Your inner teen needs love, too

What did you want for your 16th birthday, more than anything else in the world? I can tell you what I didn't want: a surprise party.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the lengths my mom went to throw it - she got all my friends' addresses and sent them physical invitations. She set up a ploy with my best friend that I'd spend the whole afternoon with her, and when her dad dropped me off at my house, I'd walk in and up the stairs to find everyone hiding behind couches and the piano in that classic way, and when it was the right time, they'd all jump out and scream. The problem was, I said down the stairs to that friend, "God, I can't wait to put on my pajamas and just chill tonight" loud enough for them all to hear.

Oops.

We still had a good time, even though I did change into my PJs. I was completely surprised, even though several of them had texted me to RSVP in the days leading up to the party ("What party?" I'd responded). But what I had really wanted wasn't a hangout the same as all the others, where the friends I dearly loved all piled in my basement to throw card games around and bang on their respective instruments all night. The only thing I really wanted was permission to go to a concert on a school night.

Two Door Cinema Club was playing at the Black Cat in DC, kicking off their very first tour. I felt so insanely cool for knowing them just as they were starting to blow up in the indie scene. I was obsessive over the bands I loved back then: Arcade Fire, Cage the Elephant, The Veils, Beach House - and I would have done anything to see them, include barter and beg with my mom, the epitome of humiliation. But if they were coming around on a school night, all bets were off. If they were all going to headline the same festival, same thing (even though "all my friends are going to Lollapalooza, why can't I just carpool!!?!").

The Black Cat show came and went, and I missed it. The only tour Two Door Cinema Club would ever run that featured Tourist History, the greatest indie album of all time, exclusively, was never meant for me to witness. And that's okay - I did finally get to see them my junior year, except it was at Constitution Hall, entirely seated, and we were all the way in the back. We danced as hard as we could and made the most of it, but as far as "seeing them," well, we didn't really. It's okay, I told myself. I'd get an even better spot someday soon. I'd witness Alex Trimble in all his glory, front row, and it would change the trajectory of my life.

In the following years, I did see some other prominent artists very close-up: the Haim sisters opening for Of Monsters and Men, Kevin Parker in the peak, long-haired days of the Currents tour, and Arcade Fire's full fanfare complete with required audience costumes and formal attire. My boyfriend and I waited in line outside the Verizon Center for upwards of four hours, decked out in silver glitter and black eye makeup, trying our best to match the "Reflektor" theme and determined to stand on the barricade for the show. Probably my biggest flex to date is that I've been to so many concerts in the last 15 years that I've genuinely lost count - it's well into the hundreds. Not just random artists, either, but all ones that I've loved.

Two Door Cinema Club announced their 15-year-reunion tour of Tourist History earlier this year, and I immediately sent a message to the group chat urging everyone to buy tickets and come along. I didn't think twice about it. But months passed, and no one took up the offer (except for my husband, by default, who was with me for almost all of those hundreds of concerts). On the day of the show, a nor'easter came through, dumping well over an inch of rain. We took turns napping on the couch, recovering from a long work week and a long Saturday drinking with the same friends who weren't planning on going along with us again. We looked at each other a few times that afternoon with hesitation in our faces - "you sure you wanna go?" "I mean, we don't have to."

I heard a distant voice through those exchanges, muted, but screaming: "Are you guys INSANE? You're thinking of not going to see Two Door (with STRFKR opening!!!) at the most gorgeous venue in DC, where you'd potentially get to push through to the FRONT ROW? And see their FACES?!? What the ACTUAL FUCK is wrong with you guys?!?!?"

It's true: this line-up, this venue, the fact that I'd get to see it with that same boyfriend who is now my husband, was nothing short of a pipe dream for 16-year-old me. But if it wasn't for her insistence, we probably wouldn't have gone.

I thought about her more as we piled into the standing section, full already of other late-20-somethings. Neither of us really wanted to be here on a Sunday night. We both opted to stay sober, which is admittedly not the norm for us, so the temptation to grab a few beers was only outweighed by the atrocious thought of wriggling out and back into the crowd. We missed STRFKR because the parking garage was massive and nearly impossible to navigate with all the false green lights hanging above not empty parking spots. We stood around in the intermission, awkward, having nothing to say to one another and, though I can't speak for my husband, I certainly looked around at the other, perhaps younger groups who were clearly more excited to be there with envy. I wanted to jump into one of their bodies, steal some of their gusto. I felt bad for 16-year-old me. She deserved better than what I was giving her.

