"Is this the crack of the pool balls, neon buzzin'?
Telephone's ringin', it's your second cousin
And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye
Makes it kind of special down in the core
And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
It's found you stumblin'
Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
And you're stumblin'
Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
Mhm, mhm"
--Tom Waits
土曜の夜の心
My hometown, one of three, four within my heart, high school days without an automobile required preoccupation during the massive periods of time between classes. Should I have spent time doing extracurriculars, becoming involved in that culture? Society says yes, but I wanted, like so many, to get out, to knock around into the underground.
Read my ZAP Comix and sit up taking "tea" with the modern Jack Kerouacs and being the modern Ginsberg (the less problematic variation).
Concerned then with an ineluctable preoccupation, not just with The Verb as Cummings but with the Word as in The Creator Has a Master Plan—
(I could pretend here that I was into and understanding Sun Ra at this point, and while I did read a book of his poems then, the clicking that happens with the free and the funky came later.
In point of this essay, one line I gave last night: "I wasn't funky the first two times I saw George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. He could tell 'cause you can't fake the funk. But as I got older and sadder, I became funky.")
Concerned with all that, we spent time reading the newspaper wherein each week in the Friday entertainment section, a local writer would detail the scene of our small little town.
The scene of our small little town was going to bars, getting drunk, scoring some drugs (always left out of the puritanical paper), and messing around the only thing open at night: WINCO. The grocery store. That or Shari's because it was open 24 hours every day, run on those razor thin margins taken from allegedly stealing lottery money-- even that is shuttered in my home town now, which has 3 dispensaries for every 2 people it seems.
As a result of the nothingness of my hometown, this writer's narrative attempts to reinforce and replicate Hunter S. Thompson's Gonzo journalism only highlighted the great truth of a hometown: you gotta fucking leave it.
The other thing they highlighted is that attempts to capture the magic of a night will fail unless you can wrangle your words into something of worth:
But ho / what are Wordsworth
Air shoveled in the bellyfully of earth
As I have rewritten in a poem before and shall do again. I could now tell you of the time a woman that looked like a doll, and several other women besides, came into the bar where I was working as a karaoke jock. Men had been sidelined for the night, and the bar filled with such things as one does not see in bars: safety, solidarity, and fun.
I could tell you how that night another woman looked me straight in the eye, told me her name (my own chosen trans name), and kissed me, only to disappear into the night. I could not have been in love with her had she stayed.
I could tell you of the time I saw a child scream "THUNDER COME BACK" at an all-night rave-up—and interrupt your questioning of my calling it such a dated term as "rave-up" to tell you that thunder and lightning immediately streaked across the sky as the child screamed. Fungal brains making connections, moving from fire to fire in the backwoods of Oregon, seeing people naturally circle up, the defensive caveman formation. Walking on the stars.
I could tell you of the times in a night I've fallen in love with a moment, with a thought, with a kind smile that grew up, got married, had 2.5 kids, and lived the Suddenly Seymour dream.
Or I could tell you of last night.It is an ongoing joke, good-spirited, amongst my friend group that I know everyone in this town. Or rather, if I know of a place, the people there knew me.
Such as it ever was: I only learned I was popular in high school after graduation. I was busy playing D&D and being the dominating and worst part of a co-dependent relationship.
The truth is that I often worry that I get stuck in my ways, that I do not go out and experience new things, that I stagnate and stay locked up, à la Fernand Khnopff, door locked upon my heart.
So to combat this I look for new and interesting places to go, to see, to experience.
Last night, free of obligations, I set out on such an odyssey. But it is Aeneas who gathers the golden bough, and if Ulysses is a day in Dublin, this is a night in Las Vegas (proper).
To situate yourself within the Las Vegas bar scene, of which I have been sometime included and given the prize sticker of the downtown degenerates, pasted somewhere in some scrapbook, there are places high and low worth going. When I first moved here? Oak & Ivy for the highbrow.
Perpetually Huntridge Tavern for the lowbrow.
Some years ago? Velveteen Rabbit for the highbrow. Across the street, Rebar for the lowbrow. This, of course, being in the 18b area of town, also known as the Arts District, also known as any other thing. Also known as "don't go to this part of town" before the great 2020 refurbishment, where a previously free-to-park part of town, in getting some money and getting some new businesses, bursts into bloom.
A five-year cycle usually, the same as any old bar—a new concept, a fresh set of people, regulars build, they ebb and flow, and time detracts and removes into a settled existence.
Millennium Fandom, too, was like this, pre-COVID era. A third place for nerds, dorks, and weirdos into the detritus of pop culture. Now its existence is more of "remember when we used to go there? Wasn't it good for a time!"
