“I can’t hear very well,” Eleanor says from the backseat of the car.

“You know,” I say, briefly making eye contact in the rearview mirror, “most people would say, ‘Can you turn it up, please?’”

Eleanor sighs, exasperatedly, and asks again, “Can you turn it up, please?”

I smile and reach down, turning up the volume a couple notches.

Since I introduced her to a movie musical that’s a bit too mature for her, she’s been listening to the soundtrack on repeat, belting out her favorite songs in the car or randomly in very public places. It’s also increased her ratio of daily questions.

“Why is that girl’s hair pink?” she’ll ask.

“I don’t know,” I’ll always respond.

“Is that the dad singing or his friend?” she’ll ask multiple times during one song in particular.

“It’s the dad,” I’ll answer.

“Is that the friend singing now?” she’ll ask a few moments later.

“Nope. Still the dad.”

“Why did that girl kiss the dad?” Eleanor asks from the backseat.

I sigh. “Because they wanted to introduce a pointless, fictionalized subplot about a historical figure while at the same time demonizing her and deconstructing her into the role of the ‘other woman.’”

“What does that mean?” Eleanor will ask.

I sigh, throwing my hands up in defeat, and after that Eleanor is quiet for once. Longer than usual as she is probably contemplating the role of women in pop culture.

“I can’t hear it all that well,” she says again.

I turn up the volume a few more notches and we continue driving, Eleanor singing the songs that she knows at the top of her lungs.

She’s still singing as we pull into my parents' driveway. As I pull in, I can see my mother watching from an upstairs window and before I can unbuckle Eleanor she’s outside, standing on the welcome mat, smiling, arms wide and ready to receive her grandchild.

Eleanor hops out, running to her, tripping, falling, scrabbling back up, running again until Grandma swoops her into her arms, twirling her around.

Opening the trunk, I pull out her pillow and stuffed cat, along with her backpack full of dolls, a change of clothes, and who knows what else. Carrying it all inside the house I set it down in the living room.

“Do you want a bite to eat?” my mom asks me.

“No,” I say. “Thank you, but I’m good.”

“What time do you think you’ll be back?” my dad asks.

“The concert is going to run pretty late, so I’m guessing that I won’t be back home until after midnight. I’ll probably swing by tomorrow around ten.”

My dad nods in agreement before stooping down to pick up Eleanor’s belongings. She follows him down the hall to her bedroom. I can hear giggles from inside as she crawls her way onto the bed, jumping up and down in delight.

“Eleanor,” I call, “I need to head out.”

There’s giggling and muffled noises. I can guess what’s going on: Eleanor isn’t listening and doesn’t want to get down. Meanwhile my dad is talking to her, laying on some thick Catholic guilt by telling her how sad I’ll be if she doesn’t say goodbye. Which is partially true.

As I pull out of the driveway I’ll begin to think about her not saying goodbye and fantasize about her remembering that she wanted to say goodbye. She’ll run out of the room, down the hall, outside, and burst into tears when she doesn’t see my car. I’ll be a few minutes away before I’ll convince myself that it wasn’t a fantasy and that she was really crying and call my parent’s landline to talk to her only to find that she was done crying and too busy playing with her dolls to come to the phone. I’ll tell my mom to tell Eleanor goodbye for me, and we’ll hang up. But the fantasy would continue because my mother, meaning well, will tell Eleanor that she just missed a call from me and—doubling down on traditional, good ol’ fashion Catholic guilt—tell her that I was very sad, which will make Eleanor sad, and then she’ll call me crying so hard that I can’t understand her. I’ll do my best to calm her down, telling her that I love her and that everything will be fine. Through the sobs, Eleanor would say, “Okay, I love you, but can I watch a show?” “Sure,” I’ll tell her, “if Grandma and Grandpa are okay with it.” Her tears will stop and she’ll whisper that she loves me one more time before handing the phone to Grandma to hang up.

The mind is a complicated place. Full of all these rabbit holes of imaginary issues made up of our insecurities and attachments.

“Bye, Daddy!”

Eleanor rushes into me, tackling me around the knees.

“I love you,” I tell her, giving her a big hug. “Have fun with Grandma and Grandpa.”

“Okay. Love you.” And she rushes back to her room.

I say goodbye to my parents before heading back to the car.

