His eyes were a piercing blue. I know that sounds cliche, and well, it is cliche. But I would be lying if I identified them in any other way. From the moment we locked eyes, it seemed like that blue cracked open my soul and tossed it into the air for further dissection. His eyes were piercing and deep, and I still shudder to remember how he looked through me.
He was dangling over the edge of the security barrier at the concert we were both working with his back to the band. I had been yanked from the main stage, where Prince was performing, to conduct security at one of the side stages. Prince said I made him uncomfortable so I was removed from his security team in a rapid display of star appeasement. I was placed about six feet to the right of this man’s position. The blue-eyed man studied me with those eyes and said nothing. Of course he couldn’t say anything from that far away; the music was too loud.
He remained standing with his foot up on the barrier and with his arms resting on the ledge. He made the gaudy bright-yellow “Security” tee-shirt look good. His arms were tan and muscled, but his physical prowess wasn’t what drew me to him. It was his presence. A crowd of over 100,000 drunk and screaming fans were laid out in front of him and he looked like he was hanging over the fence at his ranch at sunset to see his cattle home. The crowd, the noise, the pulsing vibrations of the multiple stages seemed a million miles away from him. He studied me hard before returning his attention to the crowd.
The night went on in a blur of light and noise. One particularly rowdy concert-goer began to yell obscenities in my direction. I had been forewarned by the security lead to ignore the comments that were sure to be yelled at me. They don’t get many small females to volunteer for the security teams for a reason. I acted as though I couldn’t hear the comments containing phrases such as “slut-fucking” but my face turned red and my eyes began to well up with hot and unwelcome tears. Unwilling to let the man see how his words affected me, I turned to watch the stage briefly to try and regain my composure.
I felt the beer hit my back in a slosh of sticky liquid. My overly large yellow “Security” shirt clung to me as I whipped around to face the offending party. My fellow security guard was already standing between me and the beer welder. His voice was calm as he told the man to step back. The drunk was so inebriated that he wasn’t able to see how strong my defender was as he continued to try and grab at me from over the barrier. The guard calmly lifted the drunk up into the air by the front of his shirt with both of his fists…and threw him. A group of other guards, who were motioned to the area by the man who protected me, picked up the guy and carried him out of the concert.
Kurt stayed by my side for the rest of the night, calming scanning the area continuously. We carried on a conversation out of the sides of our mouths as we watched the crowd for more trouble. He would bend down and speak into my ear. His breath was hot in the cool desert night air.
By the end of the concert, amid the piles of trash and drug paraphernalia, we were both dangling from the barrier, laughing and exchanging life stories. We were so engrossed in each other that we missed the bands packing up around us. When people asked us to move from the barrier so they could pack it up, we glanced up to an empty venue, and people from our respective sections were looking for us.
It was four in the morning before we had to part ways onto separate buses. He asked for my phone number, and I gladly gave it.
You are an amazing writer I felt as if I was there a part of the story! 🙂
Thank you!