A natural cycle: I've moved from Oak & Ivy to Millennium Fandom to Rebar to Silver Stamp to Red Dwarf and other ports of call in between.
Last night's first port was Jive Turkey, which is situated just north of the Huntridge Tavern. Just north of the (in)famous Huntridge Theatre that has been just about to re-open since I've lived here.
A dive with a backbar I might build, all Cynar and Campari and Fernet, mixed drinks plus a few easy-to-market bottles of beer.
Have you seen Twin Peaks? Nadine Hurley, a woman with an eyepatch, a woman who experiences the frustrating frisson of not getting what she wants, so much so that she reverts to her high school personality in her desperate attempts to free herself from the restrictions of such a town as my hometown, or such a middle-class dystopia as Twin Peaks.
As I am sitting reading my book on Cynic philosophy, a woman enters with the same bearing and cadence as Nadine Hurley, an eyepatch as well, but blonde.
I could not help but think of Pirates of Penzance, the Pirate King's description of Ruth: She has the remains of a fine woman about her. Some day this will be said about me. It probably already has.
This woman proceeds to spend much time hitting on the bartender in a way that clearly unsettles him as well: "Maybe I'll have another if you're pouring. Are you single?"
"I'd like to take him home," rather loudly. This sort of thing.
When that becomes a wash, especially when the bartender asks her if she's making fun of him, she asks if the other bartender will take a shot with her.
I glance over, of course, interested to see where this will go, which of course moves her over towards me. Rather than stand up and move the three chairs over, the woman scoots chair to chair next to me and asks me what I'm reading.
In brief, the conversation cycles through the usual topics:
What are you reading?
Oh, I'm Slavic; I know Zizek's philosophy.
You look like you're wearing a bathrobe.
(Why should I care, sez I, rebuffing the negging).
--Here she makes another pass at the bartender, then says that she doesn't like the ice because it's too giant and she can't eat it, explaining her anemia.--
--Multiple times the bartender gives me the signal, the sign, asking me if I'm okay--
[And I should interrupt here to explain that I, being trans yet not out, move through the world in the mask and disguise of a man, being the best Drag King of all time with unnatural advantages transphobes would not understand. Because of this, I am viewed by default as male and have accidentally and quite against my will infiltrated their ranks. The toxicity, even from the nice ones, is worse than you know, dear reader. Yes, even with what you think and have experienced.]
Are you going to take me home so we can cuddle?
(I have another port of call, sez I).
I was just joking.
What are you reading?
Having had my three cocktails: Mayhem, please (Earl Grey, oat milk, etc.), Thug Passion #2, and a Campari & Coke I can still taste this morning despite multiple other... drinks... entering my mouth during flâneuration—having had my drinks, being unable now to finish reading of great cynical wit and comebacks, of chickens thrown at Socrates, I took my leave.
After all, the conversation had cycled.
A wandering woman with an eyepatch, an odd way of speaking, Slavic ancestry.
Did I encounter the character of myself from my own songs? Freyja in Aspect of Odin:
C C7
I can see you thinkin
C C7
Thinkin that I'm lying
C C7 C C7
I am the hanged goddess
F
Horned on the tree dying
[Chorus]
Dm Dm
Spend another forever
Gm C
Chewing on the yew
Dm Dm
I am the tree and she is me
Gm C
And we're the goddess in you
Sometimes the world does glitch and what I write becomes true. In 2014 I wrote a story where teachers were reduced to being babysitters that watch over as children simply learn to push buttons. Said teacher runs away and learns there is no underground.
Once I wrote a script about poisoned eggs turning people into zombies. Then a friend who had criticized the script called me and told me that after reading the script, going to a diner that had bad eggs, a waffle fell out of nowhere BLOPPING down in the middle of her car.
Recently, my advent story of Jingle the Dog breaking free and being chased around by two women immanentized into a real-life experience of the same situation, according to one astute reader of my words (hi! if you've made it this far, award yourself 33,000 Snoopy points).
It was time for a change of scene anyway, and my goal was a bar called Petite Boheme, which I stumbled into the night prior, wondering "what's this new cocktail sign" as I trudged towards a punk show at Swan Dive.
A good show overall, Pure Sport putting on their corporate Christmas party as their high concept. Haushanka first, then Twist Off, then Style Cramps (a band I really liked who answers the question "what if we all like Rage Against the Machine?") then of course Pure Sport.
My grumbles being only: when there are about 50 people inside don't ask how everybody is doing. & punks throwing up the middle finger is so much like the way everyone uses vulgar language now: it cheapens the effect.
