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The snow in the mountains was melting, and Taylor’s reputation had been dead for several years before we came to understand the gravity of this presale.
Though Henry Winter and I always had very little in common, taste-wise, other than an abnormal appreciation for Homer, the aloof malcontent that I evidently became during my first two years of studying at the inferior college in Plano did manage to provide the two of us with one more common denominator: an insurmountable disdain for popular music.
Bunny Corcoran, on the other hand, was surprisingly more flexible on this matter than one would expect a pretentious and insulated classics student to be. I partially blame that awful Marion and her obnoxious collection of about fifteen Lana Del Rey vinyls for influencing him, but as time went on, he tortured us by playing Taylor Swift songs unironically during the time we stayed at Francis’ place.
Francis himself was not particularly keen on Taylor. In fact, his lackey nature had caused him to fall prey to the Taylor Swift hate trends of that dreadful year when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. One would think, with his status as a gay person with chronic anxiety attacks, that he would fancy himself among Swift’s target audience. To this day, I still have a suspicion that he kept a few copies of folklore hidden beneath the floorboards somewhere. His appreciation for art mirrored Henry’s in that he found superstitious value in the repeated consumption of the same piece of work, so it seems like just the cryptic but simultaneously camp thing for him to attempt to do.
I digress. Taylor Swift’s announcement of the Eras Tour could not have been more ill-timed for Henry and I, because along with worrying about Bunny’s leverage against all of us, we now had the additional stressor of attempting to navigate the professed mortal enemy of our generation: Ticketmaster.
On the day of online mass registration, I heard Henry’s monotone rambling to himself at about three or four in the morning. “This blasted application keeps sending me emails confirming my status as a ‘verified fan’. I have never touched a Taylor Swift record in the duration of my cursed existence and I do not plan to do so. What do I need to do to display qualification for this purchase? Do I need to be able to translate her lyrics to Latin? Conjugate the song titles? Is there something I can memorize?”
I heard Camilla’s exasperated sigh on the other end of what seemed like a phone call. I supposed that Henry wasn’t talking to himself after all. I thought to myself, that’s strange. Usually I can swiftly tell who he’s addressing based on the subtle but defined fluctuations in the cadence of his voice. “Oh dear. That’s just the service terminology. I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyway, the general ticket sales don’t officially start until next week. Go to sleep, Henry. You and I both know that Julian’s a very observant man, he can always tell when you’ve pulled another all-nighter, and we really can’t have him suspecting that we are involved in this ticket business. Oh, God. The very thought! Us, dedicating precious hours of our heroic education to acquiring spots at a venue for consuming popular music. He would probably consider that a fate worse than death.”
I heard a clicking noise, and then I heard a loud clashing noise and went to observe what eccentric method Henry had employed now.
“Not that I have any intention of intruding on you at this ungodly hour, but what the hell is wrong with your computer?” I hissed at him.
“There is an ancient practice of destroying and reassembling things when they fail to perform their intended function. Admittedly, I can’t recall the specific procedure, but I’ve retained the ideals behind it, and that is the current business with acquiring Taylor Swift concert tickets to get Bunny’s ever-present threats out of the way…” He said something else, but eventually the sounds flying out became unintelligible and I finally recognized that familiar cadence of Henry’s dazed and heated conversations with himself. Apathetic, I returned to the room that I was staying in and fell asleep.
Three days later, the five of us received word that the general sale for tickets to the Eras tour had been canceled due to limited ticket inventory.
Henry calmly and succinctly informed me, while Charles was adding sugar to his coffee in the kitchen just a few feet away from us, that Bunny did not accept this cancellation and now that we had no potential means of providing him with admission to see Taylor Swift perform, there was only one other action that we could take to protect ourselves from his retaliation.