In the driver’s seat I rummage through my pant pockets until I find what was hidden: a small plastic baggie with two edibles unfortunately melted together. Pulling them apart, I pop one in my mouth; a premeditated move to let the drivetime to the concert allow the cannabis to circulate in my bloodstream, so that by the time I arrive I’ll have the beginnings of what I hope is a very heady, ethereal high.

I had been looking forward to this concert for months. This particular singer, Har Mar Superstar, was as indie as you could get, only playing in smaller venues throughout the country. I had first heard him while rolling the radio dial on my commute, trying to avoid commercials and finding some actual, decent music. His voice cut through the mundaneness of my drive, making me blindly reach for my phone, pressing the home button, and asking the virtual assistant “Who is singing this?”

His catalog is small, but all of his albums are amazing. It’s this mixture of soul and pop and R&B. It’s fun and funky and the lyrics are inspirational and a little bit dirty. I started looking for videos of his performances online to see if he was as good as his albums portrayed him to be. Underneath the glare of the stage lights was this singer dancing around the stage in his underwear. His voice was just as good as it was on the albums and his moves were better than I could have imagined any white male pulling off.

I wish I could have shared his music with Veronica. Honestly, I’m not sure she would have enjoyed it. I think she would have enjoyed the music, but as soon as I showed her a video of him dancing and singing in his tighty-whities she would have dismissed it and I would be left alone listening to him on commutes or in the dark corners of the house with headphones blocking the sound.

Eleanor liked the music. Granted it was without the context of the singer’s outfit choices, which I’m sure she would have found hilarious, and I only played songs that contained the least amount of innuendo. He fell into the genre I would play for her that was creatively labeled as “Do you want to get funky?” Other genres were labeled as “Do you want to rock your socks off?” or “Do you want to get jiggy with it?” If I had asked her if she wanted to listen to artist A, B, or C she wouldn’t recognize the names. Not that it matters, because if it wasn’t sung by a princess or from her favorite musical she usually wasn’t interested.

Soon enough I arrived at the club. It was early. Perhaps too early, but I was curious about the opening bands and I already had a comfortably growing buzz snaking its way through my head making things feel fuzzy and more enlightened.

One of the benefits of getting high—one of many—is that I never felt like drinking, so I ordered a four-dollar bottle of water instead of amassing a fortune on my tab for over-priced beer.

The crowd was small, but the space was slowly filling up as I made my way closer to the stage. The space was intimate. The stage was probably six-inches off the ground and you could easily stand a foot away from it for the full sweat and saliva filled immersive experience.

The first set was an electronic-DJ or at least I think that was the genre he fell into. It was all pre-arranged tracks that he overlaid with vocals. It was good, but forgettable. People moved to the beat. Nothing too crazy. They just watched and swayed, sipping at their beers while I sipped on my water.

The DJ’s booth provided a relatively mesmerizing light show. One audience member in particular was enthralled by it. Hands in pocket, eyes not blinking, and most definitely on mushrooms, he stared into the pulsating rainbow, rocking his head forward and back to the beat.

When the DJ was done, the crowd shifted. Some people gathered into small, social circles, while others drifted off, closer to the bar. This allowed me to move in a little bit closer to the stage.

The next act was even more off the wall. The lead singer was dressed in tight, leather pants with a thong sticking up out of the back. His top was made out of black fishnet layered with a black vest. Over his mouth was what I could only describe as a bedazzled bondage mask. His backing band were all shirtless men with glitter covering every inch of their torso.

The music started with a fluttering of cymbals before. The lead singer approached the microphone, gripping it in one hand. There was the faintest tremor in the vocal cords as his voice entered his throat, but the voice that came out was in a different league from that of any other voice in any other band. I was taken aback. Based on everything I had seen, this wasn’t what I expected. The music was funky and groovy and the singer, regardless of the apparatus strapped to his face, had an amazing voice.

I watched in shock until someone jostled me aside: another shirtless man with a gold bandana hiding the lower half of his face. He strutted to the front of the stage where he met a woman clad in a gold bikini. They began gyrating and thrusting towards each other while the singer bent over them, kissing and licking each in a more than platonic fashion.

People were cheering and grooving to the music; drinks raised, hands in the air, heads bouncing to the left and right—all as one. His music gripped them in the very center of their being. It was a strangely religious experience; a form of worship. The audience was enthralled and in his thrall; a deity being born before our eyes.. And it kept building. The singer was beyond perfection; sailing with each verse and refrain into the realm of chaos, and establishing the right order and balance, a few milliseconds away from catastrophe. Confetti cannons were shot, his fishnet shirt was ripped off by the bikini-clad girl and a few moments later he gracefully stepped out of his leather pants to reveal torn fishnet tights. Soon those were ripped off revealing a gold sequined banana hammock.

