Well today is just the best, because someone is going to see post-hardcore rockers, My Chemical Romance tonight at the House of Blues. That special someone is going to jump, and dance, and (likely) scream inappropriately. That’s because that certain someone has a big time crush on the sexy lead singer, a .

So yeah, this is my second time seeing MCR in the past four months and I am *stoked*. While musically MCR is more pop-punk than prog rock, their stage show, I anticipate, will have all the glorious excess of a Pink Floyd (prog rock) show – there’ll be makeup, smoke, lasers, and maybe even a huge, awkward contraption hanging from the ceiling. Maybe it’ll be a heart. And on that heart, written in shiny, white sequins will be the words “Hänni, Will you run away to the circus with Me? We could perform on the trapeze together Fort Nightly! XOXO, Gerard.”

…So, probably that last part with the hearts and trapeze won’t happen, but a girl can wish, right?

Yeah, so I’m a little bit concerned, because the girl I’m going to see my rock star boyfriend with, well she is a total sweetheart whose typical concert fair is more Sarah- MacLachlan-calm than My-Chemical-Romance-crazy.

She’s never seen me when I’m wearing my rock show hat, and for someone who is unprepared, this could, I imagine, be a bit unsettling.

… And here’s where we cue the flashback sequence, and I do my best Sophia Petrillo impression. (God love the Golden Girls.) Here goes:

Picture it – Sicily 1935 – oh wait.

Okay, so it’s 1998 and Green Day’s just come out with the hit-heavy, radio-friendly Nimrod. The big song off this album is “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)“. It’s the one Green Day song that everybody knows. Sort of a feel-good, reminiscence-type number, it was standard fair at high school graduations and on televised sports programs – they even worked it into an episode of ER, for goodness sakes (and remember, at that time ER didn’t suck).

Anyway, in the summer of 1998 my friend Missy bought tickets to see the Green Day show at the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage. Three of us girls went together, all wearing black baby doll t-shirts. In my long, unkempt hair, I wore green, plastic barrettes. My two companions wore big, clunky combat boots, as was the fashion in those days.

For 60 minutes Green Day thrilled our audience of 3,000 in a way I’m sure most of us had never experienced. The show was loud and lively, and highly interactive. It was the kind of show you spend your whole life reminiscing about. It was - in a word - amazing.

And here’s where all the trouble started for me. In 1998 it was a well known fact that if you went to a Green Day show, you were going to see lead singer, Billy Jo Armstrong in his birthday suit, or at least in a teeny weeny thong.

Well, Billy Jo had never done anything for me in terms of rock star crushes. He’s short, has bad teeth, and a kind of weird torso. But I tell you what, when I saw Billy Jo come out onstage for the finale wearing nothing but his leopard-print thong, something embarrassing happened.

I started whooping like an excited Oprah Winfrey at a soul food convention.

When I saw that man play the guitar sans pants, well, I became a fiend, a fanatic, a howling freak-banshee.

As my piercing, giddy shrieks filled the air, my friends, and all the men in my immediate vicinity began slowly backing away. Aware of their terror, but unable to stop, I kept calling out in high-pitched staccato “I love you Billy Jooooo!”

Now flash forward about eight years. We are an adult now, but we’ve still got the same primordial instincts. Imagine what I’m like at a show where I do *indeed* have a crush on the (very sexy) lead singer. Picture, if you will, the theatrics that I employ as I become a depraved animal, crying out for my lover’s attention with all the eagerness of a baby crying out for it’s mother’s breast.

In short: it’s not gonna be pretty folks. And hopefully, my concert date will be able to forgive me in the aftermath.

Posted in Rock Star Crushes, Reflection