The Birth of a Bitch Face

Frequent readers of the blog would assume I possess a proclivity towards exaggeration.  Then you spend an afternoon with me in “real world” and wish me well as you see that I possess a force field that screams, “Please!  Bring out your weird on me!!”  I’ve had cross toting Jesus’s on the streets of Michigan avenue chase me down while yelling about saving my soul, homeless people follow me into shoe stores chirping about my style, and strangers in bars ask me for my cup size and a fondle.  I respond in much the same way to all of them-I apologize for my discomfort and try to slink away without appearing mean.

-as if its my own fault they decided to make me uncomfortable. 

Its beginning to be a problem.  There’s a difference between being nice and being a doormat, a difference I’m only starting to discover at the “Dream Job” where I spend a healthy portion of my day being berated where the only option is to smile and ask if I can bend over more.  Necessary at work-I need to pay my bills and keep Ari in a luxurious habitat whilst supporting my shoe fix, not necessary to tolerate on my one night out a week when I escape the office and have the back of my neck stroked by some addled 60 something in a cowboy hat demanding to buy me a whiskey (laced with a roofie) because I look like his first wife before he’d “tapped that”. 

Something has been bubbling beneath my blonde smiling exterior.  Rage. 

I had the day off on Friday, and by day off I mean I worked from home until 2 and still read email from everyone and their nephew about how I need to do x/y/z-and still they will never be satisfied up until about 6. My sister and I had bought tickets to Austin City Limits- a three day concert festival with headlines like Kanye West, Coldplay, and Stevie Wonder-and I was intent on enjoying myself.  After bitching about work for an hour or so, we found ourselves back in the 80’s.  No really, 80‘s fashion is back, and every college and high schooler there was racing around in neon and legwarmers.  This blatant resurrection of a blight on the history of fashion was everywhere, and the neon seemed to add glow to my irritation levels.

There are bad manners abound at outdoor festivals.  Not wearing shoes into the port-a-potty while I stand waiting in horror is one of them.  Yelling into silence over and over about how Kanye is the voice of a generation (from a 18 year old white boy sporting an iPhone paid for by his parents) is another.  But perhaps the most egregious sin of concert going is the punks who wait until the concert starts to wheedle through the crowd directly into the spot you’ve held down and saved for two hours and ignore your puzzled expression as they invade your territory and congratulate you on saving this great spot for them. 

My sister and I are not the typical Kanye crowd.  For one, we’re upper middle class girls who work in management roles at technology firms in Operations.  Damn we’re exciting.  We’ll probably never wield a gun and dropping the f- bomb is not exactly customary.  But we enjoy “Stronger” and “Gold Digger” as much as the next person so we staked out a spot about twenty feet from the stage two hours before.

Not five minutes before the concert began I was standing cozily close to the person in front of me about six inches of space between us, enough to swap SARS or Swine Flu but not an STD.  And then this guy and his girlfriend barrel through and wedge them selves directly into my six inches of person space.  I kid you not my entire chest was touching this guys back.  I was shocked he stopped, there was no room, I was even more shocked when he proceeded to make out with his girlfriend on top of me.  I started to inch into the person behind me’s six inches of personal space…when I snapped.  Why should I move?  I bounced my chest forward and yelled, “HEY!!!”

The kid turns, annoyed I was speaking and didn’t notice my Bitch face on full blast, “I’m sorry…you need to move up, or away from me, and you need to do it now.”  He glared, rolled his eyes and obliged me with an inch. 

I fumed. 

But then Kanye rocked the place out and I got over it.

The next day AC and I were in our same old position waiting for Stevie Wonder to play.

We saw the same bad manners.  Our personal favorite was the mother who sent her kid to the edge of the fence, waited a few minutes then shoved herself there as well claiming she couldn’t leave her daughter alone.   Time spent waiting for the spot.  Approximately 3 minutes, the people who’d been there previously 2 hours. 

We remarked to our fellow concert goers who’d spent the afternoon camping in the space about these “wedgers”, and then we made a pact to stand together, in our area no one was getting through.

Ten minutes before the concert started we heard a rustling from 3 rows behind us, “the edge of our group”.  3 girls were trying to get through up closer to the stage-and there was no space to get up there.  The girl claimed the guy in front of me was her brother and she just wanted to get to him…Our group yelled to the guy in the Indiana hat, “Is this girl your sister? She claims she trying to just get up to you!”  Indiana turns, appraises, and goes “NOPE!!!  Send her back.”

She screamed, she begged to be let through, she demanded to be closer to the stage, and we looked on-unimpressed.

Individual bitch face doesn’t always make an impact.  Group Bitch face?  Works like a charm.