I wrote a version of this story in 2014. It’s based on something that happened at a pub I worked at in 2004. Now here we are in 2024 on a beautiful Thursday morning.
Mick held out his hand, waiting to be handed his ticket.
Confused, Alana gave Mick a low five.
The first misunderstanding: Mick (the bouncer) thought Alana (the bartender) would buy him a ticket to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert.
Alana hadn’t bought Mick a ticket. As she had previously explained — there was a max of four tickets per customer and — she was already buying them for Pete, Julia and Brendan.
She’d said Mick was welcome to join them at the concert but he'd have to buy his own ticket.
She'd also told him that — while she appreciated the offer of company while she camped out over night at Ticketek — doing it alone was no problem. She was actually looking forward to some time to herself.
But if he wanted to buy one anyway, great. Come along and camp out. They could stock up on snacks and have a few drinks.
But Mick hadn’t listened to Alana. He wasn’t great in this department.
The second misunderstanding: Mick assumed that Alana fancied him back.
This was closely related to the first misunderstanding.
They’d only met that evening at work, but she’d almost definitely been flirting with him. Why else would she have smiled like that? Why else would she have practically begged him to queue up outside Ticketek with her?
The third misunderstanding: happened entirely within Mick.
Instead of treating the ticket mix up at face value, Mick bundled it in with some other bad feelings and went very quiet and tense.
Alana noticed and tried to turn it around. She apologised for the mix up and pointed out that — seeing as they were still at the box office — he could just walk in and buy a ticket? That way they could still go to the concert together?
But Mick had already committed to the meltdown, so he stood in the middle of the road and yelled about how he’d thought she was different to the others.
The result: the next day Mick wrote "fuck them + fuck you" in whiteboard marker on the back of a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD and threw it at the rear roller door of the pub Alana worked at.
He sped off straight after, but everyone knew it was him. Brendan reckoned the skid marks in the loading zone matched the tyre profile of Mick's Jeep Wrangler, but mainly nobody else at the pub had any active disagreements about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The album Mick threw was the band's 1995 release, One Hot Minute. It’s from the album album where John Frusciante had briefly left the band so Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction had filled in on guitar.
The plastic case shattered on impact with the roller door but the CD itself was fine. Alana held onto it, but didn’t play it that often.
She still loved the Chilis, she had most of their other albums on her iPod. But there was something about Dave Navarro’s guitar on One Hot Minute she didn’t gel with.
She could tell he was playing the correct notes and that it was objectively good. But however loud she turned the volume it aways sounded small..