So there I was on a Tuesday night. Eleven thirty post mortem (just kidding—I know it’s meridiem and it’s Latin and it means after noon or something like that…ok? Get off my back, people) at this bar called the 40 Watt, owned by the one and only Michael Stipe (REM guy). My friend Mills was in town visiting from CO, and he and his friend wanted to paint the town red (and black) because they had both gone to UGA for their undergrad. After they took me on a small tour of down town (hello…only lived here a year…what do you expect?), we went to 40 Watt to see this guy who once was the guitarist for Drive-by Truckers (you know that band, right? Yeah, me too) but left that band to start his own band.
So there I am. Front row. Arms above my head swaying to the five member band all dressed in brown and light blue plaid button-ups and jeans with holes in the knees (for effect?). My eyes are closed and I’m lightly falling back and forth a little too much so that I accidentally keep hip-bumping the guy next to me, who probably has a crush on me, but there is no way I could notice this because I’m so infatuated with the band. Not one member in the band; the whole band. And then I look to the left and I see me again.
There I am on a Tuesday night arguing with my girlfriends about who is going to drive home or who is going to by the next pack of smokes or who is going to put the next pitcher of Bud Light on her tab. All of us talking as if no one else is in the establishment and using our most lady-like inside voices and word choice.
Oh, you mean you thought that girl was actually me standing front row swaying drunkenly in front of the twelve-year-olds playing in the band? No, no. The real me was standing in the middle of the nineteen and twenty-year-old crowd about fifteen people deep from the band—SOBER—watching with wide eyes as my past unfolded rapidly in front of me. You wanna talk about being zapped back into time and instantly being able to reminisce your college days? Those were mine. Obsessed with the local boy bands and front row to watch them every night wherever they were playing. This band was so similar to my boy bands in that every single song they played sounded JUST LIKE the one before, only with either a slower or faster pace on the drums and bass. I actually think my boy bands were a bit better looking than this one, but at thirty-three, sober, and engulfed by drunk college kids screaming as if they were at a Pearl Jam concert it was all the same.
Oh, and the kid behind me (wasted) who “LOVED” that one song and kept screaming for them to sing it again…you know the ones… “PLLLAAAYYY BLAH BLAH AGAAAIIINNNN!” “GOD, I LOVE THESE GUYS! HELL YES! PLAY BLAH BLAH YOU ASSHOLES! GOD THESE GUYS ARE GOOD! DUDE, PLAY BLAH BLAH! JESUS I LOVE THIS BAND!” That was him. He was there. Right behind me. Or rather, right ON me, behind me, swaying gracefully with his sloshing beer and his ultimate and devoted love for HIS band. He was there, indeed. I finally turned around (gently, mind you…I understand that I was once to this kid’s right on a date with him or something thinking he was right on and wonderful for yelling so passionately) and said, “Wow, you REALLY love these guys, don’t you? Know ALL the words to their songs, too, huh?” his precious little glazed over eyes tried to focus in on mine as he smiled with a bit of drool on one side of his kegged out lips and replied, “Ohhh, sdskagoasdghawoifa.” And then walked off. What? Do you think I was trying to cover up a curse word by using random letters? No. I was just trying to capture completely for you what I heard come out of this youngster’s mouth while he thought he was the most articulate person in that bar at that moment. Too cute. Only for a few minutes, though.
I guess the only difference between my past experiences from college and this night (aside from the fact that I was in Macon, GA in college, not Athens, GA, and I would have never been sober in this kind of situation) was the fact that this bar was smoke-free. Well, they had the best intentions of being smoke-free, anyway. That is, until the band decided (after their sixth or seventh shot of whisky in just one set in between their “light” beers) that they all wanted a smoke. So they just lit up. Right there while they were playing. All of them. What do twenty-year-olds (and yes, I mean twenty…there was no way in hell these kids were old enough to drink…) do when they see their idols light up in a smoke-free bar? Go outside and smoke? Not quite. In a matter of two minutes about thirty kids were smoking cigarettes. BUT holding them down by their legs as to HIDE them from the fifteen bouncers circling the place. Brilliant, the youth of our time. Truly brilliant. I bet in an inside establishment they’ll NEVER see the smoke if you hold the cigarette by your leg instead of waving it in the air to cheer your band. Alcohol adds that last step of intelligence for most of us, doesn’t it. That moment when you have the best idea you’ve ever had and you must act on it right now. And then you’re sober the next day either thinking, where am I (for those who need to stop drinking yesterday) or, man, I thought it was SUCH a good idea last night to hide my cigarette by my leg so I could smoke inside a smoke-free building with thousands of bouncers and people who hate smoke. That was so stupid. And then you laugh. That’s what we did most of the time the day after, anyway; I’m not sure what you did.
So there I was on a Tuesday night. Standing outside (as we were leaving to go home and go to sleep and leave the early hours of the morning to the college professionals) talking to some twenty-one-year olds (“I SWARE I’m twenty-one. Here, check my ID!”) asking them about their majors and such while my friend Mills stood behind the goofy teens shaking his head that I would be so bold as to associate with the vagrants of our youth. It was pretty funny, I have to say. But when you’re looking for a good time, why not reel in some drunken kids and act as if what they have to say is interesting? Try it sometime. Good weeknight entertainment if you’re bored.
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