But I just couldn't get into it. Are we getting too old for this? I asked myself. Are concerts not our "thing" anymore? Do I even like Two Door Cinema Club still? Was it worth coming at all?

Once the band started playing, the nostalgia tasted sweet - like the tiniest dewdrop of honeysuckle on the tongue. I started to not just hear her, but also feel her. The "first act" of the show spanned the first half of the Tourist History album with a few twists - namely, running from "Do You Want It All?" straight into "Costume Party," one of the special edition tracks that Americans could only listen to on YouTube back in the day. It was my favorite song.

She turned back to Mikey, beaming: "Oh my god, YES."

They played a few songs from their second album, Beacon, which strung me along through memories of mid-high school, going to the football games and staying late in the parking lot to sit and gab in my friends' cars. It came out the same autumn that I got my learner's permit and skipped homecoming to run around town in the dark, get a massive table at IHOP with a dozen friends, and scare ourselves playing Slenderman with the lights off. She was surprised, but delighted, to hear the song "Settle," the slowest and sleepiest on the album - the one she played on repeat in her dark purple room every night while she journaled or did homework in bed.

The albums that dropped in college and after weren't good at all. She forgot about Two Door for a long time, moving on to deeper cuts: Flume, Andy Shauf, BROCKHAMPTON, Hannah Cohen. Into adulthood, they were only brought up for nostalgic purposes, hanging out in the living room or driving to a party, everyone agreeing that Tourist History was, indeed, the greatest indie album of the time. It started to be called "millennial hopecore," or at least lived adjacent to it. And now she's almost 30, staring Alex Trimble in the face from the crowd, trying to connect herself to the music or to those bygone days, she's not really sure which. It feels strange, and a little sad.

After the show, I started to wonder what she wanted that I've slowly, quietly stopped fighting for. It obviously wasn't just the concerts, but maybe it was the hunger for them, or the hunger for experience. I wondered when rainy days or the pull of our couch started to overtake the desire to go out and do something. Or when the necessity to ask, barter, even beg for something became too big a hurdle for me to care to get around it. There have been a few concerts in the past couple of years that I've skipped out on - because they were too far, or I was too busy - but I wondered what else I've talked myself out of.

I should give myself some credit: my circle of friends is as wide as hers was, and I prioritize them just as she did. I do seek out new experiences often - and I'm not afraid to ask people for the resources I need to make my dreams happen. I am still active, and lively, and I try to get out into the world as much as possible. But I'm also tired, and a little burnt out, and more frequently burdening myself with the question of why any of that "extra" stuff matters.

Well, I know what 16-year-old me would say (because she did say this - I went back and read my old journals to find it): "All I've wanted since the beginning of summer was to just feel like I'm alive, and doing what I should be. Kind of like in movies, but not really because no one is ever that happy. But I feel alive. I feel like I'm in this world. I'm making my mom happy by doing all these stereotypical high school things that she thinks I need to be satisfied, but sometimes I don't mind. All the same, my stereotypical high school things aren't cheering on the football team or going to homecoming. Mine are sitting in Mikey's garage on a chilly September night, waiting for someone to come pick me up, but holding onto each other because we want every second we can get. It's listening to Beacon and folk music on Saturdays after band practice and taking in the fall. Besides the fact that I can't have a surprise party for Mikey's birthday, this fall seems very promising. Especially since, I forgot to mention, I got my learners permit this morning. This is good. Life is good."

So she wasn’t asking for much, it turns out. A learner’s permit and a chilly September night and someone to hold onto would do just fine. The hunger for experience that she had wasn’t dramatic or expensive, just always turned on.

That’s what I want to call back. Not the youth, not the energy exactly, not even the concerts. Just that quality of attention she had, the one that looked at an ordinary fall and called it promising. The one that, fourteen years later, dragged me through a nor’easter to stand in a crowd and feel, even briefly, like she was still in there somewhere.

I know she is. I can feel her all the time.