I spent the beginning of my Friday night having dinner and drinks with a friend. We wanted to talk so we chose places that respected the volume of the human voice. It was a nice time and I could have ended it there. But after I saw her off for the evening, I decided I would wander back into the city and try to see what the nightlife looked like. I have lived here seven years but am a neophyte to the workings of downtown after 10PM.
The streets are the same ones I walk along to get to work, and there is no special stardust that changes them at night. Everyone around me is so young. One young woman has already vomited on the footpath. Nobody else is walking alone. I walk past a place that is blasting music that seems better at repelling people than drawing them in. I got a tip from a friend at lunch that this hotel had a passably good nightclub, so I wander in. The doorman takes one look at me and says the club is full and they’ve closed it off. What I heard was, “no 39 year old dorks.” Fair enough.
I walk up a side alley, and see a man that I see hustling on the street on my morning commute asleep on some steps, his arm extended, clutching an extinguished cigarette butt. Hopefully he gets some uninterrupted rest. A place called “The Future Club” stands out on the darkened street. I turn the corner and head to the Bluestone Room.
Nothing is happening at the Bluestone room. But for a few small groups of mates who haven’t yet called it a night, it’s surprisingly quiet. I get a bourbon and drink it alone. Before I get too depressed about this ill-fitting adventure I decide to call in on this so-called “Future Club.”
The doorman checks my ID. I tell him he’s flattering me and laugh way too loudly at my own joke. Yup, dork. Nothing in my bag but a blue notebook and a scarf I knitted myself. The entrance looks like the beginning of the “Star Tours” ride at Disneyland and I begin to wonder if it actually is some kind of amusement park thing. There is a nifty grid of green lasers beaming across the entrance. I am stopped to pay a man at a window 10 dollars before I can inspect the lasers. Can I walk through these? A hand passes through them easily (of course).
As soon as I walk down the stairs I want to leave. The massive dance floor is empty, the music isn’t terrible but only worth dancing to if a heaving mass of people were there to screen your struggle to figure out how. Because I need to get my ten dollars worth, I walk up the opposite flight of stairs and see a few people vaping outside a toilet. Downstairs there’s a bunch of empty tables and chairs. Might as well sit and at least bring the cost down to a dollar a minute. A man makes a beeline toward me.
“You can’t sit here, it’s for VIP.” He motions me away in case I didn’t understand through his accent. I think of protesting that I’m the OP, regardless of importance, but I decide to stand awkwardly outside this cordoned area instead. The music has not improved, and I decide my hearing is worth more than the 10 dollars. I linger at the lasers a moment; they are the best thing here. As I leave the doorman smiles at me reassuringly. “More people will come soon.” I smile back and say, “They will? Far out, it really is a future club!”
This is a bust. These places won’t get going for another couple of hours, and I need my sleep. Plus I have my doubts that the music will improve with time. I head for the ferry. If someone were to ask me how I feel at this moment, I would say, “fine” but I would think, “lonely and out of place” The busker I have passed three times is singing, “Sitting at the Dock of the Bay” to a crowd of whooping hens. They were probably at the “no dorks” club earlier. As I pass by I join in the song.
On the ferry, the stairs to the top deck are closed off, but not if you go outside and around the back stairs to the outdoor seating. I congratulate myself on being the only one to figure this out, overlooking the probable case that nobody else was trying. There is a man standing by himself at the terminal. I look at him, he looks at me and looks away. I keep looking at him. What is he doing standing there? What is he thinking about this person who won’t stop staring at him? I could ask but I’d have to shout and he is very close to the edge of the water. I stare at him until the boat pulls out of sight. How long will he stand there?
I pipe music from my own reliably epic supply into my headphones. Skip, skip, skip. Bingo. I turn the back deck of the ferry into my own personal dance floor. Now this is more like it.
A few minutes later a guy about my age in uniform wanders through the back door of the closed deck and I think he’s about to tell me off for being where I shouldn’t be. Instead he smiles and gives me a thumbs up before returning inside. Moments later, Stevie Ray Vauhgn’s “Pride and Joy” pipes through the tinny loudspeaker that is usually reserved for announcements about delays and dolphins. I realize I’m being trolled by the ferry captain. I’m torn because I like my music better, but want to appreciate the gesture, so I leave the headphones off. At the end, a garbled message comes on, thanking the woman dancing out on the outdoor deck for making his night. I am genuinely touched.
Disembarking, I salute the captian and his mate who are hanging out their tiny window on the bridge whooping at me, and walk off into the night. Walking through the empty streets of suburbia, I feel less alone than I did in the city full of people. Perhaps belonging somewhere is overrated.
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