Radical Pleasure: Athena Dixon on How Stepping Outside of Your Body Is the Best Way to Gain Freedom

It wasn’t until I stopped worrying about how I appeared to others that I could truly live in joy

By the time the Kendrick Lamar concert at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field ended, my entire body hurt. My ears weren’t ringing as they usually did after most concerts, but I ached deeply. My thighs were tight; the insole of my sneaker was bunched beneath my left heel; my knees felt hyperextended; and the night air was making my exposed arms clammy. I knew I’d have a difficult time walking the next day because despite purchasing a floor seat with an actual chair, I’d stood for nearly the entire show.

For almost three hours I’d bounced and danced and rapped and shouted. I felt the heat of the pyrotechnics flash across my skin and drank overpriced drinks trying to capture another type of buzz. I threw my hands in the air and joined the crowd of over 53,000 people in lighting up the stands during Kendrick, and co-headliner SZA’s, performance of one of my favorite songs, “All the Stars.” Turning my entire body to capture a video of the stadium singing loudly was magic. It felt almost too good to be real. But I was there, sing-shouting my heart out with a smile on my face.

For the months leading up to the concert I’d had my normal fears as I always did when I ventured to a public event. I worried about parking and logistics just as much as I worried about purchasing an end seat so I had plenty of legroom for my tall frame and would cause the least disruption if I had to move. But most times when I go to events like this concert, I have to convince myself to actually show up. I’ve purchased too many tickets to count floating on the excitement of seeing one of my favorite acts live only to sell or give away the tickets at the last minute. Why? Because I’ve found myself irrationally worried about what people may think. Sometimes I go alone and worry that people will believe there’s something wrong with me and I have no friends. Why else would I be swaying softly to the music solo? Other times I worry that even if I’m tethered to a friend someone may find something funny in the tiny ways I let loose—often a little two step here and there or a slightly raised voice singing the lyrics.

It never quite occurs to me that the vast majority of people don’t care. They are in their own bubbles, with their own expectations and memories, trying to live in the moment in ways I seem to be afraid to. At some of these shows I’ve latched onto other solo listeners and we bounce quiet energy off each other until the lights go up and the venue empties.

When my friend and I looked around the row of other fans around us just a few feet from the stage no one was judging us, though. They sipped their drinks and held their phones aloft just like us. They were dressed up or down and they didn’t seem to mind the collective way our bodies pressed and moved against each other as the energy under the May sky increased to a fever pitch. No one laughed at me or even cared that I was singing off key and throwing my middle finger in the air like a bad ass kid because they were doing the exact same thing. All of us were free, living in the moment.

I talk a lot about living into a year of radical pleasure. I’ve learned that it takes some discomfort to get to the kind of ease and peace I desire. The first discomfort that night was standing from my chair while the warmup DJ played a set and moving my shoulders just a little. Then it was pointing one arm into the sky while I used my free hand to bring a drink to my lips and sip. I moved on to rocking my shoulders side to side and bending my knees enough to stay solid on my feet. The rest is a blur. My hands and neck and mouth got involved and before I knew it, I was openly free under the flashing lights. Outside of myself and unfettered.

I knew reality would settle back in the further away we got from the venue after the show ended, and the more days that slipped by on the calendar, but I knew I had the makings of joy in my grasp. I’d tipped myself into something new, someone new. My friend said she’d never seen me like that. And I suppose she hadn’t. I’d always been buttoned up, reserved, shy, skittish. Never this loud and joyous. Not tamped down by fear someone else was watching.

As the concert wore on and the set list grew longer and longer, my friend remarked that every time she looked over at me I was rapping every word. The video she sent to me later shows me turning toward the camera’s bright flash and reciting the lyrics in perfect time with Kendrick on the stage. I remember the moment, but I don’t. I remember because my body tells me I was there via its aches. I don’t remember because I was outside of myself. Full of joy I think she tells me the next day when we’re recovering. I tell myself internally that I’d finally broken free. During those three hours, I didn’t care about anything other than getting to share space with an artist I’d been longing to see again for seven years. I wanted to hear my favorite songs and scream out the punchlines with his other fans. I had to get outside of myself to make this actually possible. Why would I lock myself into a shell after spending so much time, energy, and money to make this a reality?

When my friend and I took the long trek from the venue to a decent place to catch a ride share, we floated among that crowd of fans pouring out of the stadium picking up bootleg t-shirts from overfilled trash bags on the street. Only $20 a pop but the memento was just as good as the $55 shirts inside. People needed something tangible to remember the night more than just the videos and their sore bodies. I clutched two of those shirts in my hands and ignored the pain in my left foot, the small of my back, and the front of my thighs. In the back of the car, as my eyes slid closed, my friend and I giggled and awed about just how perfect of a show it had been, about how freeing it felt to be in the midst of it all.

When we got back to my apartment nearing one a.m., we munched on hot honey pizza and relived our favorite parts. We groused about the $25 drinks that tasted like watered-down juice and complained a bit about how the venue had zip-tied the chairs together to stop people from moving them at will. But where we landed, the most important part of it all, was the joy. Of seeing young kids at their first concert dancing in the aisles. Of couples gazing into each other's eyes and softly reciting lyrics. Of people looping arms around each other and singing at the tops of their lungs. Of each individual moment of happiness and pleasure that being in that stadium brought to the surface.

Before we took to bed for the night, my friend and I came to the conclusion that sometimes you have to get outside of your body to be free. It’s not about forgetting, or even pretending, your body doesn’t exist. It’s about realizing it’s a vessel that carries the life you want to live. That night I wanted to live into joy and all that mattered was that the body I had, aches and all, was the very thing that would carry me into that feeling if I stopped putting restrictions on it.

No one was going to feel what it was like to experience those moments except me. No one would ever understand the race of my heart or the quickening of my breath. I couldn’t continue to let my fear of judgment, really the fear of living too loudly, stop me from doing exactly what I wanted or experiencing the unbridled happiness of throwing my head back and singing like no one was actually watching. Because they weren’t. And even if they were, I'd proved to myself it didn’t matter. I’d tasted my first bit of true freedom and I wasn’t willing to give it up for anyone.

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.