People were bouncing, drinks were spilling, and I could feel the beat of the music coursing through me to the point that I allowed it to release in the form of a rhythmic head bob. Within the chaos, the audience had this sense of thrill about them. Life itself pulsated from them. I could feel it pulsing through me. They were happy. I was happy to be alive and everyone was celebrating this sense of life and perfection at the same time.

There was more confetti.

The flashing of lights sped up.

There were flashes of nudity.

The lead singer kept fondling himself.

I loved it; every minute of it.

And then, finally, almost at the point of climax, the music stopped and the house lights came back on, leaving me feeling somewhat unfulfilled and at such a heightened sense of ecstasy, the silence that followed was almost maddening.

I wandered towards the back of the venue feeling alone. There was no one to share the experience with; no one to talk to about it. Just me and my thoughts and my empty bottle of water.

“That was insane,” I hear beside me.

Looking up there’s a man leaning against the wall next to me. He’s dressed in a short-sleeved button up shirt, hair styled with more effort than I apply to mine, and with a short beard that I was immediately jealous of.

“I haven’t seen anything like that,” he says.

“That was pretty amazing,” I say.

“Have you heard his music before?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him. “I really just came for Har Mar.”

“Same here,” he says. He looks down at his almost empty beer cup and then back at me. “Do you want a beer?”

I’m not sure how I feel or what state my high is in after that performance. I’m not even sure I’m still in my own body, but for whatever reason I say, “Sure.”

He looks like he’s about to ask what kind of beer I want, but he stops, says that he’ll be right back and leaves.

Har Mar’s backing band is setting up. The stage is still covered in glitter and confetti, but they don’t seem to mind as they move through it, repositioning microphones and setting up their drum kit.

They are an interesting juxtaposition to the last band. The trumpeter, saxophonist, bass player, guitar player, and drummer are all wearing these pastel-colored suits. They are smiling, joking with each other as they set up.

The man is back, handing me a clear plastic cup of beer. Unsure of the social norms of accepting beer from strangers, I fish in my pocket for some loose cash, but he waves it off. We exchange names—his is Patrick—and we sip our beers, watching the band tune their instruments, before leaving the stage to make their entrance in a few moments.

“Come on,” he says, motioning me forward towards the stage.

For the main show, people were starting to press in, trying to get as close as possible for the full experience. Somehow we end up at the front of the stage just as Har Mar makes his grand entrance: spinning on the toes of his polished dress shoes, before grabbing the microphone in one hand, and beginning to croon.

It’s magical.

And it’s hard to describe. If you ran into Har Mar on the street, you’d think he was a mailman, but as soon as he starts to talk he exudes this sense of swagger that no mailman on earth could pull off without coming off as cocky.

At one point he does a little striptease as he unbuttons his shirt before launching himself, bare-chested, into a weird yoga-like headstand with more dexterity than is appropriate for his stature.

It’s a paradoxical night.

Patrick is fully into the music. He’s created a small space around himself in which he is swaying and moving and grooving to the music. It’s an odd mixture of arms, shoulders, hips and legs. He was in his own world. He was John missing his Uma.

I was content with my head bobs with the occasional side to side sway. It’s not that I couldn’t dance. If Eleanor was having a dance party, I could get down with some sick dad moves. If Eleanor was having a dance party, I could get down with some sick dad moves. Occasionally, Veronica and I would go out to clubs, but when in public I could never relax enough to dance with the same ease that Patrick exudes.

“You need to relax!” I hear over the music. Looking over, Patrick is smiling at me, gesturing at my stationary hips. “Just let it go, man,” I can see him mouth. And he’s back to dancing.

But I can’t let go. I think I’m having fun, but a part of me knows that I won’t have as much as I could if I just keep standing there moving to the music with the least possible effort; looking like a stiff goon. I wasn’t worried about other people seeing me dance. It’s just dancing, after all. I wasn’t worried either about letting go. I knew what my body needed to do in order to move in a rhythmic fashion. I just didn’t know how to tell myself that it was okay to do that; that I was safe enough and strong enough to let my body flow with the music. There was an illogical risk equation rattling about my head. It wasn’t something that was easily formed into words or conscious thought. It was just there as a mental block; a fun block.

