"summer in russia when you wish you were in denmark"

The lead singer for Cardiac Attack introduced himself to me by throwing a mostly-full water bottle at my head and calling me a pussy. When his band played their set fourteen people were blown up by suicide bombers at the edge of the field and this is my first time in Russia and they ran from the stage and homeboy started crying so who’s the pussy now.

One tape made its way into the right pair of hands and I’m not going to bullshit myself- there was a picture of me on the cover of that tape and I’m a good-looking guy and I’m marketable, you know- I’m marketable. I’m not going to bullshit myself and tell anyone I’m the next Bob Dylan. I’m finding my voice and I get the privilege of doing it in public for a lot of money and I am twenty-one years old and I am from Cleveland and I had never even been out of the country until this year and now I am getting beaned in the head by the lead singer for frankly one-hit wonder metal bands while waiting to play my set at a rock festival in Russia.

The Cardiac guy is in tears still and everyone is panicking and I don’t know what we are supposed to do and there are police everywhere and someone is speaking Russian to U2’s tour manager and they are screaming at each other and I just want to be safe, frankly, I want to be playing those opening dates for British pop bands where my American accent makes me a little bit of a novelty and so I get laid and it’s not all about that, you know it and I know it, but there is a girl in Denmark who thinks I am the only man on Earth who understands her soul and she can move her tongue in truly astounding ways and the things she can do with her hands feel like heaven and I am in Russia and fourteen people just died and all I can make out from the stream of what are presumably Russian swear words is Bono’s name and a fierce head-shaking by the tour manager.

And then I’m tapped on the shoulder by a policeman and a translator and I am assuming that they are going to tell me the plans for evacuation but instead they tell me that I am due to play in nine minutes. Nine minutes? did you not see the fucking explosion, I ask the translator to ask the policeman-

I am cut off. The policeman growls something in Russian and it sounds fierce and maybe the Cardiac guy was right after all and I am a pussy because he reminds me of a gym coach in high school and I am scared of him. I am told that if we all leave then forty-thousand rock and roll fans who have traveled to Moscow will trample each other to death and they are patrolling the area by helicopter now and Bono is not going to be coming after all but aside from his band the show must go on because the alternative is that more people will almost certainly die.

And I laugh at the policeman and his face gets red and his neck hardly exists at all and I stop laughing and I am told that I have eight minutes now to get on stage and entertain a crowd full of people scared to death but some local favorite, some Russian rock star in tight pants is assuring the crowd that they are safe and the show will go on and they are frightened but they trust him and there are the helicopters flying overhead and so the show must go on, I guess.

I excuse myself to tune my guitar and the policeman nods and I start strumming the chords to “Want To Know” and I feel ridiculous because fourteen people have died and I wrote this song eight months ago when that tape had just barely found its way onto the desk of my benefactor at the record label about the day that Lora left and now I am supposed to play it here?

So I decide not to open with “Want To Know” and I warm up my voice with “No More Yesterdays” which at least has political overtones and then I decide that I don’t want to sing about politics because I have no idea what I am doing here and I am twenty-one years old and I have been ordered to play to forty-thousand terrified people by the Russian police and “Whenever” is this song I wrote the day I met Corinna and I would play it except it’s not the best song I ever wrote by a long shot and my radio hit right now is “My Fault” except I don’t like the overtones that come with playing a song called “My Fault” after fourteen people were just blown up.

Time slips away and the police are glaring at me and so I take the stage because I have to and the crowd applauds almost certainly more out of nervous energy and all I can think to do is to play Beatles covers and hope that everyone maybe just forgets exactly where they are and what’s happening and so that’s exactly what I do and by the seventh song or so I look to the side of the stage and even the douchebag from Cardiac is singing along and nobody else dies that night.