It’s not a good show unless you come home with your new shorts ruined and covered in either or both of the two “B’s”. Bruises and beer. The other people on the T will grimace as you revel in your “eu de  mosh sweat” mixed with a hint of “shower de PBR”. Needless to say last Thursday’s Black Lips show can be considered a success.

In summary they are a delightful mix of punk roots and garage pop-rock, self-described by the band as “flower-punk”. And audience described as mosh-worthy. I still have the remnants of yellow bruises on my thighs to prove it.

Being the small club that the Paradise is, I found myself watching the show from at the band’s feet. Literally. Deciding that we were done being mosh pancakes, my friend and I managed to hoist ourselves onto the front lip of the stage and continue to enjoy the show amp-side.

From said on stage view, one really gets a look at everything. The lead singer’s Vans, the second guitarist’s hipster-stache and the relatively attractive sound guy. With whom I apparently traded glances with all night. I’m not one of those girls that struts about thinking she’s the cat’s meow, so during the stage rush performance of “Bad Kids” I couldn’t tell if he was flirting with the “religious reveler”, who was either having a religious experience or convulsions next to me on the stage or the “groupie” who kept trying to fling herself at the band’s lead to no avail.

After the set, however, my premonitions were confirmed when “sound guy” approached my disheveled, boozy smelling self to ask what’s up. You know it’s bad when the conversation starts with whether or not you have a boyfriend and ends without asking for your name in the interim. And you know it’s worse when the next question is “would you like some company tonight?”

I’m not sure what is more obnoxious, whether people still use those lines or whether people still think they can get away with using those lines.

Needless to say, I declined. Either because I’m no fun or because I have class. But it really got me thinking, what is it exactly that we expect out of these random encounters? Half of the women I speak to believe that chivalry is dead. So why is it when we are randomly approached at a show for nothing more than a quick tryst, there is that pang of disappointment in the current state of the human race.

I have never been a relationship gal, if it works it works. I can take one or leave one and be happy either way. So why exactly is it that innately we seem to want some sort of gentlemanly knight in shining armor to want to sweep us off our feet?

We, as women, are constantly making statements that testify that we do not need to be saved, but just maybe, once in a while we might want to be. Or to quote a fellow writer, perhaps that’s just the “pussy-power” talking.