crossed. Fade to black as the music fades.
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| Hey, Hellogoodbye...hey. |
Fade in: the brightness of the campus center lobby is startling in contrast to the dimness of the auditorium. The audience has mostly dispersed, leaving only a smattering of fans lingering in clusters, hoping to catch the band on their way out to wherever they're going, some even optimistically planning to invite them to hang out for the night. The faithful are finally rewarded as Forrest Kline himself saunters through the open double doors and receives the first eager fans with the grace of a musician accustomed to the excitement generated by his mere presence. Mike soon follows, revealing himself to be far more petite when upright than when seated behind a drum set, and Augie wanders out after, almost as if he were looking for a bathroom and just happened to stumble upon a flock of college students wanting to take his picture.
Not fifteen feet away from the band stands the dark-haired girl from before, her enthusiasm now subdued under the fluorescent lights. She is accompanied by a tall, sleek-haired boy in a light blue child-size Superman t-shirt and grey jeans. Both are anxious; both are attempting to appear otherwise. They mean business, as the boy confides to the girl: "I want to tell Forrest that his music helped save my life." They wait together as various groups and camera flashes come and go, sorority sisters and roommates and couples clustering together for photo ops with the smiling, compliant band members, but nearly miss their chance as Forrest turns away with a sense of finality. The girl calls for him to wait!, and she and the boy close the distance to request their thirty seconds of attention. Sure, no problem, Forrest and the guys would love to sign your CD and take a picture with you and hey, thanks for coming out to the show. No...thank you.
To state the obvious: the girl is me.
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| Me and two guys with nice hair, one of whom is famous. |
ACT II:
Now, picture me huddled uneasily on a beige couch in an off-campus, fraternity-affiliated house. I'm wearing a grey cardigan, red scarf, dark blue jean shorts, slashed black tights, and red flats. The coffee table is littered with bottles. To my left is a friend who hadn't even come to the concert but tagged along for the aftermath; one of our friends is across the room perched on the edge of an armchair, wine glass in hand, as his brother and his brother's girlfriend hover in the vicinity of the door -- as high schoolers, they're even more out of place than I am. The remainder of people in the room are an assortment of vague acquaintances and strangers: the blond surfer type from my English majors seminar who barely acknowledges my hello, and not without an unsubtly skeptical glance thrown in; the friend of a friend whose presence mostly justified us cavalierly inviting ourselves into someone else's house; and Hellogoodbye, no longer separated from their fans by a four-foot-high stage. Forrest is on the couch, Mike is next to him, and we are next to Mike but for the two girls piled atop each other who are trying to appear both smart and sexy by discussing Communism with the drummer while hiking their skirts up and their shirts down. I am uncomfortable, but I am five feet away from Hellogoodbye.
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| I am the paparazzi. |
Close-up of an iPhone featuring a black-and-white photo of someone (identity never determined); slowly zoom out to show that the hand holding the phone is the bassist, Augie's. He, Forrest, and Mike surface after a brief whispered conversation among themselves to point the phone in our direction and their fingers at my friend's face: "He looks just like him!" We disagree with their conclusion, but none of us are unhappy about receiving their attention.
Briefly, a flurry of overdressed -- or under-dressed, depending on whether the term refers to situational appropriateness of outfits, or the actual ratio of clothing to exposed skin -- freshman girls appear on screen, just long enough to give the band members a reason to leave. Half of the wraparound couch is now empty and lonely. We stay where we are.
The rest of the scenes in the house would serve best cut together into a montage of the waiting that followed, alternating between slow and fast motion effects as various minor characters enter the room and move around, leave and come back or sometimes not. My friend and I remain a singular unit on the couch, both unwilling to relinquish our prime seating and lacking any reason to move elsewhere. Interspersed with views of the living room are occasional cuts to upstairs, whatever it looks like, where the band spends an hour smoking as an increasingly large crowd presses in on them. Augie briefly reappears, expressing his relief at having escaped the crush of people: "I'm the same age as you guys! I just wanna chill!" Enticed by the invitation to punch the wall in the adjoining room (drywall, easily gives way to the force of a fist, relieves stress, is replaced every year by the brothers who pay rent), he does so, but disappears again shortly after. We debate, over and over, whether we should give in and go home, and each time we decide to wait a few more minutes. It's worth it.
The band returns downstairs, significantly less sober but also trailed by a smaller crowd of admirers. We invite them to get food with us at McKinley's, and our timing is just right: they accept.
The group is walking now, and the camera follows along as the entourage crosses the campus in the November night towards light, warmth, and food at McKinley's. Between the familiarity of the campus center and the foreignness of strolling casually a step ahead of Forrest Kline, it feels like an episode of a reality TV show, the mundane made momentarily less so. If anyone's curious, Forrest orders onion rings. More people come over and more people leave, and the nights winds down as every Saturday night at Allegheny College does: with fried food in cardboard boats and soda in compostable cups, but Hellogoodbye just happens to be there. We request one more autograph, we smile and try not to openly fawn over them as we take our leave, and we call it a night.
Like a moment borrowed from someone else's life, tonight was so surreal and so cinematic that I can't quite believe it happened to me...but it did, and it was so great.