I love going to concerts. Sally, on the other hand, does not. More to the point, Sally does not like crowds of people. She doesn’t like strangers touching up against her. I can relate to that, but my fears of being touched go out the window at concerts. It’s just going to happen. Now, I am a very conscientious concert goer. I work hard to make sure that I don’t touch people. And I guess that I don’t really like being touched either, but am willing to endure it to see a band.
I guess that’s a lot of words to say that I go to concerts, but I am dateless for them because my wife doesn’t like going. There are things that I will go to by myself; the Voodoo Music Experience, being a prime example. For other shows, typically club shows, I don’t want to go alone. Enter the frate.
Frate is a slang term made by merging the words friend and date. As you have deduced, a frate involves doing something platonic with a member of the opposite gender. I have a preapproved list of ladies that I can take to such events. I think the list stands at 2: Jennifer and Hollie. As much as I love playing volleyball and such with Jennifer, she’s terrible at concerts. She doesn’t get into it. Her musical knowledge isn’t deep and her musical preferences are not deep. Hollie, on the other hand, brings everything to the table that you could want in a concert companion.
As a guy with more than his fair share of platonic female relationships that will never be more than that, I don’t know how Sally handles it because she is the jealous type. But for whatever reason, she doesn’t turn green for them and I am thankful for it. I’m sure every wife wouldn’t let her husband spend the evening with another woman. That’s one of the many reasons that I love my wife. She gets me. She knows how much I love going to shows and how much it really does suck to go alone. No one wants to be the old guy at the club who is such a loser that he has to go alone. Thankfully, I don’t have to be that person.
It took me a while to figure it out, but I don’t get mad at you going to concerts with your friends because you’re not spending all your time with them. Once in a while is good.