There have been times, moments where the block was gone and I felt completely free and in sync with some sort of preordained pattern the universe had laid out: dancing with Eleanor; building a complicated profitability report at the office; running pel-mel down a trail at breakneck speed dodging rocks and trees.

Here though there was no sense of the universe steering me in a certain direction. There was no sense of cause and effect behind my actions in the present and what might happen in the future. And that’s when I see what the block was made of: fear. A big, black, gaping maw full of fear. A fear of not being in control.

I offer a smile to Patrick and leave our space near the stage, pushing my way back to the bar; getting away from the music to clear my head. My ears are still ringing and my mind is still a jumbled mess of thoughts.

A gentle hand touches my shoulder.

“You okay?”

It’s Patrick.

“Did I make you uncomfortable?” he asks. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You just looked like you wanted to have more fun than you were having.”

I laugh, shaking my head. “That’s fairly accurate.”

“Are you okay?” he asks again.

How do you explain to someone that this is the first time you’re socializing since your wife died without making them feel uncomfortable?

“My wife died almost a year ago,” I began. “This is the first time I’ve been out on my own and all this,” I gesture to the stage, “is a lot to take in.”

“Shit,” he says. He doesn’t say sorry like most people would. Instead he rests his hand on mine in a reassuring manner and it’s comforting—strangely comforting—in an unexpected way. It lasts for only a second before he removes his hand and for a second longer I can feel the ghostly imprint of his soft, warm skin on my own.

“It was cancer,” I tell him, because usually that’s the next question people ask: How did she die?

There’s silence, an awkward silence, a silence that stretches on way too long.

I turned my attention back to the stage, only to see Har Mar hop off it, whipping and dragging the microphone cord behind him as he made his way to the bar and us. Patrick and I part as Har Mar hops onto the bar between us, beginning to belt out another ballad.

Patrick is trapped in the spell of Har Har; back to his moving and grooving and I am feeling even more awkward as Har Mar is seemingly—at least from my perception—singing to me. Patrick mouths, “Let go,” but I don’t, so he jostles into me, causing me to step back, my hip popping out and back with the beat. He over-emphasizes a shoulder roll, so I pull my hands out of my pockets, locking my elbows to my sides and do a slow shoulder rotation to the three, six, nine, and twelve on a clock.

Somehow the clenched fist around my ability to have fun loosens and I feel slightly happier and a lot more free.

I can feel the beat and the music run through me.

I thought about those times running where I’d find myself on a stretch of trail and lying before me I could see the pattern: what rocks and tree stumps I had to dodge around, where my stride could lengthen, where it had to shorten so I could quickly and deftly move through obstacles.

Just like on those trails, here I was free.

I catch Patrick’s eye and he’s laughing and smiling and there’s this connection.

One that feels strange and different and safe.

Har Mar eventually jumped off the bar and makes his way back to the stage to finish his set and we follow closely behind in his wake.

He plays another song or two before the band exits. Patrick, myself and the rest of the crowd chant and scream for an encore.

They emerge, just as they planned—those teasers—and begin to play again.

A few more songs and it was over.

Everyone began to make their exit, spilling into the street. Patrick and I are still within proximity of each other. Things feel awkward. I’m not sure how to take a newly formed friendship and make it last past a social gathering like tonight. Once you reach your mid-thirties, making new friends is one of the most challenging aspects of life. Everyone has their patterns and circles and not everyone is willing to deviate from them.

“Do you want to get coffee sometime?” Patrick asks.

“That’d be cool,” I say. “Yeah. Sure.”

He makes a motion with his hands. “Do you have a,” he begins before I realize the hand gestures were his imitation of typing into a phone.

“Yeah,” I say, unlocking my phone and handing it to him.

He types in his contact info into my phone and hands it back.

“Look,” he says. “It sucks you lost your wife, but I’m glad you came out and I’m glad I met you. You’ve got some sick dance moves.”

“My daughter tells me that I embarrass her.”

“You kind of embarrassed me,” Patrick says, laughing. “I’m kidding. There’s no judgment here.” He shuffles a bit, hands in pockets. “Last time Har Mar was in town he hit up this karaoke bar just down the street. Do you want to scope it out?”

“Oh man,” I say. “That sounds pretty awesome, but I have an early morning.”

“Okay,” he says. “Give me a call sometime.”

He sticks out his hand and I take it.

Turning, he starts walking down the street and I start back to my car trying to make sense of tonight.