Snippet

This town closes down too fucking early.

It's still practically light, in a dense summer hazy kind of way, and it's pretentious for a place this close to L.A. to put on airs like it's a small cozy wholesome little town, and it's been all day driving and humping sets with only eating burgers and shit, and tomorrow is going to be the usual bullshit, and all we basically want is a drink. Any drink will do.

The company put us up in the Griswold's, which is actually kind of nice, especially for the company's budget. Except the people are cold, spaced out, and we have our road 'tudes going full blast, pulling up in the Ryder like we own the place, take up about fifteen parking spaces, and lug in our duffles and our satchels and our blaster and our tapes and our 'tudes, and we're not going to take any shit from anyone, even if we are from a no name company putting on a no name production in a no name little fucking town that puts on airs like it's fucking Solvang or something. Sure, we've got our airs, too, but they could smile at us or something when we're checking in.

So the room is frigid and I get on the telephone and put in my usual snotty call about the condition of our lodgings being unacceptable and Scott flops on the bed and flips through the channels with the remote that's nailed onto the nightstand in such a way that it's almost impossible to use it, and then I rummage through the drawers, taking the pens that will almost surely run out in a week, checking out the personal hygiene products in the bathroom and that's it. We're in, we're beat, we're bored.  We need a drink. Any drink will do.

Well, we're stuck with the big yellow sportscar, so an expedition is out of the question. I throw a yellow pages at Scott and instruct him to look up Bars. I leaf through the glossy entertainment folder. Nothing. I suggest Taverns. Sure there's one, about fifteen thousand miles away. I pick up the phone and query the nasal receptionist. There's the Lounge downstairs. Not only the closest thing, but the only thing that's open. I ask her about the Jacuzzi. It closed five minutes ago but I hang up and laugh. We've never let that stop us before.

Scott and I walk around the building where this alleged Lounge is rumored to reside. I suggest a door as a means of entering the building, but Scott is being his usual and keeps walking, looking, I presume, for a better door. I walk in my door and wander through the wide shagged hall, past closed conference room doors with little stands next to each one welcoming the Kiwanis, the Merchant's Association, the CPA Women's Auxiliary. At the top of some orange stairs opens up a wide dining room, chairs on top of the tables, a tall skinny guy with a perpetual shrug sort of moving a sweeper around. I ask him where the Lounge is and he doesn't look up. I see a set of double veneer doors and know instinctively that beyond them is the destination of my desires.

The place is dark and specked with single men, staring at a duo in the alcove. Lit with par cans and bastard amber gel, a woman, not completely unpalatable, sings the usual lizard tunes with slightly too much enthusiasm. You could see her forcing a tear out for the Ballad of Billy Joe, which thankfully she did not have in her repertoire this evening. Her partner, on the piano, plays in a mechanical sort of way as though he'd much rather be in Vegas but is just doing this to fill in his schedule. For about five seconds I imagine them going home after the gig and engaging in violent activities involving leather and manacles, but the fantasy just doesn't take. Scott wanders in and sits behind the gin and tonic I bought him (his least favorite drink, which I well know, and why I bought it for him) and ponders his own inner dilemma for about seven seconds and then we touch glasses and dig into the oyster crackers.

The singer stops and smiles with eager myopia into the audience behind the par cans. She waves at some people in the corner and, to my surprise, they all wave back. She smiles at an old guy with receding hair and tells him she'll sing his song just as soon as she's done a request or two. A woman calls out All My Ex's Live in Texas and the room laughs. Scott and I look around, stunned: they're all regulars. This is their life.  I drink my Cuervo and grapefruit juice quickly, for some odd reason vaguely panicky about this new thought. Somehow I thought they were all travelers, like ourselves, stranded against their will at the Griswold's on an anonymous Thursday night. The possibility that all these people have sought out the companionship of sitting alone in a room full of other people sitting alone, waiting perhaps for a request or a song that will touch something long grown old and rusty inside, makes me feel really weird all of a sudden. These people are here by choice; this was what they had to look forward to. And we're just stupid assholes who can't manage to find whatever simple pleasure there is to be had in this poor excuse for a place. Suddenly the old guy with the comb over has something on me I can't quite define. We split pretty fast after that.

In the hot bubbling waters the tequila hits and the thoughts spin wide. Scott is in the room calling some girl from home and I sit with my fingers floating just under the surface, against the stream of the jets, feeling the reverse energy imploding through the tips and into my hands and up my arms and around my chest and into my body and out my head. It pours into me and I can grasp, just for a second, what it feels like to turn it around again, shooting vibrant pulses through my fingertips and out into the world. The tequila spins my head, cracking it open into the beginnings of a hot-tub-double-drink-long-day-and-longer-tomorrow kind of hangover. I think, with some degree of sympathy and tenderness, that if I keep on this way for a whole lot longer I may very well die.