12/26/2019
Making it happen.
On It Right Now
- Home
- United States
- Sacramento, CA
- On It Right Now
Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from On It Right Now, Sacramento, CA.
06/04/2019
A Blizzard of the Real
As the author of this story, I simply must ask first of you as a reader to agree and participate in a simple contract with me: if you are going to read this, first you should know that this is the kind of story that must be read or told while outside. That is, if you plan on telling this again. That is, if you plan on reading it at all; I don’t want to be presumptuous. I will attempt to excite you towards a finish by admitting here that this story includes as a matter of fact a blizzard of true historic proportions, but we are not there yet.
First of all, I did live in Sacramento, at the Berry Hotel. At the time, the hotel was nearly connected to the Greyhound Station, and my window was right across the street from a great Chinese diner, and me yelling vehemence could often be heard from an open window on the fourth floor. I had been living in this tiny room for a while, after spending various amounts of time in Santa Rosa and San Francisco. The night this story really begins, I guess, I was sitting in my booth, booth 13 over by the movie theater, doin my business of counting tickets, and my volcanic friend Johnny pulled up into an empty spot right round the corner from me, hopped out and said, “I want to go to Reno. Like, I want to move there tonight.”
Well, I say, why? of course, and he tells me his fiance says he either can quit smoking or he can quit her. Naturally, he up and leaves immediately to come get me, because we’ve talked a long time about moving to Reno. We went up there so often, I mean, it was almost a matter of time. He was making fat bank working security, and I could barely stay drunk and feed myself at the same time, so, he would give me $500 to gamble with. This was very nice of him, because, to be fair, I could barely keep in stock mustard for myself.
That's the best way to quit a job, by the way, to just say into the stupid fu***ng walkie-talkie, “A, this is Jason in Booth 13...yeah, uh, um...you're going to need to send someone to replace me, Imma come count my drawer right now.” “Uh, wow, what was that?! Really?! In the middle of the shift Jason??!” “Yeees, right now. I quit, and I gotta go now. My ride is here. Thank you very much for your time; I will miss you; but send someone to count my drawer I'm leaving now. Thank you.” “Uh. Um. Well, um. Ok, come in, then.” And I did. I counted my drawer, stopped by the Berry for my boxes of cassettes and poems and books and some clothes, and we drove all night to Reno.
Understand now, it could not really have been all that much of a surprise to this employer seeing as I had been coming in drunk for weeks at this point, and sending people to buy beer for me as they left for home in the middle of my shift. Even more awesome, I had a whole scam I shared with every other cashier where I was punching in $5 tickets and cashing out $5 cash, making like $75 most days, which is enough to drink.
Also, I figured Reno was going to work better for me, that I might come out ahead there, because I wanted to party. Sacramento, it wasn't working out party-wise anymore; all the trees were still there, the sunrises and sunsets still made magic in the way they should when you love a town, but empty lots were getting rebuilt everywhere you looked, and all the shortcuts were getting built out with new construction and big fences, and I had puked on most every intersection... all my friends gone, too, moved out of town or moved on altogether from the life we once lived together. The world had changed; 9-11, that girl Megan I sold my stupid, innocent heart to for a foolish dream I did receive in fair return. Things were going south; I had twelve books due to the Public library, and the fines were backing up.
It was near Thanksgiving, in fact, we arrived in Reno on that particular date. I will remind you, sports fans, that this was right after the Giants lost to the Angels in 2002 (which I blame on Tom Goodwin...well, Dusty Baker, really, cuz Livan Hernandez was a better hitter than Tom Gottdam Goodwin, but I suppose that's a different argument anyways). I had had my fill of the Berry Hotel, which at the time as I said was near connected to the Greyhound station (and so always was an option for those of us determined to be of less value to society than some others), and the walk to Rite Aid was just about the longest I ever found it necessary to take.
