Texas heat, sweat dripping down my face, people pushing up against me. I thought to myself, “how could anyone enjoy this?”

Last May I traveled to Dallas with my girlfriend to go to my first music festival and I hated it. I had never been to a music festival before this, but my girlfriend was a music festivallionare. She taught me the ins and outs so I had some idea of what I was getting myself in to. These are the things she didn’t prepare me for.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spent 7 hours outside, during the summer, in Texas, but it is not the most enjoyable thing. The concerts started at 3, but of course we had to arrive hours in advance in order to secure a spot up front. Once the gates opened, we sprinted to where the crowd was supposed to be. And we were followed by other sprinters. Instead of sprinting to the crowd, I should have sprinted to  the concessions because an hour in, I literally started to die of dehydration. People were passing out left and right, and I didn’t want a picture of me slobbishly passed out to end up on twitter so I left mid-way through Riff Raff’s set to revive myself. Unfortunately we lost our spots, but having a good spot was the last thing I was worried about.

After regaining enough consciousness to properly enjoy a concert, I went back to war. We somehow managed to squeeze our way back to the front right in time for A$AP Ferg’s set. At one point during his show, Ferg asked the crowd to split – I’m sorry, he forced the crowd to split in two and run at each other, also known as the Wall of Death. I drove 239 miles to run at someone. At this point, I couldn’t even enjoy the music. It was like we put on a show for Ferg.

Around 9, Chance the Rapper finally came on. I was front row for this dude. I knew every word to every song and for once during the festival, I understood why people come to these sort of things. I now understood why people stand outside for hours on end, in a smoke-filled atmosphere, dehydrate their bodies and go crazy for their favorite artists. During his set, nothing else in the world mattered.

But then my girlfriend felt nauseous so we had to leave.  As I said, I went to a music festival and I hated it.