a night out gigging
It's one of those nights. I’ve been here before. Play a gig. Find a parking space. Wonder if my bass will get home with me. Load up. Load down. Enter the darkness. Darkness.
Amp in hand, bass guitar slung over the shoulder. A muffled greeting is exchanged. The bearded, money-collecting doorman raises his stamp.
“Listeners,” I say.
Hungover, stoned, or both - he dutifully marks the page after marking me.
Thirty minutes to stage time. No one here except the bartender, who is my best friend at the moment.
“Any drink deals for the band?”
Nope. Not a surprise, anyway.
We rock. We play for friends and family. One of each shows up tonight. As expected, not one, but two more eventually appear. After we are done.
I thank my bandmates as they leave for hauling my ark of a bass amp back to the rehearsal space - and thank the fact that I have a reason to be out tonight. Time to hit the bar with the two stragglers.
Pints. Strong. Hoppy. Tasty. Anxiety dissipates. Not that I haven’t grown accustomed to playing in front of nobody. The frontman sweats. I make silly faces as I thump on the bass. I look out at a point floating in the air over the barren bar-room floor. It’s good.
But that was then. This is now.
My Russian friend texts. The usual inquiry: “Have you played yet?”
“Yes. Come to the bar.”
“On my way.”
Yuri appears with a mutual friend. The friend is dressed in a pinstripe suit. Shiny tie. Russian. They’re like that. He probably drove. Russians don’t take subways. He looks like a gangster. But he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I find it amusing, and make a few Sopranos comments.
Greetings are exchanged briskly. “Let’s take a walk. I have great stuff.”
Leaving friends in the bar, we walk. The gangster is the only one who wonders if the Bowery, filled with traffic and pedestrians, is a proper place to pass a spliff around. “Dude, this is NYC.” We say. Easy enough. We’re not carrying bags.
I normally don’t smoke, but I’ve been convinced that this is “good shit.” Good means I’m not a paranoid mess, unable, after the beers I’ve already had, to follow through from thought formation to voiced statement without a snafu along the way.
We go back in. Yes. This is good. I feel…toasty. Electric. I know it because another friend texts that he is on his way and I swear two hours pass before he arrives. It’s been 10 minutes.
Grimes appears haggard. Wild-eyed. He’d recently quit his job and took a gig with “some guys” who were “building apps.” We found it amusing, this operation he described, his boss in pajamas conducting interviews from an apartment. But what the hell, right? He was selling his soul at an ad agency, so why not see what it’s all about?
“How’s the job?”
“I have yet to be paid…”
Gangsters are on my brain. My brain…it’s like a cow…ambling around directionless, chewing cud. Looking up every so often to emit the same moo. Then back to chewing.
“You work for gangsters.” I suggest. I must say this 10 more times. The same moo. The rest of the conversation floats above me.
“This is good stuff,” I say. I drift...
Grimes looks terrible.
“Are you ok?” I ask.
“yeah.”
“Sleeping?”
“Not really.”
I recall a night in a Berlin hotel at 5AM. I reluctantly traded Grimes a Xanax from my dwindling supply for an Ambien. Unchartered territory. Sam was sprawled out, bed-less, face down, lower lip on the floor in a puddle of drool, shredding any possibility of silence with his snoring. Grimes was on fire. I was hoping the Xanax would put an end to his might-have-beens and surely-what-could-haves at the nightclub prior. But there were no women here. Just stories and sleep aids. And Grimes, drunk on sleeplessness and adrenalin, amusing himself by snoring and cackling in Sam’s unresponsive face. That only encouraged it. Fuck, man. Wake up. Are you fucking dead? It was a snore contest, but Grimes was fully conscious, and amused to no end. I was not. I wanted to see Prague in a couple hours, but I couldn’t sleep either. Especially not with this shit.
“Remember when you were tormenting Sam in Berlin?”
I was happy to connect Sam and Grimes in this way. Neither sleeps without aid. Sam claims to go days. Grimes looks like he’s at least 3 in.
The conversational lull is replaced by an animated discussion of pills between the two. How many? How often? What dosage? I was off the hook. Sleep is something I can still manage. Satisfied, relieved, I back out.
Yuri, away from his wife in Chicago, takes aim at anything with tits. He’s wearing his track suit and his Russian hat. It’s not a “Russian” hat. It’s just what a New York Russian would wear. I guess it’s a Kangol. I really don’t know. Track suits...pinstriped suits...hop-hop hats. It all goes over very well in Brighton Beach.
He’s left. He’s right. The women look interested. But the exchanges don’t last long.
“Bryan – are you good in a fight? We may need you. Yuri is hitting on someone’s wife. And he’s here,” says the wise guy in a suit.
Fights! Fun. I like fights. It means something happened. Emotions flared. Humanity bared. But I wasn’t going to fight for that. Well, maybe. Another drink first. Line ‘em up.
I really need to piss at this point. I make my way down. Walk to the back. Line up at the urinal. Unzip your pants. Piss. Zip up. Hand wash, out the door.
Back at the bar, I feel wet. Good god, my pants are soaked! I mean…soaked. I must have jumped into a lake. My jeans are sopping wet. Paranoia sinks in. What happened down there? Did I…forget to unzip? What the fuck? It’s cold, though. Cold and wet.
“I’m all wet.”
Grimes feels my jeans, then pulls away with disgusted glee.
“Ha! You’ve pissed yourself!”
No. That’s simply not true. What the fuck?
“One more!” Yuri pokes me, clearly unaware of my plight. He’s sure he’s going to score tonight. Sure. You’re buying.
Can’t stop thinking about the cold. The wet. I’m not staggering drunk. I’m a bit high. It makes no sense. Did I stand in front of a urinal and piss in my pants? Was it the sink? Was it a faulty blast from the faucet? Did the urinal go haywire? What did happen at the sink? I don’t remember that part. I don’t remember a fucking thing.
I’m now disturbed. I gulp down another pint, hoping to somehow numb the watery discomfort. Yuri is at it again with another hapless passerby. My gangster references are boring the fuck out of me, and certainly everyone else. My fucking legs are soaked. I have no idea what time it is.
Time to go.