Unless I felt like walking further, in which case, I walked over to Rodney’s Smoke Shop across from Cesar Chavez and the old Biltmore. On those days, I would go walk through a record store or one of those old independent bookstores on the way back to the cockroaches and left-over pork-fried rice and the shower that did not include hot water. I never minded using my last bit of change from the last twenty I had to break on tapes by artists I had only heard of, not listened to, and on books I felt needed reading again and again.
End part one
I had come to where even with my little money-making scheme I was running, I still found a need to pawn my guitar at the ten day point of pay periods so as to have enough money to eat and enjoy other sorts of pleasantries. It was nice living two blocks from work, sure, but I knew in Reno you can find a job doing just about anything as long as you could walk from here to there. At that age, I did not consider such a task to be a prohibitive burden, and besides, I already knew places there to get breakfast for cheap.
We drive all night and get there Thanksgiving Day. Destination: the Old Comstock Hotel, down on Second, near Arlington, by river, right? Not hard to find if you are looking. Johnny went to the front desk while I unloaded the bags and my guitar, a Takamine Jasmine my teacher had gifted me. Johnny, recently paid out a lawsuit settled for a substantive amount of money, paid two months rent in advance, and it wasn’t even expensive.
The truth is that we each have a duty, and mine requires me to register with the local police agency that I set a large fire as a fourteen year old. Fu***ng dummy. As it turns out, so did Johnny, which is how we met, in 'treatment' and why in the morning we headed down together right away to begin searching the whole gottdam town for stamps. We needed to send in the fact that we have changed our addresses, and the statute was clear in stating that even a postcard will fulfill this requirement. Being that postcards are sold on the corner of here and every fu***ng where in Reno, we thought finding a stamp would be similarly easy, but in the end, we had to walk all the way to the freaking Post Office. Ok. Wait. Stop. Reno? Are you listening? You say you are a little city; I call Bu****it. Walk from anywhere downtown to the fu***ng post office and say that s**t again. F**k you Reno.
Anyways, my point is that the post office is nowhere near the Comstock, and the police station is not anywhere near either of these locations, all three to which we must travel. To further the f**kupedry, the police attempted to charge me $10 for the privilege of registering my status. I refused, and filled out an “I’m Too Poor” form, because there was no ‘I aint paying you to f**k with me’ form.
Finally, having accomplished all we must to assure no immediate future destruction, Johnny hands me $500 and we went to cruised the El Dorado casino for ho**ers. Johnny found one right quick while I turned $500 into $1500 on the craps table, after which we walked her back to our room, and she wasn’t asking to cost much; but it wasn't much worth having either, which almost don’t need saying. And of course she wanted half up front so she could smoke some m**h first, but that would mean calling some dude to come over and give it to her (and we aren’t THAT fu***ng stupid). I didn't need this, that this wasn't what I really wanted. To be honest, it was better than sitting in a booth listening to Suicaine Gratification until some guy with a gun shows up, talking about let me out because he doesn’t want to pay his $14 ticket...but not what I was looking for, either.
I walked down to the Cal Neva Casino the next morning, choosing it as a place I might like to employed mostly because it was always the one I enjoyed the most when we had come up to gamble. It was the one most like a hole in the wall bar that had added some machines and other games as an afterthought. I seem to have thought that because drinking was foremost on my mind, and gambling wasn’t yet the curse to me it would become.
I started by asking if I could run Keno, because I had seen some cute girls running Keno on those previous trips, and I figured that was som**hing I could do, run keno.
And I was upfront, too, like, “I got arthritis and I have to take some extra breaks; my doctors have told me that.” So they hired me despite this knowledge and were generally fair about letting me take my rests and stretches.
End part two
After a coupla months and a few adventures, Johnny and I moved just down the street to the Ace Motor Lodge (where the party basically continued for a few months until his wife decided that she missed him too much to not be his wife and she moved up and he moved out, but Johnny was nice, and paid one month ahead on the rent, so as to keep his promised responsibility to help me get on my feet; I was as safely ahead of schedule as a man of my age at the time ought to be if he is responsible enough. Which I was trying to be. And that was fair.) I didn’t mind so much, as everyone likes to have alone time, and I was happy for my friend.
