seasons change
Winter, it seems, is on its way out, and good riddance. Spring, I have a feeling, is right around the corner.
Winter, it seems, is on its way out, and good riddance. Spring, I have a feeling, is right around the corner.
Tomorrow is Self-Love Day, which is by far and away a better alternative to the traditional Valentine’s Day, which I have long believed is one of those holidays that is only a big deal because Hallmark says it is. Ever buy anyone a President’s Day card? Go out to Groundhog’s Day dinner? I rest my case.
Still, there are those out there who are going to have a romantic evening planned, and it’s for those folks that I play the following video, the ones that are looking forward to taking care of a little …business.
Picture this:
You’re in Rimsky Korsakoffee. It’s one of those Portland staples, an old Victorian house turned into a coffeehouse. It’s close to midnight, and the place is nearly empty: there’s one or two other tables, a lone guitarist, and your buddy Patch. You haven’t seen Patch in at least a year and you’ve been catching up, first at a brewpub and now here at Rimsky’s. The beers were good, and so is the hot chocolate in your hands, but now they’ve caught up with you. So you ask Patch where the bathroom is. “Up the stairs,” he says, gesturing towards the front of the house. “Oh yeah,” he adds as you turn to go. “Make sure you look up.”
You find the stairs and walk up to the landing, then up further to the second floor. It’s quiet here in this narrow hallway, chillingly so. Other than the muted sound of the guitar downstairs, the only noise comes from rain outside and your footsteps on the carpet. The hall is maybe five paces long, and there are two doors on either side and one at the far end. They all bear signs saying ‘Do Not Enter’ or ‘Keep Going’, till you got to the one on the far left, which finally says ‘Restroom.’ You knock at the door, wait, and turn the handle to enter. It’s dark inside, the only light filtering in through the window coming from a street lamp outside. It’s a bigger room than you expected, your eyes adjusting as you feel along the wall for a light switch, and as shapes start to emerge from the darkened bathroom you realize with a start that someone else is in here, your breath catches in your throat and your roll up onto your toes as your body tenses, fingers scrabbling now, where’s that lightswitch something is in here where where-
-CLICK-
WHAT THE –?
You spend a minute staring at the bathroom’s permanent resident, not quite sure what to make of his glassy stare and his creepy, empty expression. You look around at the rest of the bathroom, taking in the ghostly toilet paper lady, back at the grinning face of the ghoul, before you finally remember to look up.
Yeah. That’s pretty cool, too.
You go about your business as quickly as possible, checking over your shoulder to make sure your undead companion isn’t crawling towards you to try and bite you on your ass. He doesn’t move, but you’re pretty sure he’s just waiting for you to get close enough to grab.
Downstairs again, you find your table and take your seat. “Did you look up?” Patch asks you.
“Yeah,” you say. “I looked down, too. It was…interesting.”
Saturday night found Niels and I at Ground Kontrol, enjoying some beer with our pinball. We hadn’t planned on doing much more for the evening than just what we were doing, but as I brought my fist down on the cover of Pirates of the Caribbean yet again I suddenly remembered that one of my coworkers had mentioned that his band was playing at the Someday Lounge, right around the corner from us. “Niels,” I said, slamming my hip into the pinball console, “rock show?”
“Sure. Where?”
“Just around the corner. This guy that works on my floor is in Bombs Into You and they’re playing at the Someday in about twenty minutes.”
Niels finished the rest of his PBR and set it down on a nearby table. “Let’s do it.”
We left the arcade and walked around the block in search of the venue. My buddy Nate had described its location but I hadn’t been to this particular club for a show yet. After we paid our covers and strolled in, I took in the decor and the clientele and realized that this was a far swankier place than I had anticipated.
Something you should know about me: I am not exactly cool. I’m at least mildly entertaining and fun to hang out with, but you wouldn’t mistake me for ‘cool’. I don’t have any piercings or tattoos; I don’t play bass guitar. I have a boring office job. I don’t ride a motorcycle. I know a half dozen programming languages. I read a ton of books, but never anything trendy, the majority of it science-fiction with a smattering of history and physics and Eastern philosophy thrown in. I sure don’t shop at Abercrombie, or any of the dozens of super-hip local clothing stores for which Portland is so well known. I am definitely NOT a hipster.
So it surprised me when, having just ordered a drink at the bar, a blonde in a stretchy sweater called out, “Hey! I like your shirt!”
“Thanks,” I said, a little surprised.
“Is it that Mafia line of clothing that just came out, by-” and she named a designer I’d never heard of before.
Now, I was wearing my Cosa Nostra Pizza T-shirt. It’s not some trendy new brand. It’s a nod to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a novel set in a near-future world where, among other startling changes to the American cultural landscape, the Mafia have gotten into the high-speed pizza delivery business. Wearing this shirt made me more than a little nerdy.
As I saw it, I had two possible courses of action: I could lie and go along with the young lady’s assumption, that I was sporting some cutting edge threads, and spend some time convincing her of my innate hipness; or, I could go with the truth and ‘fess up that I am, in fact, kind of a geek.
Embrace it! said a little voice inside of me. Embrace your inner anti-cool!
So I did.
“It’s actually a fictional restaurant. From a cyberpunk novel.” The bartender brought out my drink then. Grinning, I raised my glass to her and winked. “Cheers!” And then I walked up towards the stage to await the opening band. It turns out one of the fringe benefits of embracing your lack of coolness is that you end up not really caring whether or not some club girls in a trendy bar approve of you or not.
‘Cool.’ Pfeh. Who needs it?
Comments(6)