Friday, September 22, 2006
Box Seats On A Picnic Table
They came from the coasts—Ireland, Spain, San Francisco—to visit our unsalted shore and strike their hipster poses: a hand in one pocket, another wrapped around a plastic cup, their heads lobbing uncaught deep thoughts with the steady thunk-thump from head-to-toe speakers holding throne on the cracked asphalt parking lot.
We hide out on the picnic table near the VIP tent, happy and distant, watching the blurry crowd, the crowded blur, mix and mash. They stand beyond a chain-link fence where the garbage trucks have taken leave from their usual harbor. Everyone prepares for a Friday night. Everyone’s beautiful in the dark. We touch and we go.
The bar sits behind us, quiet, tucked in our armpit like a newspaper, like an afterthought. There’s a line to get in, so we scoop up beers and balance out the table with our weighty weeklong thoughts, letting them unravel into a net we cast out upon the occasional friends swimming through reeds of strangers like fat, aimless catfish.
But I miss this bar behind me, this rickety house with cutout snowflakes dangling from the ceiling. It's been good to me. Restless nights, alone, I’d amble up, self-conscious, impatient for the Jameson to crawl up my neck and drown the worries. And others, after work, with friends, our backs arched and calves bouncing on the brass rung and our forearms locked into the glazed wooden bar. Through words and beers and the rhythmic dance of dollar bills we'd regain ourselves from the day, remember who we were when we were kids, when we hoped out loud.
We toasted Waylon's final trip to Luckenbach. Robyn Hitchcock served us doughnuts from a Krispy Kreme pyramid. Soul and country blend indistinguishable. Siblings know no rivalries. Friends turn into family, grow young listening to three kids on a bench back seat singing popcorn on a long highway drive around the back room. Stanley licks Pabst off the linoleum floor while my friend tells me he's getting divorced. We navigate the buildup to war, melancholy settling over the room like the aftermath of a fight. Work wears us down, paychecks dissolve into cash, hangovers stagger to our desks the next day.
Then the chatter cracks and an unamplified voice conquers the room. Such a silence you've never heard. It's a Monday night and you have no business being there. It's too late, but when heaven casts its rays out of the slate-gray sky you'd best stick around.
This September party has grown too big, but we take comfort from the ash tree, the twenty-foot weed rooted under asphalt, dangling leafy tendrils from its unpruned arms. In Chicago it's not the night sky that twinkles but the glittering glassy ground. Broken bottles carpet stone. And on the other side of the fence, on the other side of the world, cop cruisers sip gasoline and roll away for another night of violence.
We hide out on the picnic table near the VIP tent, happy and distant, watching the blurry crowd, the crowded blur, mix and mash. They stand beyond a chain-link fence where the garbage trucks have taken leave from their usual harbor. Everyone prepares for a Friday night. Everyone’s beautiful in the dark. We touch and we go.
The bar sits behind us, quiet, tucked in our armpit like a newspaper, like an afterthought. There’s a line to get in, so we scoop up beers and balance out the table with our weighty weeklong thoughts, letting them unravel into a net we cast out upon the occasional friends swimming through reeds of strangers like fat, aimless catfish.
But I miss this bar behind me, this rickety house with cutout snowflakes dangling from the ceiling. It's been good to me. Restless nights, alone, I’d amble up, self-conscious, impatient for the Jameson to crawl up my neck and drown the worries. And others, after work, with friends, our backs arched and calves bouncing on the brass rung and our forearms locked into the glazed wooden bar. Through words and beers and the rhythmic dance of dollar bills we'd regain ourselves from the day, remember who we were when we were kids, when we hoped out loud.
We toasted Waylon's final trip to Luckenbach. Robyn Hitchcock served us doughnuts from a Krispy Kreme pyramid. Soul and country blend indistinguishable. Siblings know no rivalries. Friends turn into family, grow young listening to three kids on a bench back seat singing popcorn on a long highway drive around the back room. Stanley licks Pabst off the linoleum floor while my friend tells me he's getting divorced. We navigate the buildup to war, melancholy settling over the room like the aftermath of a fight. Work wears us down, paychecks dissolve into cash, hangovers stagger to our desks the next day.
Then the chatter cracks and an unamplified voice conquers the room. Such a silence you've never heard. It's a Monday night and you have no business being there. It's too late, but when heaven casts its rays out of the slate-gray sky you'd best stick around.
This September party has grown too big, but we take comfort from the ash tree, the twenty-foot weed rooted under asphalt, dangling leafy tendrils from its unpruned arms. In Chicago it's not the night sky that twinkles but the glittering glassy ground. Broken bottles carpet stone. And on the other side of the fence, on the other side of the world, cop cruisers sip gasoline and roll away for another night of violence.