After a few months, I found a roommate in Navy man. This guy Gary had just finished his two tours in Afghanistan as an electrician on a boat that wasn't allowed to fire back if anybody fired on them, and he said that that had happened a few times. He had all the patches on his leather jacket, and his dad was a cook at one of the casinos, and his mother lived up there with him in a hotel a little further down Second St. Sometimes, we used to hang out in his parents motel room and listen to music. He liked the heavy stuff, like Disturbed, and Kitty.
The one bar I used to like to hang out at that first year was called the El Cortez, which was hilarious I thought, but that's what they called it, and anyway, the beer was decent cheap, the bartenders all were well-versed in sports history, there was plenty of action as far as people of many kinds coming and going twenty-four hours a day, and further to its benefit, it was right around the corner from the Ace Motor Lodge and the Ace Liquor Store. This was handy because the liquor store also sold toilet paper. I was mainly able to afford my supplies by using my (we split tips with all three shifts; shake my damn head) ten or twelve dollars I’d made that day to play craps in the evening. I won’t lie, I was coming ahead most times. I did gamble a bit on the baseball as well, and I came out ahead often than not ( I went 14-9 in my 25 bets) but more not in the money department came out to near even.
One story about the Ace Motor Lodge: I was hanging out with this friend one day who like to smoke m**h, and I was trying to help him not smoke, cuz I knew I wasn't going to let him do that s**t in front of me, and because I knew I had had my fill of it after finding myself involved in a sexual three-way inside a bathroom in an apartment I had broken into. I knew I wasn't going to do it anymore because I turned it down every time it was offered to me. Anyways, just hanging out when there's this police knock on my door, and you always know police knock cuz they're really obvious, and so my friend, he's happy to leave, and as he does, I invite the two officers to come in and sit down so as to not out and out let the whole motel know exactly where the cops are. Well, they have for me for a surprise, don’t they? They tell me they have told my landlord about my status, which apparently is one called Tier Three now, and it wasn't a big deal, it was just could be on the local news one night and in the paper one day, there's lots of people like me around town anyway, they say, most people don't care they just turn a blind eye, they say, but no way around it, Tier Three means public notification, you know turns out we have a different system you have no juvenile status in Nevada, only an adult status, and you have been judged a Tier Three because of this reason and that.
And of course I get all indignant at first. Then I decided I had to be real extra polite, because otherwise they're not going to listen...and I explained very carefully that I went through all of this as a child, my case began when I was 14. Yes, I was arrested, but I have done every treatment and I've been graduated from all the programs anybody ever sent me to. In the end, I was able to appeal to the previously anonymous board and have my tier level lowered, but the law there only allow for one tier reduction every five years, so f**k you essentially, you’re tier two, which does not require public notification. This did appease me somewhat, but in the meantime the damage had been done, little did I know.
So, it’s near the next Thanksgiving after I've lived on my own, been through the Navy Man as a roommate, and now found myself cohabitating with a young man named Adam who happened to be a co-worker of mine who often worked a different shift. Plus, I met Vinny. I have not yet met anyone else like Vinny; he could drink most people I know under the table, and then buy them a round afterwards, all while running jukebox and kicking their ass at billiards of any type. Wasn't nobody like Vinny at sunrise, talking about, “Well, finally! WHOOOOOT!” I heard somebody ask Vinny once if he wanted a glass of water. He looked at them all disgusted and stuff and said “I never touch the stuff.”
End part three
Anysways, the whole point is that much of this year I’m telling you about was wasted on a married girlfriend named Crystal, who had two children, two and six, the eldest of which thought you had to unscrew an apple to eat it. But no matter.
