It’s RokIsland Fest here in Key West and I’m getting in place for my shift in the VIP tent when I get all the feelings. “Who is this?” I look to the stage and ask my co-volunteer. 

“Stephen Pearcy, lead singer for Ratt!” He yells back.

That explains it.

When I was a teenager, I wasn’t allowed to go to concerts. I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things my peers took for granted because my mother, a cop, was in the profession of seeing, or at least preparing for, the worst in people and events. 

Couldn’t wear leather pants because then I’d be “asking for it.” Couldn’t get my drivers license because I might end up in an accident. And I couldn’t go to concerts because she, “Saw too many girls getting lifted out of mosh pits on a stretcher,” or “Overdosing in the bathroom.” 

Contrast this with a father who was so close to the music scene, Van Halen’s first U.S. cover was under the masthead of his music newspaper The Emerald City Chronicle. That sentence alone speaks to a lot of what my dad and I had in common. Love of music, love of this band, love of words, love of The Wizard of Oz, and both of us writers. 

But my dad was not there to weigh in on this decision–they’d divorced long ago, having been total opposites that had attracted. Their collective DNA was like magnets repelling inside of me. Even though I hadn’t seen much of my dad since he left when I was four, with his guitar flung across his back, I was very much like him.

When I was sixteen, Staci–my best friend with a much cooler mom–and I worked out a plan. I’d sleep over at her place the night of the Ratt concert and Staci’s mom (who’s got it goin on) would take us. The electricity was palpable as soon as we stepped into the coliseum, joining the sea of titillated teenage girls in black off the shoulder shirts and black eyeliner with a crush on the hot lead singer. Our newly activated pheromones ready to be set aflame by slick guitar riffs. 

The playlist progressed and so did me and Staci, closer and closer to the stage until the tall speakers were piercing our ears, the bass guitar emanating from inside my rib cage. Something came alive in me and clicked into an experience I’m still addicted to. Ratt was my gateway show.

Not only to concerts, but to not following fear. Fear can only take you back to your past, and you might get stuck there. Fear doesn’t warn, it limits, keeping you in the replay of the very situations it’s telling you to avoid. I try to never listen to it. Wouldn’t be where I am, if I had. And I really like where I am.