A couple weeks ago Jon and I attended an Interpol show at a bar/venue in downtown Salt Lake City. It was the third or fourth concert we’ve been to since I’ve been pregnant, a significant decrease in the usual number of live shows we like to see. And after our Interpol experience, I can’t see myself attending another live show while my body is being ransacked for nutrients by the human being growing inside. I’d very much like to be the poster punk rock pregnant woman who doesn’t let the changes in my body dictate what activities I can and cannot participate in, but what I didn’t realize — what no one told me — is that live shows are not pregnant-woman friendly.
I Am Here To Tell You the Ways in Which Live Shows are Not Pregnant-Woman Friendly:
1. Alcohol consumption: While it’s never necessary to consume alcohol to enjoy a live show, alcohol consumption can always help a live show. By nature of being pregnant, a pregnant woman should not participate in alcohol consumption, and is usually the only person in the room who is neither drunk nor stoned. This makes the pregnant woman feel like she is the only one not in on the joke, or at least that every other person in the room is excruciatingly annoying. Plus, the smell of alcohol on everyone else’s breath is about as sexy as a poopy diaper.
2. Standing for extended periods of time: By the time we walked out of the Interpol show, Jon and I figured we’d been standing for over four hours straight. I couldn’t feel six of my toes, and every ounce of blood in my body was stuck in my ankles. At one point while waiting for the band to take the stage, I could no longer endure the feeling of blood pooling in my calves, so I sat down on the sticky concrete floor. Two separate people spilled beer on my head as they tried to maneuver around me, cursing me in the process for ruining a perfectly good pint.
3. Cigarette smoke: This is such a divisive issue, and I’m almost hesitant to express my opinion about it here in fear of the hundreds of hate-mail I’m going to receive from people who believe that they have a constitutional right to smoke . . . but nothing sucks more than coming home from a live show smelling like someone else’s carcinogenic, exhaled respiratory crud. Although it is illegal to smoke in public places in Utah, it is still legal to smoke in bars and venues, and everyone does it with a religious fervor usually reserved for sacred temple ceremonies. I hate breathing second hand smoke, and my baby certainly doesn’t like breathing it. Smokers will tell me to avoid bars and shows if I don’t like it, and that is what I plan to do. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to have to give up seeing the show of a band I like (whether or not I’m pregnant) because of someone else’s “right” to contaminate my breathing space with their carcinogenic habit. Let the hate-mail begin.
4. Pretentious, cock-tard bassists: There is something about being pregnant that puts life into startling perspective, and in the last five and a half months I have called my mother at least once a week to say I’m sorry, please forgive me for everything I’ve ever done. Never before have I had such a sense of what is and isn’t important, and people like the bassist of Interpol just need to grow the fuck up. I have never seen someone so upset to have to play a bass line. I’m willing to bet that his toes weren’t swollen to the size of a large grapefruit.