That Navy man, Gary, he got a woman pregnant, and her daddy was rich, so Gary had to get married, and I was his best man. I do not have any idea where he is now. I do know that when he discovered my background after I spilt my guts one night whilst drinking, he dropped me as a friend right quick. Not Vinny. F**kin’ A, Vinny, check out that sunrise!
Then came a night I get a call from Gary, on my payday, asking me to take him drinking. His fiance is giving him s**t, he says, so I say, “Meet me at the El Cortez!” And then it all went to s**t...he got smashed and broke into his own apartment while she slept, and I was drunk and dumb enough to come in when he opened the door. It didn’t take but ten minutes for her to be screaming at him, because she had locked the door, and he had broken in, and the neighbors heard her yelling...guess what happened next? If you took a ten on ‘her rich dad got there before the police somehow,’ you win!
That the night I was arrested. Turned against the wall, handcuffed and confused, completely in compliance with every law in every jurisdiction I was accountable to. But there is no person to convince when the system is working; you simply wait for the system to work itself out however the f**k it wants to. Police say to me ‘there is a felony warrant for your arrest from the state of California’ and I try to explain- look, in other words, they are looking for some adult offender named me who never updated his address with them as is his duty, and they found an adult offender named me. Of course, me, it’s all juvenile bulls**t. No-one to tell, no-one to hear it.
Let me sum it up this way: I spent my Christmas in Sacramento County Jail with a man headed to San Quentin Prison for life on a murder sentence, a big scary f**ker with a bald head full of N**i tattoos. I told him I sold w**d. It was mostly the truth, which I have discovered is the best way to operate in these such situations. Long story short, I had a loyal local lawyer friend, a lady in Reno, and she made a few calls for me. The man in charge of the men in charge of the men in charge called and said that man (ME!) is not a felon running from anybody; he is currently registered, and has registered numerous times timely and everywhere he ever was supposed to- this Man in Charge even offered to come down and testify in my defense! Around this time, I finally did see a lawyer. For the record, I saw a lawyer for the first time one month after having been detained and transferred and detained again, and all without appearing before a real judge (although the one I did appear in front of was in a TV and he said his name was Judge Albright and he thought that it was funny, us sharing a name. Haha. Not funny).
Anyhoo, after my appointed lawyer reminded the prosecutor in front of the Sacramento Judge that I had essentially been arrested on accident, Sacramento released me on ‘my own recognizance.’ I had a choice to stay, and I thought about staying in Sacramento, as I walked around with my $67 and my pack of ci******es. I tried to smoke a block away from the jail, and it was a bad idea cuz it hurt my thoughts and my throat. Sacramento still felt like a home I might live in someday, not a home I belonged in at the time, so I caught a cheap midnight bus ride back to Reno. At least since my rent was already paid through the month there, I figured I could at least start over, even if I had in the duration been fired, which I had.
Adam was surprised to see me; he was even more surprised to have to explain why the $300 I had hidden up under my under-clothes in a drawer (my just in case) - the money I hadn't taken out to party with Gary the night all that bad stuff started. Well, he was even more surprised when I stood up for myself, and demanded that he not only give me back my $300 by renting my room for me for the next 6 weeks or until I found another safe place to sleep, whichever came later. It was agreed he must do as I told him, given that no bail was ever offered or indeed ever needed. That was his story: he had taken my $300 and placed it on a 9 way NFL bet over at the sportsbook inside the Neva; he said that was in case it hit that he could pay my bail-- although, again, to repeat so loud as to unring the bell-- nobody was ever required to pay any bail for my release.
In any case I found myself with about $40 and a place to sleep settled up, and it was right across the street from the El Cortez Hotel bar I liked starting and ending my night at so much. Now, the El Cortez was by no means the place to be; it was the place to go. The place to be was West Second St Bar and Grille.
End part four
They had the guy with the mullet that sang the National Anthem to start his shows, and he had been on Country Music channel and was a blond woman magnet, so. Yeah.
