Willie Nelson.
I have a friend named Terry who is a poet. Not just a run of the mill poet, but a Governor General’s Award winning poet who’s works are sold in popular bookstores and are studied in universities – even had one novel turned into a movie.
So one day Terry called up and said we ought to attend the Willie Nelson concert which was playing in town. Being the curious type, I asked “Why?” Big mistake.
Turns out that Terry thinks Willie has great lyrics. I think Willie is pathetic, but who am I to contradict Terry, one of my nation’s literary icons? Off we went to pick up tickets.
On the way we came across Mike, a.k.a. “The Human Probe”. Mike is willing to try just about anything once, and has a terrific survival ability, so we invited him along. The silly boy joined us.
The concert was held in a particularly rough end of town, where drunks on the sidewalks were common. It looked to me like many of these drunks were heading into the concert.
We had terrific seats, but unfortunately a number of other people wanted them. That our tickets and our seats clearly matched, and that the interlopers’ tickets clearly did not match did have any effect on the hostile drunks who wanted our seats. At one point I though we were going to be thumped.
After a few hours Willie decided to make an appearance. Better late than never, I suppose. Unfortunately, he was quite drunk. He had difficulty walking. His supposedly wonderful lyrics were unintelligible. My cats in heat are more harmonious. The crowd did not seem to mind, for they were distracted by random fights which were springing up throughout the audience.
After about half an hour of Willie, the Human Probe decided to pack it in. He said he could not take the pain anymore. Now let’s put this in perspective. This fellow is a hard rock miner, who as a child played soccer with live rats, who rode trees down which his brothers were felling, who has rolled his vehicle more times than I have had parking tickets, and who paddles off waterfalls just to see what will happen (thus his handle). I have seen him ski out 10km on one leg after severely tearing his hamstring on the other – a truly superhuman feat of endurance which to this day I find utterly astounding. But he could not take the pain of enduring any more Willie.
And then there were two. Just Terry and me and an empty seat. But after about fifteen minutes, in staggered the smelliest laggard I had the misfortune of encountering in a long time. And he plopped himself down in the Human Probe’s empty seat. While trying not to vomit from the fumes, I asked to see his ticket. He produced it, and said that a fellow had come up to him on the street and offered it to him.
The stench was so bad that Terry and I had to evacuate. Now I know why theatre and arena exit portals are formally known as vomitoria. Lord knows the one we scuttled through had enough puke in it. We made it to the street, and while walking home laughed about the Human Probe having payed yet another prank on us, but to myself I thought that I owed one to the Human Probe for getting me out of that god awful excuse for a concert.