Inhuman Conditions in Gainesville
I was mulling outside the High Dive. The first thing he said to me was that he’d spent all his rent money on band merch. He was a tiny kid despite him being about my age, pencil thin, and somehow shorter than me. There’s not too many young men I dwarf in height, wearing a denim battle jacket that would be tight around my arms. He could not have weighed more than my bulimic teenage cousin. He approached me with excited eyes when he said those words. I didn’t even know he was there before then. No one wanted to admit they were sliding down into the same predicament as him. The only thing I could confess was that I’d spent a good hundred bucks that previous week. If I’d been in college without parental support, my funds would’ve been toast. He repeated the phrase to a guy that looked like a clone of Lil Peep. The guys pink hair clashed with the warm bulbs lining the venues porch.
“Yeah that rent, such a hassle. It just keeps comin and comin,” said Lil Peep clone in forced eubonics.
“I know. I gotta find more money fast man, I’m running dry,” said the kid. I’ll call him Denim Dwarf from now on.
Despite his prophecies of doom, he was in high spirits. He turned to me with those same ecstatic eyes that scanned me head to toe.
“I like your jacket, it’s really colorful,” he said.
I smiled and complimented him on a few patches of his own. Many were peeling off from loose stitch work. He had a Slayer back patch and a few more thrash bands sewn on in fat white thread.
“Metal Devastation! That’s were I get all my stuff. It’s falling off now,” he smiled.
His fingers tugged against the peeling Slayer insignia. A few of its strings trailed down the denim. Before I knew it we were inside. There couldn’t of been more than two dozen people there, most friends of the bands or the bands themselves managing the merch tables. A few high school kids I’d seen perform at Loosey’s had shown up to mosh. This posse were the types that dressed in normie attire, despite being in a band. They were about the only few people that ran around other than me and Dwarf. The kid was bouncing off the walls the moment he got in there. None of the bands had set up yet, but they were playing metal classics on the speakers. It was enough to get him up in arms and go monkey hour around the room. A few minutes in they started playing Cowboys from Hell and it was all over. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the dark center floor. All I remember is him letting me go, us both running together in a circle, a mosh of two. He charged forward in a spastic shakedown. A few of the high schoolers joined us for an awkward minute before retiring to the tables. I joined them soon after, but Dwarf didn’t call it quits. He ran to the sound table and climbed a platform near it. Arms raised, he continued his shakedown for the next set of tunes. While no one cared to do so, it wasn’t hard to find him.
“Swing of the Axe!”
“Swing of the Axe!”
His frantic words gyrated to his electric knees. Each word becoming lost to the indifferent crowd. It was a shame no one took notice to the side show, but perhaps it was for the best. By now Lil Peep clone was hanging side stage. He swayed along to Dwarfs attempt at metal vocals, a high pitched crackle soon joined by Peep’s low monotone quips that sounded more like raps than songs. A few opening acts left their merch booths and played for the next hour. It was odd pickings. The second group was lead by a man with a faded Vector shirt stretched over his burly abdomen. He was one of those types that seemed a bit too high strung for his age. It wasn’t hard picturing him ranting online about MGTOW mumbo jumbo.
“Now here’s a song about a chick slicing off a mans dick!”
His words got mixed reception from the ground, but their guitarist was good enough to make anyone forget of their shortcomings. The main act was Inhuman Condition, a Florida act that ripped out dirty old school riffs with class. Local class would be the better description. If anyone embodied the addicting formula of Florida death metal, it was this act. Their show is burned in my memory from a tapestry I bought from them that night. It was one of those album covers that told a story I could only attempt to understand, a leering man creeping up a circular staircase covered in corpses. A mirror revealed his zombifed reflection brandishing a bloody knife. His feet looked less human and more weasel, his eyes sporting a glare that brought instant unease. I’ve hung it up in about every apartment I’ve crashed in.
I rejoined Dwarf and the metal teens awashed in orange light. It was one of the few pits I could tear around with ease, if it could be called one at all. Our small posse were the post pandemic’s greening buds. Only a few younguns and unhithered boomers dared to share air within a six foot radius in early 2021. That would soon change a few months later when the Orpheum became packed to fire hazard stage in Tampa. We were sharing our dirty hands and spit that night whether anyone outside the ordeal cared or not. The stage was ours and that’s all that mattered. Finding a front stage spot to lean and headbang wasn’t hard. I’ve compared this experience to what a dog might feel when sticking their head out the window of a moving car. It’s a unique catharsis, one people try to correct me on in words I cannot hear. Dwarf stayed at the stage edge until the end of the show. In all my times at concerts I’d never seen someone shake their behind like Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. That the only accurate comparison I could make of the scene. A guy shaking his head like a true corpsegrinder while shaking his ass like something out of a cartoon. The band concluded with a cover from Death’s Leprosy, he was back on the floor again, wheeling around like a skinny wired banshee. It was the only moment he became lost in the crowd, the energy within the walls finally making its peak. Lil Peep clone shoved us hard towards the stage as we regained our balance and spun back to him. It was a battle of two against one until the lights came on.
Dwarf went as quickly as he came into the humid night. That’s how outings at the High Dive went, people dissolving into the tired cracked sidewalks, their minds lumber back into silent indifference as they trod past the murals and half filled bars. Sometimes I wish I shared more words with the fella. A sprite like presence is something not often seen in these crowds. The last I remember of him he was walking away in the same direction he came to me, his black goth high boots making trivial strides on the roached pavement. I don’t think I’ll ever see that kid again. It’s not the place that brings in too much of the same people each night. I can only hope he’s wandering scatterbrained and happy to his next adventure, minus the looming terror of eviction. I miss nights like these, those rare times curious characters all coalesque under one roof. It’s all a game of chance by the end of the day, an uncommon roll you either love or hate, but never forget. I soon too became quiet footsteps becoming ever faint on a humid night, going down the road of “I don’t know, who cares.”