i live in raleigh & 15 driving hours away is chicago. Convergence, organized by internet goth kids, has ten bands playing in chicago the weekend of june 23rd. from all the hype on the internet, it seems not only will there be ten bands playing (including Lycia, Mephisto Waltz, Trance to the Sun, Lestat, Sunshine Blind, & the Wake), but in excess of a thousand people coming. so i try & get all my friends to go & only two of them seem interested & one of them can’t go, so katherine & i drive to chicago. i get there & i find out the club only holds 400 people & didn’t sell out. that was the first disappoint-ment. then me & some people i met up with wander through chicago a little bit until the show’s supposed to start. we go down to where the club is & i start flipping out because it looks like a sports bar. when we turn down the street, the place actually says "sports" on it, & i start cursing so they let me & katherine out of the car when they go to park. we get there after doors should be open & they aren’t letting anyone in. after a while they start letting people in, but say you can’t get in under 21 (which i am) even though my ticket says 18+ on it. so i’m sitting on the sidewalk feeling totally crappy & under dressed because everyone’s wearing full goth gear, except me & katherine in pants & t-shirts. then this girl walks by & waves, i wave back & say, "hi." & she says, "hi, you’re brian john mitchell." i ask her if i know her & she says, "i’m tara, this is mike & dave." they both say hi & i go, "oh wow, you’re Lycia." it didn’t seem as profound to them. I told them about the show & they seemed to think the club must be pretty crappy. we talked for a while & ate pixie sticks & then they went back in. then some guy who helped organize the event came out & was stamping tickets for refunds, but almost everybody under 21 was just standing around because there’s nothing to do & no place to go except where they are. the bouncer guy started to get belligerent & was talking crap about all the people who were dressed up, including tara who he told to get a real job. after a while the police came, but there isn’t any law against loitering (just solicitation) in chicago so they only arrested this one guy who called a cop a fucker & then they searched a couple people, but didn’t find anything. this one cop car stayed watching people for a long time & laughed about this drunk guy who was trying to start fights & hit goth kids. a little later, tara came back out having stolen a bunch of stuff from inside & then she had to go back in. eventually we gave up on being let in & went to this girl bela’s house. there was this cat with a missing ear there & i talked to this nice guy from california named sam who couldn’t get in either. then i fell asleep because i’d been awake in a car from 10 pm to 1 pm. next thing i know, my ride is leaving so i get in her car & fall asleep. then i’m being asked for directions to her house & i’m like, "i don’t know, you live here." i woke up & saw a sign that said welcome to wisconsin & thought i must be dreaming. then we stopped at a gas station & jen (the girl we’re staying with) comes out & says we’re in wisconsin so we get on the highway in the other direction. the next time i woke up jen is asking for directions at a toll booth & we’re told to turn around again. finally, after two & a half hours, we end up at her house & it’s really cold in the basement where we sleep. the next day when we get up, we talk to her mom for a while who thinks we go to school with jen & tries to give us a lot of food. then we take a train into chicago & goof off in the town (on our own because jen has some people she’s supposed to meet) & i’m handing out zines. i got some cd’s in a couple of stores, though supposedly i didn’t go into any of the cool ones. i also got a cool cure t-shirt in a huge thrift store. then we met up with this group of nice gothic kids & ate dinner with them at mcdonald’s. then we went back to the shitty club to make sure we wouldn’t be able to get in (even though we already had refunds) & we couldn’t. so we walked two miles back to where we were supposed to meet to catch the train back, but there aren’t signs labeling the streets so of course that’s an ordeal too. on the train ride back, the train stopped for half an hour to let another train pass. the next morning katherine & i gather up our stuff & leave. we ate dinner somewhere in west virginia at a pizza place where everybody stared at us & then we got back to raleigh at 4 am monday. the whole experience cost me $110 including food & memorabilia. here’s the happy ending. since i met Lycia in chicago, i found out Lycia & Trance to the Sun were playing in charlotte & richmond & got to go to both shows for free. both bands rock & are really nice.