I Didn’t Wear A Cowboy Hat To The Beyoncé Concert And They Beat My Ass

I like Beyoncé just as much as the next person. So naturally, when I heard that she was going on tour, and coming to a city near me, I brought tickets. Just every so often, I’d check the calendar, and feel a nice excitement.

Then, the day came. I put on what I believed to be a normal outfit for a concert. Casual, but still a tad bit stylish. Nothing too loud, but cute regardless.

Parking was a little bit hard to find, but I planned to come down there early enough that it wasn’t too much of a headache. I found a parking spot, and got out.

But there was something weird. Something in the air. I looked around, suddenly realizing that this was an unusually dark garage. Brightness came from unusual places. A warm lone light in the distance, the left on taillights of empty cars, eyes.

Eyes— tired, beaming, triangular, hypnotic eyes. Fixated on me. Fascinated by me? Scared? I couldn’t tell. I only knew I was uneasy.

I started, briskly, down to a nearby door. My footsteps were mirrored. They echoed off the wide walls. Footsteps so loud my head shook. Footsteps so loud my brain felt as if it were being tossed around in my skull. I had to stop. I fell down to my knees, and tried to catch my breath. Then, I heard the most beautiful harmonies I’ve ever heard in my pathetic, fucking life.

“Hello, my old friend/ You change your name, but not the ways you play pretend,” reverberated what seemed like a million times over in that cold, yet tender, garage.

Do you know how confusing it is to be getting your ass beat while simultaneously trying to hold back tears, not of pain, but awe? Or to be getting kicked by a man in thigh-high American flag cowboy boots? At first I thought it was a hate crime but then I saw that the boots were thigh-high, and that he was Black.

I’ve been beat up a lot of times in my life, but that was the first time I ever walked away wanting to thank the people who did it. The way they beat my ass was like a love letter to the craft. They were so coordinated, and determined. You could tell they all graduated from Howard. My nose was punched in a manner that only could have resulted from hands that also had in their possession a questionable master’s degree.

I asked why they were beating my ass and they said it was because I didn’t have a cowboy hat on. How kind of them, to pause their ass-whuppin to answer my question. I guess I wore out my welcome, though, because when I asked about the messiness/possible issues in “reclaiming” the aesthetics of a country whose so brazen in their evil they’ve issued all of its former slaves the last name of someone who committed unspeakable acts of terror and abhorrence upon their bloodline, they just said, “shut up, nigga!” and punched me in my shit.

The concert was nice, though. After they jumped me, they helped me up and gave me a spare hat. “Don’t let us catch you out here again not physically embodying the experience of listening to a new Beyonce album. That is, politically confusing, with a blaring, perhaps even offensive, disconnect between the aesthetics, content, diegesis, and eisegesis of the text.”

Tyrant was dope.

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