Wir sind Eins wie Yin und Yang

“Rachel there is a hell lot of people here.” I huffed as we finally approached the venue, whoever it was we were going to see, they sure had a lot of fans. A girl ran past me nearly knocking me to the ground, I reached out with my hands, and stupidly landed on the one that had been cut, so fell flat on my face in front of everyone. I signed then stood again dusting myself off while wincing in pain.

“Hey! You little shit watch where you’re going!” Rachel shouted after the girl and she was checking my hand and practically every part of me to see if I was in any way injured that might compromise the night. “Rabid huh?” I looked after her and found she’d finally met up with her group of friends, each one of them screaming in that high-pitched shriek that busts your eardrums.

“This band had better be good.” I muttered.

“They’re totally worth the shrieking fan-girls. Trust me.”

I wasn’t convinced. We stood like statues in comparison to the surrounding girls. They were as Rachel had said, rabid. Constant screaming, shouting, singing, dancing around just a buzz of pure energy, it confirmed my thoughts that I need to be jacked up on coffee if I was going to get through the rest of the night. I spotted a café on the other side of the street, and headed over, making sure I could remember roughly where Rachel was standing. As I stepped into the café I shut the door behind me and leant against it closing my eyes and letting out a long breath.

“The Great Escape huh?” A lady asked from behind the counter.

“Something like that.” I walked over and took a seat, with my head in my hands only realising I was now nursing a headache.

“Well, what’ll be?” I ordered a cappuccino. Not strong, but bitter was never really my style. “I’ll be glad when tonight is over, these big concerts drive people away, you’d think they would want a drink but no instead it seems I get no customers. You’ve got to be pretty brave to be venturing down here while this band are playing, I hear they’re fans can get obsessive.”

“Seems that way, but I’m actually following the crowds.”

“You mean you’re going in there? Well, good luck to you, I hope for your sake you come back out with your sanity still intact.” I handed her the money and she left to go back into the kitchen. I left the shop and joined Rachel again, carefully dodging the over-enthusiastic fans with my coffee. As I finally approached her again I heard a lot a louder screams (if that were possible) coming from the venue entrance, I figured it was officially opening time. As we slowly filtered into the venue my arm was pulled out of the socket as Rachel grabbed me and started running. It was lucky she had a death grip on me, otherwise she would have completely lost me in there. She was also lucky I’d drank my coffee and ditched the cup, otherwise some poor kid would have been going home in an ambulance.

A lot of the concert was spent waiting for them to actually make it to the stage. The house lights were still up and girls were chatting and screeching away excitedly, this was before the band had walked on. I wasn’t sure how I was actually going to be able to hear the music when they did start, but I was sure that the headache I currently had was going to be a lot worse by the end of the night.

“What are they called again?!” I yelled down Rachel’s ear, she still didn’t hear and I had to repeat the process.

“Tokio Hotel!” What kind of a name is that? Before I had time to even consider how anyone could come up with that, the house lights went down and I was deafened by the noise of pre-teen vocal chords.

I was suddenly caught in a surge forwards I was being crushed from every angle, my feet were screaming in pain as they were stood on every few seconds, it didn’t take me long to realise this was one of those, eat-or-be-eaten situations, every man for himself. I refused to be pushed around any longer and began to fight back simply by leaning and using all my weight to keep my own space. The stage was dimly lit, there was movement and one by one a band member would emerge out of the smoke slowly, all the effects obscured the view for a few minutes, until someone, who I assumed must be the singer since they held no instrument, made a grand entrance beckoning lights and stage effects.

As the smoke faded away to reveal the figures and faces of whom I would be listening to for the next hour and a half, I would have paid to have seen my expression as I realised it was the fools from the café. The cut in my hand twitched with pain as I tried to make my head figure out how this could have happened. To their credit, they were surprisingly good and definitely knew how to entertain an audience. But just why was this happening? I tried my hardest to appreciate the music, and even trying to make myself be amused by the dancing of the front man, or even by the slightly inappropriate movements the guitarist made with his instrument, but all that played on my mind was how these people seemed to have been plaguing my life for at least a week. I glanced over at Rachel who was thoroughly enjoying herself, singing along, elbowing the odd space invader every now and again.

The night continued, and eventually I managed to forget about our previous encounters and fully concentrate on the music, atmosphere and trying to enjoy myself as much as Rachel was. That was of course until the last note rang out echoing off each and every surface in the arena, the lights phased out and the band exited the stage looking exhausted, but as soon as the house lights were bright again, Rachel grabbed me, and unfortunately I was now accompanied by a screaming fan-girl yelling in my face about having to find out where to go to get back-stage. I winced, not only did I have to spend my evening forcing myself to enjoy music, and looking at people who had annoyed me more in one week then Rachel had in a life-time, but I also now had the pleasure of being graced by their radiant presence.

I was dragged –with force- to where we needed to go, which Rachel had found out by stuffing her pass into a stewards face, I tried in vain to apologise for her as I was pulled away. We worked our way through and were let into a room with a few other people, a party no less had been set up. I’m not sure I trusted them enough to be near them with a glass of sorts again. As the door opened I was pleasantly surprised by the way the people in this room didn’t scream. It was a welcome change. I hid myself behind anyone I could as best as one can when they have a bouncing best friend hanging off their arm itching to get near to the talented trouble makers. My efforts it seemed, were futile as they approached us having greeted everyone else. I pulled my hair in front of my face and kept my head down.

