Elmo Tide. I love this guy--whoever he is. He seeks out the craziest reflections of our culture to date, all under a nom de plum, unknown and anonymous. The dude is wired. Every time I see his work, I despair of making photographs. It is like trying to write after reading William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy. For me, anyway. Mileage may vary for every viewer.
That is what men look like to me. They are just hard to look at, difficult to deal with. And I was out among them and the ladies of the night. Literally and figuratively. An evening with the gymroids. We started in a tiny, lovely bar tucked away in a garden alley off the Boulevard. How we got four seats together, I'll never know for I was the last to arrive. They had saved a stool for me. We took up the middle of the bar, four of the ten seats there, but we were crammed together and made ourselves small. Having eaten only a bowl of garbanzo bean and lentil soup that day, I decided to drink beer. I'd not had enough water, either, and I figured beer would count as a hydrating meal. I ordered what turned out to be a delicious local IPA, and once I was seated and served, the fellows began ordering happy hour food--cajun shrimp, spicy wings, calamari, meatballs, burgers--to share. A few beers in and a lot of bar food later, I needed a palate cleanser. And boy, did this place have them. They had all the scotches. This was a good bar stocked with expensive tequilas and bourbons and ryes. But it was happy hour for both food and drinks, and when we called for the check, it was quite a nice surprise. The barmaid must have liked us, for she was pouring doubles, but the check did not reflect that. And so, boozy full, when we got up to go, we said goodbye to all our new friends. We'd made plenty. One woman in her seventies wouldn't let Tennessee go without a final full tongue kiss on the lips, one of many she had planted on him. Her husband was amused, but not as much as the gymroids. "Swingers," we concluded. The town is full of them. No one was going to eat or drink after Tennessee for the rest of the night.
"Michael texted me. He's with some guys down at Birdy's bar. Let's go see."
I don't like that place at all. It is a big bar on the Boulevard owned by one of the fellows we know from the gym. It is a go-to place for The Housewives of Factory City who get dolled up for a big time on the Boulevard away from their husbands. Going there is as close to being on a cruise ship as I will ever get. It is what used to be called a "meat market." I don't know what such places are termed in the modern parlance, for I was asked if it was still the 1990's when I threw some gangsta signs up and said, "Yo, what up homes?" I may have lost touch with the language of the '20s. As with so many things. But the meat market has added some professionals, and here, in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday night, the bar was packed beyond capacity, fancy watch boys, the wives of other men. . . and hookers.
"How do you know she's a hooker?"
"She has her Chanel purse on the bar. . . open. That's the 'secret' code."
A lone woman in a black dress drinking champagne sat on the other side of the double bar looking at us, smiling. She had not been the first. It wasn't long before a big middle-eastern looking fellow took her attention away. They became fast friends quickly.
A place like this has never been my vibe. Jam. Maybe they say "It's not my jam," now. I don't know. I should, though, if I want to write about it. I need to pay more attention to the world "out there," I guess. But such is life, I think.
It is like music. One of the young women trainers at the Physical Fitness Club with whom I am friendly came over to chat a day ago. She's an aspirational kid just out of college with a business degree who says she is going to go to grad school. She ran track at the big University in town on a scholarship, a pretty African American who, she says, did not grow up with money. She is enamored of the people with money at the gym of which there are plenty. But she talks to me, the brokest assed mo'fo' in the house. O.K. I need to quit that. But to my point. . . what was it? Oh. . . when I was talking to her yesterday, she asked me what kind of music I listened to.
"Mostly jazz," I said.
"Oh. . . really."
I told her that she'd find as she aged that her musical tastes would change, that she would find the repetitive nature of popular music would come to bore her and that she would start looking for more complex things. She lit up and said, "Yea, I've started listening to. . . " and there she lost me. She pulled up some music on her phone by someone I'd never heard of.
"I used to like fast music, you know? But recently, I've liked slower music. . . ." She put the phone up for me to hear.
"Uh-huh," I said hearing what to my ear sounded just like most everything else.
"See?"
Tennessee, though, had to come over and interject.
"That's my boy," I said to the track star. "He likes to . . . block me whenever I am talking to a woman."
"He's cock-blocking you," she laughed.
"Yea, well. . . I didn't want to use the word."
But T knows all the music and started busting names I've never heard of which they were both familiar.
"He just knows this shit because of his son. He drops all this music on him."
They were laughing and telling me I'd like some woman named Little Red, I think.
Nope. I just looked her up. Ain't a her, and it is" Lil," not "Little." So. . . look at me getting all hip and shit. This is the kind of stuff T puts on when I get in his truck to piss me off. I'm sure he has a mix titled "Piss CS Off Music."
But whatever. Like I said, I need to be more open to the world if I want to write about it. I mean. . . I don't want to end up like this guy. The world is weird at heart and wild on top. I read that somewhere.
It was early when I left the bar. "It's not even nine yet," Alain complained, but I was done. There was nothing I wanted there and certainly nothing good was going to happen. To me, at least. So I stood up gingerly putting weight on my bad knee and limped out the door and down the glistening Boulevard to where my car was waiting. I drove home, back to the quiet, contemplative life of the disengaged.
But, I thought. . . I need to learn the language.
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