Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26415

Whenever I listen to "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan, I can't not be back there.

I'm sitting back in West End Lounge. Small place. A dive really. Gigantic haze of smoke. I go there about 3 times a week using this REALLY shitty fake ID that says I'm 27 and six feet tall. But that's okay because I know all the bartenders and the owner as well. Everybody here calls me Paint CHiPs before I even logged onto a message board. A few guys are playing darts on the two electric dartboards to the back, somebody is playing a golf arcade game off to the side, and a few girls are sitting at the heightened tables (only six of them, it's a tiny place).

I'm sitting at the end of the bar, playing the mega-touch and trying to beat my own high score at Movie Trivia. They reset the high scores at the end of every month and this one is only a few days fresh so I haven't yet gotten a REALLY impressive score. Petey is bartending and he refreshes my beer, not even bothering to ask. Every once in awhile, somebody--usually Miegs or Bilstead--come over and stand over my shoulder for a minute, giving any answers they know. The one about "Which movie won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1978" I've seen so many times that I hit the right answer without even reading it. I tap my cigarette on the way too small glass ashtray and get about half of my ashes on the bar. Nobody cares much.

"The Way" by Fastball comes on.

I'll be here all night. Drinking cheap beer from expensive pint glasses. Tipping a dollar a drink. Smoking a pack and a half. Going into the poorly lit bathroom once an hour to piss in the small toilet, my back to the door as I'm doing it to prevent anybody else from coming into the one commode room. Invariably, there is a pool of piss on the sloped floor, surrounding the toilet. You have to stand in the tiny room just so to avoid it. Later, there'll probably be puke on the walls. All over the walls I can read about who was here. I was here, too.

Later that night I'll end up trailing Miegs, and we'll sit with a few skanky girls by the window, and I talk to them a bit but mostly just Miegs lay his skank smack-down as I stare out the window and watch the meth-house across the street operate. Usually once a night one of their customers, often homeless, will wander in, talking like a crazy person but almost always nice enough. Sometimes, if I'm in the right kind of mood, I'll buy them a beer and listen to their stories.

It's busy enough now that Bilstead has moved to a little stool next to the tall thin door. He's holding the flashlight and checking IDs.

I go back to refill my drink and push past all the anonymous faces and get my drink refilled immediatly, long before they'll get served Sex on the Beach or whatever fancy thing they're drinking. Maybe I've also been drinking gin and tonics tonight. Maybe Long Islands. Undoubtedly I've had a few shots of whiskey and more than a few pints. The most I have to wait to get a drink is a minute or so, no matter how packed. I'm known here. "Paint CHiPs," they say, "Again?" And I nod and give them a five and they refill my glass and I wander back to Meigs who is now making out with the skanky girl and I sit back down at the table that's almost as tall as I am and I watch the meth house somemore.

I know almost everybody in the bar, and at some point they'll come over to me or I'll come over to them and we'll talk a bit and then one of us will wander off. Maybe I'll play a game of cricket later and lose badly.

At some point, "Closing Time" by some band whose name I can never remember comes on and everybody collectivly sighs and the bartenders put their hands up to cup their mouths and start screaming "LAST CALL!"

I finish whatever is left of whatever I am drinking and go find my coat. It's either on some barstool or on the coat rack or, more likely, lying under the coatrack.

This time, I find it balled up and shoved on the counter that is used during the day as a window seat and during the busy times as a "coat refuse".

I grab it, slip it on, say goodbye to Meigs who is still making out with some skank and obviously isn't going my way, and slip out into the brisk night to walk home.

Do you have any songs that take you back to places like that?

I was walking by somebody's house today and the window was open and they were playing Hurricane and I just sort of slipped back to that place. I miss those days, sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes.

What about you?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
Posts: 9187

*Raymond Chandler sues*

(I liked it though)

fag0rt

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: toronto
Posts: 1612

Band is Semisonic. They opened for... someone I saw, fuck if I know.

The song here is Wooden Ships by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I could top that hazy memory you posted, but I'm far too lazy.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26415

I had only intended the subject line of this thread. It sort of got away from me there.

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: toronto
Posts: 1612

Biggest understatement in the history of ever.

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