Worcester sucks. Not just because it’s a dead city with no internal economic support and crumbling infrastructure, nor even because its downtown more closely resembles 1940s Poland after an air strike than a 21st century Amercian metropolis. I hate Worcester because it is inherently evil. You may be thinking that the whole “lack of mortality” thing would exempt a city from the loaded epithets of good or bad, but I’m telling you the truth. I can’t explain how, but somehow Worcester has up and gotten itself a hollow dead soul, and it ain’t pretty.

I’ve gotten ripped off for fifty bucks in Worcester, I’ve gotten pulled over and ticketed in Worcester, Worcester always has weird construction and mis-numbered highway exits to fuck with your head. My mom had knee surgery in Worcester, I cater-waitressed the most horrible acid-trip of a bat mitzvah in Worcester, I saw the worst Phish show ever in Worcester and now, finally, the culmination of bullshit has occurred.

On Friday night, I got beat up in Worcester.

I was with my sister and her friends at the FOB concert at the DCU center. Although I’m not a Fall Out Boy fan, Molly and I both love From First to Last, who was opening. So we crowded up to the front of the floor, packed in like sardines, and began the usual angst-filled group sway that accompanies such a performance. Things were progressing in a relatively uneventful way, standard random mosh pits, standard pushing and shoving, when all of a sudden I took an elbow to the skull. I didn’t think much of it at first – you don’t jump into the ocean if you don’t want to get wet – but after the third or fourth hit I started to get bothered. I gave elbow girl a little shove, like “lay off with the crazy limb-swinging, bitch”, and she started punching me. Hard. In the head. And in the face. My sister and her friends were a few people in front of me, so none of them noticed the smackdown, but seriously, this girl was like sixteen years old and wasted as hell. She easily had sixty pounds on me, if not more, and I was too stunned by the actual beating to do much in the way of fighting back. It’s kind of embarassing, really, but I did land a couple hits on her giant girlflesh, and I have a sharp memory of kicking her in the ass pretty hard. Somehow I managed to extricate myself from her drunken clutches and elbow my way into the crowd. My nose was bleeding, which I thought was pretty metal, and although Molly was concerned about my welfare and pissed off at the drunk girl, she agreed that being hit in the face is cool.

So now, although I have no visible scars from the battle, I am pretty sore in a bunch of places and firmer ever in the knowledge that Worcester sucks more than anywhere else on Earth. Evil incarnate, hands down.