PORTLAND, Ore. — Local 42-year-old Mitch Hensley, a self-proclaimed supporter of the Portland scene, is concerned that he has already given the best excuses he will ever come up with to not go to his friends’ shows, sources confirmed.
“I’ve gotten to the point in my life where you just start to wonder if you’ve accomplished everything that you’re ever going to do or, rather, not do,” Hensley said while ignoring a text from a friend he had promised to get drinks with “soon.” “When I was in my 20s, I could come up with multiple excuses not to see a buddy’s band’s basement show at the drop of a hat. I could spend hours just free-styling excuses, like ‘my great-aunt has rickets and I have to organize her hat collection’ or ‘I think there’s some kind of rat or rat-like creature in my car,’ just jam out those excuses. Now, whenever I try to come up with a good but completely untrue reason why I can’t come to a show, I’m empty. I guess my best years are just behind me. I’m not the excuse hotshot I used to be.”
Adriana Packhurst, a longtime acquaintance of Hensley’s, had little sympathy for the aging scenester.
“Mitch is always moaning that he doesn’t have any ‘creative spark’ left in him,” Packhurst said. “Even though he won’t shut up about how his AI-generated Misfits posters are ‘digital freespace art,’ despite them primarily just seeming to be about the Crimson Ghost throwing a beach party. I’m not exactly sure how he’s connecting his inability to come up with a decent excuse why he won’t get his ass off the couch with the divine impulse to produce something of worth, but honestly, it’s been years since anyone even invited him to a show, so I don’t know what he’s worried about.”
Behavioral therapist Martha Carter says that middle-age often causes individuals to lose faith in their ability to produce new excuses.
“A midlife crisis can very commonly cause people to question their greatest strengths,” said Dr. Carter. “Particularly when your greatest strength is being a flaky dick who can’t be bothered to support a local scene, like Mr. Hensley. It is likely that he will continue to descend into a death-spiral of doubt and increasing nostalgia for his lost ability to let down his friends, which all could have been avoided if he had just shown up at a house show every once in a while. Loser.”
At press time, Hensley was also starting to suspect that his days of pretending to skateboard were behind him.