Thomas had surprised me with a freshly Bic’d skull and a three-piece suit when I arrived at his house a few hours before the concert. His light blond hair and pale skin had already rendered him a solid candidate for the Hitler Youth; now he looked like genuine trouble, or at least troubled. The new look was an homage to one of the bands we were going to see, Execution of Babyface, each of whose members rocked the “shaved head/natty threads” combo. The EOB fans were notoriously violent, even for hardcore kids, and Thomas and I, best friends and cultural comrades since we were ten years old, had spent a lot of time on message boards reading—probably?—untrue rumors about coordinated windmill fist phalanxes and secret seven-inches given only to “executioners” who could present the band with a tooth, or teeth, knocked free during a show. It was all a bit scary and conspiratorial for punk rock, and, even at that early stage, it was much more Thomas’s scene than mine. But I did enjoy the music, or was at least fascinated by it. It was pulverizing and ultra-fast and punctuated by terrifying screams. EOB’s lyrics were inspired by Guy Debord, Ashbery poems, and Kevin Smith movies, though you generally couldn’t catch them in real time. It was a substantial leap from the Punk 101 I’d absorbed from a rudimentary website run by a Russian autodidact, which was filled with long paeans to the brilliance of London Calling, Zen Arcade, and the brief, collected works of Rites of Spring. I’d just turned sixteen.

Mrs. Rickley pulled up to the venue, which turned out to be a wide single-story building off of Route 35, a quiet highway in South Amboy, wherever that was. Before I learned to drive, I never had any idea of my location in space—it seemed impossible to pay attention to something like that from a backseat, and so I never tried. There were only a couple of years between my learning to drive and the rise of the talking navigation machines, which reduced the world to their glowing screens and precise, incorrectly pronounced instructions. In other words: Is it any wonder I still have no idea where I am?

“All right, guys, I’ll be back for you at midnight,” Mrs. Rickley said. “Be ready. For every minute you’re late I’m going to—what? Dock your allowance? Do you have an allowance?”

“Sure, we’ll come out when the show’s over,” Thomas said.

“I know Paul heard what I said,” she said.

“Yeah, we’ll definitely meet you out here when the show’s finished,” I said.

“Paul, do not be an asshole to me. I’ll see you here at twelve.”