In the Image of Grace by Charlotte Ann Schlobohm Page B

so I let him
do what he had to do.
    After a bit they were all in place. The short guy at
the drums, tight tee-shirt guy was armed with a bass and Jeremy was
strapped with an electric guitar with the mic in front of him. I
squeezed my way up to the front. He saw me and smiled and said,
“Hi.”
    The audience said hi back.
    “Oh no, I wasn’t saying hi to you all.”
    Everybody laughed.
    “I was saying hi to my,” he cut himself off. “Oh,
let’s just get started.”
    People clapped and cheered and with that there was a
surge of people to the front. All of a sudden I was enclosed in
bodies.
    “Hi for real this time, we’re Final Resolution.”
Everyone hooted, hollered and whistled again. “This one’s for
Charlotte.” Jeremy smiled and they went straight into playing.
    The audience then started to move. Some were jumping
around. Others were bouncing and bopping and some were head
bobbing. I tried to just stand in place and watch, but due to the
movement of the others, I was forced to sway with the ocean. I
didn’t mind. At first I felt a little self conscious, but then I
just chose to ignore everybody and listened to the music. I started
moving with it. It felt all right. I let everything else slip away
for a few brief minutes and just went with the flow. I listened to
Jeremy’s voice. It was soothing and melodic. The music was fast and
only consisted of several chords, but it made me feel good. I had
never heard anything like it. Since I spent most my life inside my
house I had never been exposed to a lot of music. All we ever
really got to listen to was classical and disco, pretty much what
was in our father’s collection. The first song ended and they went
right into another.
    For the second song I just kind of watched Jeremy.
His glasses kept sliding down to the tip of his nose. He’d
occasionally shake his head and twitch his nose to get them back in
place. He played his guitar the whole time he sang. I noticed that
he would kind of stand on the outside of his feet and shrug up his
shoulders and shake the hair out of his face when the timing seemed
right. After a few songs he started to sweat a lot and half way
through one he took off his glasses and set them on the ground at
the front of the stage. He then continued right on. After the song
where Jeremy took off his glasses I could feel somebody up real
close behind. I felt hot breath on my neck. I turned and looked.
There was this guy with limp greasy hair and a flannel shirt
smiling crazily at me. I could tell he was in some sort of altered
state. I tried to move over a little, squishing through a small
horde of girls that appeared to be swooning and greasy guy just
followed me. When I stopped he stopped right on top on me. I could
feel his body parts pressing into my back side. I found it to be
quite disturbing.
    “Can I help you?” I screamed at him as loud as I
could to make sure he could hear me.
    The guy smiled exposing all his teeth which appeared
too small for his mouth and taupe in color. “What’s your name?” He
shouted back in a nasally voice.
    “You need to take a step back,” I shouted.
    “We’re at a show. Where am I supposed to go?”
    “Away from me,” was my response. I turned back to the
front hoping he had gotten the message.
    He then leaned into my ear. “I like you,” he
lisped.
    “And I would like for you to leave me alone.”
    “What’s wrong with you bitch?” Was the next thing he
said.
    I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. What was
wrong with him? I pushed through some people and tried to get out
of the crowd. He just followed me. I stopped and sharply turned
around. He wasn’t expecting me to stop so suddenly and walked right
into me. I stomped on his toes.
    “Ow, bitch,” he whined. He then took both his hands
and shoved me backwards. I landed on a couple of guys who were
holding cups of pop. Their pop went flying everywhere, getting the
girl in front of them wet.
    “What the fuck,” somebody in the