“Hi! I’m Rachel and this is Adrianna. I loved the show by the way it was amazing. We both did, didn’t we Andi?” She prompted yanking on my arm. I nodded. “She’s a little shy.” I could just tell she would be smiling in that fake way to hide her anger, and I knew she was going to wheel on me as soon as they’d turned their backs.

“Thank you, and maybe she’ll come out her shell a little when the party’s started properly?” I recognised the voice of the one who wore the tight, dark clothing, how couldn’t I? It’s like his mouth runs by machine; motor mouth. I could feel his eyes on me and decided to walk off muttering an excuse that I needed to use the bathroom. As I left all I heard was ‘Hopefully,’ from the one who’s dress sense compromised his ability to walk properly. I kept true to my word and found a bathroom -which was disturbingly unisex- and locked the door. After removing my jacket I turned the tap on and put cold water on my cheeks trying to talk myself into the fact that this behaviour was irrational then, consequently attempting to convince myself that it was from dehydration and heat exhaustion after the concert. Neither technique worked to my advantage.

Drying off and taking three deep breathes I returned to the party, which in my absence seemed to have really got going. I headed straight for refreshments and a non-alcoholic beverage, vodka was not going to help with my dehydration, but it might have helped with trying to get the night over with as quickly as possible.

“I knew I recognised you! You’re the girl from the café.” It didn’t take long for one of them notice me now my hair was no longer serving as a mask for protection. The tall, dark, thin one came over, now I really got a chance to look at him; he towered over me, by a mile. It also wasn’t difficult to notice that he was actually highly attractive in a way I can’t actually begin explain. I felt bad for holding so much angst against him, it’s not like he’d actually done anything wrong, he had in fact, hit his band mate when he checked me out. “You weren’t embarrassed were you?” His question gave me a quick reality check as I realised I hadn’t actually been listening to him.

“Pardon?”

“I said, you weren’t embarrassed to see us again were you? I really am sorry if we’ve been causing you trouble.” I hated that he looked like he was sorry.

“You haven’t caused me any trouble. If anyone was causing me trouble it wa…”

“I am still sorry about that hand by the way.” As if his ears were burning he appeared from nowhere. Unfortunately, he didn’t look nearly as apologetic as his counterpart. I looked back at the darker one and he tilted his head as if to say ‘I feel your pain.’ He then left and headed in the direction I’d previously come from.

“Yeah, you sound like you’ve been losing sleep over it.” I snorted.

“Well maybe if some waitresses watched where they were going every once in a while…”

“And if some conceited boys would where clothing that didn’t cause them to be constantly pulling up their pants…” I countered. He simply took a drink and looked me over. I rolled my eyes and decided that now would be a good a-time as any to start on the Smirnoff. “So, will I be able to put a name to a face this time, or should I continue to know you as ‘the one who shredded my hand’?”

“Tom, my name is Tom Kaulitz. The guy who was here before is my brother, Bill.”

“Well Tom, I’m going to be honest here, and say that so far, your brother seems to be out-doing you on first impressions.” I took a drink and scanned the room.

“The horror! And here I was thinking I was the attractive twin.”

“You’re a little big for your boots aren’t you?” I looked him down once and raising my eyebrows, walked away.

I took my time circling the room a few times to get a feel for the place just in case I went a little heavy on the alcohol. Eventually I found Rachel, she was standing with a couple of other girls crowding around the one I now know as ‘Bill’. He was politely laughing at something and smiling, though it seemed to be more out of routine than personal interest. I headed over and stood close by, but was eventually spotted by him.

“Tom finally finished apologising?” He asked before Rachel could start talking again.

“Apologising? Not so much. But I was quite impressed at his ability to inflate the size of his head to such an outstanding size.” He surprised me by laughing.

”I just hope he didn’t manage to cut you up too badly.”

“Back up a bit,” Rachel said I turned to face her and was greeted by the faces of at least five other girls staring at me in what I thought might be disbelief, could have been horror that I distracted the object of their desire for all of two minutes. “When did Tom cut you?!”

“It was just an accident seriously. They were in the café the other day and he knocked some glasses over. It was nothing, really.” I tried to convince them all that he hadn’t attacked me or something.

“The other day, as in you already know each other?” I was a little thrown when some random redheaded girl questioned me.

“Well not know each other, I work in the café.”

“The food was great by the way I didn’t get a chance to thank you because of the incident, it wasn’t anything like that other place we went to.” He smiled. “Excuse me.” He left me standing there in the glare of a group of fan-girls.

Rachel turned on them instantly, “Okay guys, you don’t need to stare. So they’ve met, big deal? Go on, go cling off the arm of someone else.” As soon as she was finished she wheeled on me with a deadly serious look on her face. “What just happened?”

“I’ll explain in the car. It’s getting late, we should go.” She nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll meet you at the car! I forgot my jacket.” I’d been so soaked up with trying to keep my cool and calm down in the toilets I’d completely forgotten I’d taken my jacket off.

“I think this is yours?” Bill was back, his arm outstretched with the jacket in his hand. I nodded thanks and took it from him. “It was nice talking to you, you know, without you staring or something.”

“I think it’s safe to say you’re brother broke that barrier for us.”

“Well if I don’t see you again, it was nice talking and thank you for the food and drink and thank you for not going crazy at Tom. It was,” he thought, “refreshing.”

“Yeah, well you never know, with our luck maybe you’ll run me over or something?” We laughed and said goodbye as I headed out to the car to meet Rachel and the lengthy explanation that would follow.