Freak on a leash

You wouldn’t figure there’d be enough people interested in wearing purple lipstick to keep the product afloat. Then you go to a hard rock or heavy metal concert, look around, and think, “Oh. There it all is.”

To think I’d come so dangerously close to forgetting about the freaks. I don’t say “freaks” in any derogatory sense; in fact, it’s rather a term of endearment, as I once considered becoming a freak myself back in those heady, halcyon college days. But that’s one of the nice things about attending a metal show. You can oggle the weirdos all you want, because the weirdos want to be oggled. There’s frankly no other way to explain an earlobe gauge the size of a monster truck hubcap and a tattoo of a dragon smoking a “cigar.”

There’s so much atmosphere at a concert you could wash your mouth with it and spit it out. And it’d probably taste like Bud Light.

It’s a scene I would have basked in 15 years ago, but when most people reach a certain age, they have to distance themselves from the extreme-rock aesthetic. Personally, I chose a career path that consistently takes me out of the house and places me before sets of human eyeballs, so I’m forced to look somewhat normal -- if you can call it “normal” to be giraffe-level tall, shaved bald and sporting a nose that could be a paragliding sail. Any embellishment at this point would not only make it difficult to get a job, but would likely get me banned from any public establishment that hinges on people keeping their food down.

Concerts are a reminder of what could have been, had things gone differently. If I had become a musician or some other kind of independent artist -- instead of a corporate shill writing copy for beer money -- I could very well look like the over-tattooed lovechild of reality star Jesse James and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. In this alternate reality, my beard is dyed red and extends to my belt buckle in a spear-like geometric tangle; I wear rings in places where rings are not appropriate; and every T-shirt I own is black and adorned with some sort of skull, many of them flaming, even though bone isn’t flammable and there’s no good reason to set fire to one anyway.

Then again, there’s always the chance that alternate-reality me is a pansy, just like the real me. Jeff Two probably looks as ordinary as a high school guidance counselor.

No matter which reality I’m in, though, people-watching has always been a favorite hobby -- particularly at concerts, where there are so many people to choose from, freaks or not.

I’m generally into bands that have been around a while, and so their fans tend to be older; “adults,” if you will, people with cars and mortgages and a taste for non-gas station wine. They go to concerts in jeans and T-shirts, yet their sensible haircuts and expensive watches give them away. They’re not what you’d call enthralling subjects. They stick to their seats and bob their heads to the music in a manner suggesting some degree of sophistication, occasionally taking out their fancy smartphones to show off the fact that they have fancy smartphones. They’re respectable and practical, a model to which the younger folks can aspire. They’re also boring to watch.

What you want in a good concert people-watching scenario are the “independent spirits,” typically 18-28-year-olds who work at Hot Topic and wear dog collars on their wrists. Next time you attend a heavy metal festival -- which I’m sure ranks highly on your list of priorities -- find a cluster of these jewel-studded souls and observe their behavior. They promise thrills much greater than those on offer at your local zoo’s monkey cage.

Take the recent Megadeth show in Bangor, for instance. Megadeth is one of those groups that’s been thrashing around for more than 30 years, and so they definitely draw the fine-cheese-and-wine-cellar crowd, believe it or not. But because of the nature of the music -- snarky, aggressive, unapologetically juvenile -- the freaks are there too, coming out of hiding with their neon-colored hair to compare body art and piercing count. The graying temples share floor space with the nose rings in a show of cross-generational solidarity that almost makes you want to cry. Although that could just be the stench of BO.

My friends and I are somewhere in the middle of these two factions. Not young and not old, we occupy that weird gray area in between. We still wear our absurd T-shirts, but eschew the moshpit trappings of the general admission floor in favor of the relative comfort of the bleacher seats. They offer a great vantage point for peeping. In the course of about half an hour, we spied a young woman with the sides of her head shaved, long pink hair extending halfway down her back and a lip ring that could sink a medium-sized fishing vessel; a middle-aged man with a tattoo of a snake coiled around his neck; and a cluster of long-haired teenagers banging their heads so ferociously they should be tapped to power a wind turbine. And this was during the opening act.

I was filled with a sick and cynical glee.

It’s anyone’s guess as to what these people are like in real life. In my experience, they often have the capacity to surprise you; you expect them to be retail slaves toiling behind the counter of a strip-mall Best Buy, but half the time they’re insurance brokers who hide their tats until it’s absolutely appropriate. Concerts bring out their inner rapscallions, and they make the price of admission more than worth it. Even if there were no bands playing I’d still buy a ticket, because why not? This is the human zoo. We’re all pretty fascinating creatures, if you take the time to look.

Besides, you’ll never see such an impressive ocean of purple lipstick outside of a Minnesota Vikings game. That much I guarantee.