And their bouncer always stood outside, making sure he was known as the baddest cowboy on the block. Johnny. He was the bouncer, Cowboy Johhny. I later lived with him and his girlfriend (who had been kidnapped once but not by him) and her kids for a very short while when he tried to dry me out for my own sake. This was after he had left West Second and descended into the El Cortez like the rest of us. But that was during the blizzard, which still hasn’t happened, so let me get us there.
I headed over to the El Cortez to get drunk with Vinny and bum ci******es while the music got started. Every night there was another band or blues jam, and when the bands finished up, RunningStar Karaoke got started. I would run around between buying my beers, doing polite things, which in turned earned me free drink tokens from the soundman, Paco. Now, every time I did som**hing super sweet for a waitress, like empty her ashtrays, remind her of some jerks wallet left on the counter, or brought her to drink half empty back to her so she could fix it up and make it look like it was still the same one (because she was running around trying to make the party PARTY tonight instead of being behind the bar tending-- that's usually where Doc the addled vet was, but he wasn't tending, he was keeping it clean behind the fish, staying up on the ice and kegs and such.
Anyway, Paco the soundman took a liking to me, so I started hanging out there most of a day most of the time when I wasn’t over by the Neva chowing on my Awful-Awful. Five dollars and a tip get ya an awful big, awful good burger and too many garlic fries. Then, January. The second of three Januaries in Reno. Not the one with the blizzard. I had a cold and I didn't have much money left because when I went to try to get my job back they told me no, misconduct off the job prevented me -- no, in fact, required me to not be rehired! despite there being no charges and my gaming card being current and my having voted in the previous election, all of which proved my worthiness as a man, if not pure since childhood. While I was able to explain that no charges ever were filed, the very fact that the charges had been filed then dropped meant only that then on file charges had indeed been filed. No such paperwork can be printed that would prove this thing ever happened-- it's just a matter of being disappeared, being released.
And blacklisted. I applied at every casino and for unemployment and was denied, all for that same reason of supposed misconduct off-duty.
And I was running low on money and I had a cold, but I wanted to sing so I went and hoped I could earn some free drink tokens one night. Manny Lopez ran RunningStar karaoke, and he was telling me stories about how he was in service during Vietnam (and I got a phone that's in my heart for listening to all sorts of stories especially stories like that), so I offered to buy him a beer, listen to his stories, help him carry his stuff. He agreed, and for a couple weeks, drink tokes were straight currency!
But then Paco had me crawl up the ladder all of a sudden during a show one night, and told me a whole quick lesson of how each machine works, why, and how to use them, said he’d been meaning to, but now he was tired, and could I take over-- watch the mains, keep these lights yellow if not green, these are fun effects, move the highs and mediums first if the singer squeaks --while he lays down for a while? Seems like a dream opportunity to me, says I, and Paco laid down and died, and Manny made me his little bitch for about a year. I pretty much spent half a day for 18 months up the ladder running sound.
We set up and played once if not twice a night every night (he had a gig over at the Sands once a week and the more than occasional gig round town, and I carried the heavy s**t) karaoke, and I ran sound and did soundchecks for both touring and local bands as they came through. Mostly, a college and the greasy crowd that falls from the nicer casinos towards the river, where you can get the hustle on outta sight of all those flashing bright lights. All was well in party land--until the blizzard. Man, the blizzard was bad for business. Also, I fell down walking from place to place. A lot. I had kept a side job at RadioShack, but I was always drunk from working the night before and that employment didn’t work out for that reason. Also, they wanted me to upsell five items for each item the customer brought to the counter. And EVERYONE NEEDS MORE BATTERIES.
I f**ked that job off good, which was fine by me, and then I started working at a gas station next to the college, University of Nevada, Reno. I lived up on Bell St., which was a good uphill/downhill mile plus to the party I was more than half in charge of at the El Cortez, but right near where I had spent a while living in the house Mannys Moms owned. That came to a screeching end when she asked, “What IS that thing?!” and pointed at the lady with one arm I came home with one day, actually stopped us on the stairs to yell this horrid thing. I moved out, and into an apartment complex near the gas station.