This, of course, is how the right wing has won a key battle of the culture war: by ceding the "say whatever you want" idea they make free speech paradoxically unfree by using refuge in vulgarity to hide their ideals in plain sight:
The hateful speech becomes accepted and allowed because it's just speech, which allows the conversation to shift even more hatefully towards even worse ideas that keep people unfree.
Free speech is not controlled, but as Lenny Bruce said it's the ability to say "Fuck the Government." It's not supposed to be the ability to say "Fuck the [Slurs] I hate them." While yes technically you can say that and always have been able to, the ability of free speech is the right to say "these fucking assholes in charge of us are murderous fucks and what happened to the French nobles is too good for them."
Note that this isn't about insulting others or pointing to minority groups and saying "Stereotype, therefore laugh because I'm funny." We laugh because we already know what the joke is, not because it's unexpected, though I'll save that analysis for later.
When punk becomes so self-parodic without clear intent it becomes a watered-down corporate statement. While musically everything fit, there's something jolting about not being able to tell whether a song called "Punk is not for Posers" is seriously, half-seriously, or ironic.
Because:
If serious—bad song.
If sarcastic or ironic—a good song made bad by not being clear.
If half and half—a bad song (for reasons listed above).
So I made the mental note to circle back, and last night I did to find that I had walked into the first night of operations (official). Pushing my way through people in fancy clothing, ties and suits, wearing my t-shirt and comfortable bathrobe looking semi-Pendleton, I made it to the back where I noticed that one of the cocktails was called J'Accuse.
It's strange to have a cocktail named after the Dreyfus affair. I will leave it to your understanding of history to explain why.
As I'm drinking I start talking to the man beside me, who like me is out of place. Hoodie up, scruffled unshaven look, nursing a single drink for a long time.
I started with an IBF Pick Me Up, a little cognac for the soul, and moved onto a drink with Herbsaint called the Madame Souza. Not that I've ever actually seen The Triplets of Belleville.
As per usual I am asked what book I am reading, so we discuss cynical philosophers, Diogenes, living in a barrel in the city, throwing chickens, the usual.
I agree to move to the little outside patio, where after I returned from the restroom he was talking to a woman who graduated college in 2020, which means mathematically she would have been in middle school when I first started teaching in middle schools.
A man came out and asked me who Freya was.
I spent time talking about Paschal Beverly Randolph.
I still wonder if, due to my tattoo, I would get free admission to Rosicrucian compounds in both California and Pennsylvania, or do they still pretend not to know who PBR is? Everyone knows about the sex magician that founded the Rosicrucians, of course... you mean you don't?
Two cocktails in it was time to make a move. The man, a substitute teacher / adderall dealer, invited me to head to Cornish Pasty, but my sights were set on Silver Stamp, a classic port of call. I meant for it to be my last, but knowing how way leads on to way.
Silver Stamp is a classic Midwestern dive bar, unmarked 222 Imperial with barely a sign. You have to know what it is to go in, then when you do enter you'll find lots of imported beers. A beer-only bar, with maybe some shots of Underberg to pass around as well.
Krampus, Raven Queens, the whole thing done up for the Christmas season. I grab a helles beer and finally find a place to sit down next to Krampus, played by a bartender there. We talk of the German-American club; I mention that I'm descended from Volga Germans and decide that there are a few more places I need to adventure to this winter break.
Hard Hat Lounge, for example, which I haven't been back to since before the ownership changed.
But that would have required extra driving, so instead I went to Stray Pirate, which is exactly what you think: a bar that is themed inside like the galley of a pirate ship. Rum-based cocktails abound with bespoke water and non-alcoholic drinks.
It so happens that I know the owner, from back in my Oak & Ivy days, so we spent some time outside chatting and catching up on the movements of life over the past few years since he was one of the prime pourers of the libations I imbibed. A giant pajama pub crawl was going on, so I bided my time and went in to have one sugar-light cocktail, a variation of the Papa Doble, but I could feel the slowdown oncoming so it was time to head home.
Small moments, fragments of a night out. The kind of night where things feel weird, get weird. The moon itself was askew, 47% of its face in view.
A night for adventure, tripping from one bar to another.
But the truth of such a night is not what happened, who said what to whom. Not the experience itself, but the feeling of the experience.
A night where yet again a child could scream out for the thunder to come back and it arrives.
A night that is its own sadness, its own rise and fall. A night that returns like any child of Aphrodite, back into the waves.
"Last night's dream was a lie.
I can't explain what I saw.
It lied like truth.
I wake up inside the dream."
--Ryokan