gut instinct

One of my favorite bands -> modest mouse -> is coming to my town and no one will go with me, because the venue is too big. What the fuck is that all about?

I saw Radiohead there 2 years ago (my favorite band) after waiting 11 years for them to play in the same time zone and roughly same latitude because I had a knack for being out of town any time they came near California. In fact the time I DID get to see them, I'd just booked my tickets to the East Coast and it was the only time I could get out there the whole summer and then someone called to tell me that Radiohead was going to be playing while I was gone and I quickly got off the phone with her and then what?...I started crying out of frustration of course (Let me state that everything had gone wrong for me that day and that was the last straw for me.) In any case, she misinformed me, and they would be playing way after I returned as I had originally thought. When my husband took me up to the airport he told me he had bought 2 tickets for me and a friend to go.

When I did get to that concert finally, I experienced my last lesson in not trusting my gut instinct. It was open seating on the lawn and I had arrived with my friend about 5 hours early so we were among the first in line in the parking lot, and at the entrance. When we got inside the gates we had to wait about another half an hour before we could be let into the main lawn area. I wanted to get in line right away for the lawn seats and my friend wanted to check out shirts at the rip-off stands and so she used her lame tactic in telling me "trust me dude, that line won't get long for sooo long, we have plenty of time". I didn't want to leave the line, I didn't trust this but I followed her to the lame stands anyway and then when we finally got back to the line and I said "FUCK!" when I saw how long it had become and said she reassuringly: "No, dude, dude truuuust me dude, there's a secret line on the ooother side no one knows about, I come here all the time". So we hurried over to this "secret"
line and I screamed "LOVELY! God DAMN it!" it was longer than the first line. We went back to the original one and it had quadrupled in size. I was fuming. So we got in there and she found a shitty spot behind some huge poles where no one had sat yet....hmmmmm.

We're not friends anymore. She was an old work buddy, I knew her for about 7 years and had hated her passionately the first 2 years we worked together. I couldn't stand her "duuuude chill" mentality and valley girl vocabulary. Then one day at work I saw a little book of her poetry that she had made for a philosophy class laying out in the back room. I started reading it standing up, then slumped down in a chair and didn't look up until I had finished it. I was silenced and she traipsed into the back room. I looked up and smiled at her for the first time ever.

It wasn't too long before that that my coworkers had had to hold me back from her because she had provoked me and had taken it too far. I quietly went to the back, punched my time card, pulled my jacket on, then went out on the floor and found her in a corner and went right up to her, blocked her in and began shouting at her to never talk to me as she just had, and to never touch me as she just had (she had put her hand on my forehead and pushed hard at it saying 'duh'). After I yelled at her I lunged at her and my friends held me and walked me out of there....that was typical of our working relationship. I hated her and therefore everyone hated her. My boss had pleaded with me a few times to be nice to her and had told me that everyone at our store looked up to me and that since I hated this girl, everyone hated her and treated her the same way I had. I would coolly tell my boss that that was not my problem who people liked and didn't like.

In any case, after I read her poetry, I let my guard down and so did she, we became close over the next few years. She was a 4.0 gpa philosophy major who loved writing poetry in her spare time. I hate poetry but she is gifted...my god that's putting it lightly. So we got closer and closer, but never too close because we were both Scorpios and very guarded being as we started off very badly those first years. We had seen the severity of each others wrath and never wanted to unleash that again, so we could never argue about anything personal and we never did...until Italy happened to us

We went to Italy together a year and a half ago. I'll make this quick. No I won't. We spent a week in Southern Italy with her husbands non-English speaking family without him. As I spoke Italian and she didn't I was the interpreter the entire time. I had talked her into taking an Italian course so she knew a little bit but refused to try, so the family, extended family, neighbors, and entire town for that matter ended up talking to me much more...go figure. I had even given her a crash course on the 12 hour flight over there, and then tried tutoring her every evening we were there! She just clammed up and became withdrawn. Every time someone would grab and hug or hold my hand I felt her eyes burning holes in me.

The second to last night she cut one of the neighbors off from talking to me and demanded that we go home right away. I told her it was kind of rude as they had us seated with little plates of cake on our lap and espresso in our hands. Very rude...as they were very poor, and obviously knew we were stopping by and had wanted to meet us and had made a fucking cake for Christ's sake! They were telling me they already knew me, that they felt they had met me before, they were giving me too much attention and I am loud and don't care at the imperfections in my Italian and this makes them laugh more and love me because I'm trying! Anyway, my friend hated this scene and demanded that I translate and I didn't want to so I gave her the abridged version so not to hurt her sensitive soul. She demanded we leave anyway so I had to take her mother-in-laws hand and tell her my friend was feeling ill and could we please be taken home. We left. I didn't look but my friend cried the whole ride home. She didn't speak to me that night. Then the next day it was as if nothing happened. The next night we boarded a train to Florence where we were to spend about a week with my old roomate/friend I had lived with there a few years back.

The stingers came out suddenly on a daily basis. Every little thing I did she complained about. Fact was she was deeply insecure and was making herself miserable. It turned into a nightmare. She was so paranoid she was telling me what I was thinking the whole time, that I thought she was this or that. She was insufferably jealous at my happiness to see my friend. So I arranged that my friends friends were around and that they please speak English since they all could. Even planned a day for just her and me...she STILL found reasons to bitch. Anyway, her weakness repulsed me and I found it hard to see her any other way since then so we no longer talk. She called me a month later to apologize for her psychoness. I'm too old for drama though, that's the last time we spoke.

Man, I guess I needed to get that off my chest, don't know how the hell that stemmed from not finding anyone to go see Modest Mouse with me!