Bass Heartbeats

The air, thick with sweat, was churned relentlessly by the multitude of outstretched hands. I'm not sure if the heat in that venue burned from our bodies or the electrifying waves of sound igniting our souls and setting every hair on end. There, we had no interest in trifling questions or caution of strangers. There, we as a unit all shared the same heart beat, the one the bass, pounding in our chests, gave us.

There is something to be said about the music of our youths. The stuff of epics that we will forever hold on to because we not only know what it sounded like, or what it looked like being performed, but we know how it feels. And a feeling is something one can never forget. Music, our surrogate lover, gave us the one thing that we had never received from another person. Perhaps it was recognition, empathy, comfort, or a sense of community. You knew that when you, short of breath and on unsteady legs, raised your lighter above your head, you would not be alone in doing so. And when the night was over, and we stumbled out into the cold, squalid streets to make our ways back to both our cars and reality, we all left with more than just crumpled concert tickets. We had a secret now. A secret one night affair we had shared with an enticing mistress or paramour. No one would know about the impact this lover unleashed on us, or what exactly we partook in together except for us. And we would never forget the way it felt.