To Mosh or Not to Mosh

Think about it, one hundred sweaty men bunched together in an area usually no bigger than someone's living room, pounding their bodies against one another. Holding on for air and sometimes grasping for life. Almost anything goes: kicking, punching, maybe even biting, but no weapons. Tempers boiling in temperatures over one hundred degrees. This is what goes on in a mosh pit. Everyone practically joined at the hip jumping, and swinging at one another, all for total enjoyment. Who knows why people "mosh"? Is it for fulfillment? Is it to vent anger, or is it just fun?
Paul Tough wrote an article that appeared in New York Times Magazine on November 7, 1993, entitled "Into the Pit." He tells a story about his own experience in a mosh pit. At first he was reluctant to enter the pit, but by pure curiosity he decided to join. Tough was a man in his mid-twenties when he entered the pit. He states that he "Is not exactly the kind of person you'd expect to find in the pit" more of one of those "New York Review of Books-subscribing relationship-discussing, National Public Radio-listening guys." Simply put, a man like him usually would not take on the pit. So what was different about the night he describes in his passage?
Tough, curious about the mosh pit decided one night to venture where few dare to go. He decided to take on the pit. On a brisk night he chose to go to a Helmet concert at the Roseland Ballroom in mid-Manhattan. Tough entered the building wondering why he was going into the pit, but by the time Helmet took the stage there was little time to wonder. He found himself being pushed toward the stage by a mad mob of teenagers. Mostly everyone had earplugs, and almost no one was listening to the band. The people in the pit were more interested in pounding into one another. Tough at one point was asked to lift a man up. Tough bent down and braced himself while he launched the man over his shoulders onto unsuspecting moshers. When one man's shoe became untied, he