When Kurt Cobain died, I was devastated. The man had been whispering his tortured pain into my ear, and I had listened intently, but I had not thought of him, not specifically, as an actual person: he was, to me, the disembodied beauty of his work. I had never seen Nirvana live, and now he was dead. I vowed I would never be so stupid and careless again.

When I read that Green Day would be playing Lollapalooza in Houston, I was dying to see them in person. All I knew about how they might have looked were the tiny black and white photos in Dookie’s cassette insert. I wanted to satisfy my curiosity — to see them at last after I had heard them so thoroughly and clearly for weeks — but I had no idea that I would be carried away by a tidal wave.

Bill and I joined the expectant crowd fidgeting at the front of the stage in the huge, muddy field that was Houston’s Raceway Park. Thousands of amped-up, sweaty-faced teenage boys were thronged before the stage, vibrating with anticipation. Tibetan monks came out and blessed the stage, in a ceremony that was stirring and somber. One of the members of the Beastie Boys came out with them briefly, and the crowd surged in his presence, which should have been a clue as to what was about to break forth. The instant the first note hit, a churning mosh pit broke out. Bill, who was a weary veteran of a Dead Kennedys show or two, had to pull me bodily out of the melee, like dragging a drowning victim from the ocean. At a slightly safer distance, I watched Green Day on that enormous stage: three skinny, snarling boys making a huge, intoxicating sound. Billie Joe was right there. Right. There. Shhh, I’m whispering. He was right there, yelling “Fuck you!” Yesss, I love you too. I mean, fuck you! Punk fucking rock. I forgot to breathe.

Loving Green Day was refreshing and uncomplicated, like a summer rainstorm. If Kurt Cobain had been an itimidating, gloomy poet, Billie Joe was the kid I had grown up with, the one who liked to turn the hose on me when we were running around in the garden, to make me shriek. He had a maniacal glint in his eye, but he was ferocious in the same way that a kitten is ferocious: he hissed and spit menacingly, but he was the fluffiest, cutest spitting thing in the whole world.

A day at a concert is one of those rare days in which you are fully present, when the air is bright and brimming with infectious joy. Every other day is one of fretful anticipation, of wondering what to do with yourself, what you should tackle next, whether you should work on a painting or go to the store for some orange flavored seltzer, and actually pondering this as if it were a meaningful question that has a difficult answer. A day at Houston Raceway Park is not an easy day. It’s very very hot, and there are huge crowds. The ground is mushy with mud. You want some water but the vendors are so far away and the lines are so long. There are golf carts speeding by on the edges of the crowd, carrying crew members and band members, and you wonder if you might perchance see the members of Green Day trundling by, and then you wonder why that should matter to you. You are not a disrespectful, fawning sort of fan, so why would you care if you saw them outside of their element, which is on the stage? And yet, you do care, and it feels embarrassing and small-minded.

Once Green Day have finished playing their set, then the rest of the day is one of remembering what it was like for that moment, that special instant that lasted an hour and that you want to now recapture forever. Even now, as I am writing this, I can remember how hot and damp it was, how blindingly sunny, and how exhausting. I can remember the other bands I saw — L7, Nick Cave, and Shonen Knife — and that I was so tired i didn’t stay for the headlining band, which was the Smashing Pumpkins. Shonen Knife was great: three Japanese women playing Ramones-inspired power pop with incredibly silly lyrics. They were on the second stage, so the crowd was smaller and thinner, but no less enthusiastic. When the band asked for requests, everyone wanted the same song: “Bison.” (”He’s got a right to live although he’s very very ill-shaped…”) But mostly I remember Green Day, with a precision that is seared in my brain because it was so special. Every song was a cut gem, as translucent and mouth-popping as hard candy. Bursts of blue sapphires and red rubies and green emeralds showered the sky. They were the same songs I knew by heart and loved so dearly, only bigger, louder, and straight from the three boys of Green Day in their skinny and manic flesh.

Billie Joe had blue hair and was wearing cut-off Dickies that looked like they had been lopped off with a pen knife, exposing his little knobby knees. Tre’s hair was green, held in place with little-girl barrettes, and Mike was wiry and manic. But the antics at a Green Day concert were The Billie Joe Show. He was full of cackling glee, laughing at all of us idiots gawking at him. He dangled a booger out of his nose, then snorted it back up. He lobbed a gob of spit into the air and then proudly caught it back again, with a glint in his eye. He went up to the amp and created a feedback loop, played a crazy riff for a few seconds and then said, “Sorry, I just had a testosterone attack.” He led the crowd in a brief rendition of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” then he laughed at us for buying into a sing-along of such a stupid song. He dared all the “fucking hippies” in the crowd to throw their Birkenstocks up onto the stage. He dedicated a song to a guy in the crowd, whom he pointed out, wearing a black shirt. The song was “Chump.” He called another guy up on stage to play guitar, but the guy had no clue so he sent him packing. He smashed the microphone against the floor on his hands and knees, banging it over and over until it was destroyed.

There was method in Billie Joe’s adrenaline-fueled madness. It was hard to say what it was, exactly, because it moved at a thousand miles an hour, shifting from idiocy to destruction to delighted laughter, but his performance appeared to be calibrated, in spite of the apparent chaos. There was a strange genius in his stage presence, which on the surface was a lot of joyful mischief. It was intentionally transformative. Spitting and snarling are punk rock staples, but it was different coming from him. There was no hate in his anger, only a self-deprecating but sharp sense of finely-tuned disgust. All of his fuck yous only made the crowd love him more.

I was a little confused by his antics and wondered if I was exactly getting the point (I turned to Bill and said, “Are they gonna play another song?”), but I was mesmerized by this strange little man giving every ounce of himself, down to his snot and spit. I knew he was doing it for me, for all of us who stood in awe in that huge field, holding our breaths. He gave us everything: his spit, snot, and stupid jokes; his skinny little body; his heartfelt and wondrous music; his boyish voice; his very dignity. (It’s no coincidence he penned the line, “I’m losing what’s left of my dignity, a small price I’ll pay to see that you’re happy.”) Take it all, it’s all for you. Thank you, Billie Joe, from the pit of my little heart. You don’t know how happy it’s made me.

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