Admission by Travis Thrasher Page A

the underclassman’s opinion.
    He ran into Mike again a few days, maybe a couple weeks, later. “You’re the guy who likes Nine Inch Nails, right?”
    The guy, whose name he still didn’t know, nodded. Then said, “You ever heard of Meat Beat Manifesto?”
    Jake shook his head, so they talked awhile. Eventually Mike invited him to walk down the hall to his room. He was only a freshman, and Jake could tell, but he didn’t care. Good music was good music, and a lot of people around campus liked Poison or Metallica or junk like that. Then there was Carnie, who liked big-haired bands like Firehouse.
Firehouse
, whoever they were. Anybody who liked great music was a kindred spirit.
    The first thing he saw on entering Mike’s room was a poster of The Smiths.
    “You gotta be kidding,” Jake said, then noticed the two posters of Depeche Mode.
    He saw a CD collection bigger than his own, along with stickers of half a dozen groups adorning the top of a stereo.
    That was the start of their friendship. Simple as that. Mike was more mature than most guys his age, but needed to be taught how to have a little fun. And since Jake accepted him, the rest of the guys eventually did the same.
    “What’s this? Our fifth concert?” Jake asked him now from the backseat of the car.
    Mike turned around, a can of beer in his hand, shaking his head. “Sixth. Don’t forget Lollapalooza.”
    “Oh, yeah. How could I?”
    “You were hung over all day.”
    “That was brutal.”
    “You miss all the fun,” Mike said.
    “Not tonight,” Jake said.
    But he was wrong. Again.

    It was easy to become enveloped in darkness. And it happened sometime during the concert.
    For the moment, Jake didn’t think of anything. He inhaled the music, loud and aggressive and searing. The cup in his hand finally went dry, and he discarded it so his hands couldwave around freely. He no longer kept track of the beers he drank, no longer felt the slight buzz those first few gave him. He took some drags from Bruce’s hand-rolled and homegrown joints, but he’d never really liked the taste and sensation of pot. It dragged him down and he didn’t want to be down, he wanted to ride up this roller coaster.
    The music sounded heavy, angry, and visceral, and the singer whom
Time
had dubbed “All the Rage” demonstrated every ounce of it with a mass of hair and a howling voice. Songs familiar and new went by in a haze, and somewhere between the screams of “Even Flow” and “I’m Alive,” Jake dipped into that dimension drunks know as blackouts.
    But at some point, Jake wasn’t sure when, the music slowed and he caught his breath and lit up a cigarette and listened to the slowest song of the night.
    What was everything?
Vedder sang in the song “Black.”
    And Jake put an arm around Mike and smiled. He would remember this moment years later. Perhaps the friendship and the times would fade to black, but tonight under the spell of the singer and the song there was something, some connection, and Jake felt it.

    The cold air outside gave off the impression of sobriety. The walk to the car, the drive back to the suburbs, a soaring high Bruce driving and raving about Eddie Vedder’s fall into the crowd and his amazing recovery at the end of the show. Jake dozed off a few times, taking an occasional sip from Bruce’s can of beer. Then they reached Summit and faced the almighty question: to go back to the apartment or not. Mike wasn’t about to go back to campus; he would crash at their place as he had so many nights before. But they didn’t want the night to be over, so they decided to check out the crowd at Shaughnessy’s.
    It was there that Jake saw Laila. Or she saw him, and walked over to the table where they sat.
    “Where’d you come from?” Jake asked. She looked amazing, actually wholesome.
    That’s why they call it blind drunk.
    And now the music throbbed and the lights blinked and Jake kept his eyes on a remarkably long-legged Laila in tight jeans