And then there’s the issue of the Pirate Man…

There’s a guy that’s been wearing a large pirate/lone troubadour hat during his pirate/lone troubadour phase to nearly every gig I have gone to.  Somehow, we have found ourselves in the same spot at venues.  He is always in front of me.  He doesn’t know who I am because I don’t wear a large hat that pokes into his eye.  I like that he is finding happiness (and a place in the pirate/lone troubadour community) expressing himself but he needs to find a way to house his head, still within this theme of course, that doesn’t create unnecessary contact with me.

The rules of gig-going need to be more, well, enforceable by law.  It should be illegal to wear a large hat.  As lovely as I’m sure he is – and as coordinated, he needs some time in the slammer to think about his impact on those around him.  I have lost a lot of my life this year dealing with his hat in my eyeball.   I have felt things toward him that I didn’t know I could feel.

I’m also curious as to how close you should stand to someone at a gig.  The Pirate Man doesn’t have a sense of body space.  He has a way of standing in his spot and slowly walking his hat backwards into my face.  I have to constantly reconfigure my relationships with poles and tall men to keep away from his hat and maintain a very delicately balanced view of the stage (being 5ft and a bit requires finesse in the art of stage view).  But, to be honest… I’m worried that I don’t have a socially acceptable sense of body space either.  Last night I caught myself getting lost in a banjo solo and leaning way to close to the chick in front of me.  I was raising her curly locks with the hot breath from my nose.   There was no need to be breathing into her hair, there was enough space for me to stand back, but it was too late when I finally realised that I’d moved in on the ‘acceptable distance to another punter’.  But not only that, I’d thrown in a little hot breathing.  It is horrifying to admit, but to that chick I had been her Pirate Man.  She is probably somewhere writing about me and the need for reform at local gigs.

It’s not always the case though.  The lines are different depending on the gig/venue you go to.  At some pubs you’d almost be within your rights to ask for your money back if you didn’t get kicked in the head throughout the course of the night by another punter, guitarist or bar staffer.  In most scenarios it is quite acceptable for someone to throw their 90kg body through the air, aimed directly at your face but really, no matter where you are, it is always unacceptable to stand unnecessarily close.  Push me over – sure – crush me with a combat boot – sure - but don’t breath on me… or wear a large hat.  Even at those pirate gigs that seem to crop up from time to time, I’m sure there’s a zero tolerance on pirate hats.

It would take quite the craftsman to formulate a consistent concept of what was/was not acceptable practice at venues.  In the meantime, I’ve developed some mathematical reasoning to assist everyone in establishing a comfortable Body Buffer Zone.

Take your height (in cm), divide it by your weight (in kgs) and then multiply that by the amount of beer you have had/plan to have (in pots).  For non-drinkers, multiply this number by one (research has shown diet coke has some socially unacceptable side effects from time to time).  If you plan on wearing a large hat, multiply that number a further 8 times.  If you have hot/bad breath multiply that number a further 8 times.  If you know you’re someone that shouldn’t really be standing too close to other people, use your discretion and multiply that number a further 8 times.  The result, divided by 10, is the distance you should leave around you, from those you don’t know, in metres.

All I can hope is that my Pirate Man is reading this.  I want our relationship to evolve and to grow into one that will allow us to both enjoy gigs in the future together.  I want his pirate children and my hot nasal-breathing children to know of a Melbourne that ‘worked it out’ and fought for a gig-going future we can be all proud of.

<A HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whatbettertime/27776303/">Image by Troy -a -life</A>