After new management came, after I got a ticket for selling ci******es to a minor (oops, was eating lunch and not paying attention; really thought I knew the girl who bought them too. Oh well.) I was...let go, and had to go find a job at the Dollar Store stocking the shelves before the opening. Then, the blizzard, like I’ve been saying, and it f**ked everything up. Oh and I also worked at a 7-Eleven graveyard shift until I got fired at the point of a gun; that was fun.
I had no job, karaoke was slow as f**k cuz there was historical amounts of snow on the ground so no-one wanted to go out and die in it except drunks like me, and drunks like me never got no money. And when they do…
This whole time, I’m singing every night, and even on the slow nights, people have stopped asking if “Manny and Jason are there?” and started asking if “Jason and Manny are there?” which to me meant more than any paycheck. I didn’t need drink tokes, I had a draw with the owner where he allowed me to hustle and he turned a blind eye. And I hustled...got a date for a lady friend once. Sold plenny of dime bags, moved a gram or two. I learned to fake my way through the hard part of the oldie songs, and could really deliver on the pop songs, so the college girls all loved me. And I sang for them and for me and played Bob Seger on the jukebox when the lull eventually hit, and the real drinkers sat down to wait for the people who work the midnight shift come in to gamble their tips on the counter machines and just sometimes win enough money to buy a ‘Round on the House thanks to So-And-So!’ and everyone would shout thank you in unison, and I would always ask for a Newcastle.
I liked to play the sound off of the rear left-- off of the lower half of my bottom right, for that directly below was where I was positioned-- in an attic booth above the room with an open frame to overlook the entire space but for the jukebox and that exact square of the point. I liked to bounce the bass and the mids right off of that spot, watch the room (above the, oh, for the sake of a weekday average night, sixty people staying for maybe as much as six hours each) spin and fall and enter each person; I liked to watch Doc get smiley when I played songs like ‘Stairway’ and “Hotel California.’ It made me feel joyful to see an argument between people end while I climaxed the end of a song like ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and they and I and all of us could kinda for a minute get caught up in som**hing more beautiful than we could have made alone at home, less vulnerable.
As a soundman, I found myself there as soon as noon to be ready for the soundcheck at two. This allowed me to run the party, until the party could run itself, most nights. This depended more on the character of the crowd than the number, though some nights we did entertain easily a thousand chained one-after-the-other in their cliques and classes and those Polish and Swedish girls with their travel visas...as we sang from 11 pm until, well, maybe dawn. Stragglers from the West Second, people who had been waiting an hour to sing over there were brought right on up at the El Cortez, included in the next ‘group karaoke surprise.’ Surprise, they stayed, and drank, and sang. When the time came I could finally sing som**hing like ‘One’ or ‘Stuck In A Moment,’ songs I really wanted to sing, sing for me, and even then the people would stay and the buzz above us would intensify...that was how I knew the party would run itself. Then I would climb down the ladder and work the crowd. Hashtag, husslin’.
And so it went, but the blizzard ruined everything, and the spring that followed thawed that snow, and the river ran, and I found myself drunk at an interview for an employment agency.
They must’ve figured that if I could past their silly tests drunk, I could do the job, because they hired me. On my first day, where all I had to do was take calls from people trying to give me their money, during lunch, I met a woman reading a book about how to read poetry. Her smile so commanded me, I began to feel my heart sing and I knew I had not, in fact, been happy. In fact, I knew nothing about anything except how to stay drunk and still hit the big G chord. As I fell further in love, I stopped even trying to feel any loyalty to Manny, who, after all, had barely ever paid me… even as he made $4000 per week, he gave me $35 most weeks and smoked his joints with me on the breaks. I found out about the contract and his pay later. Lucky him.
I opened a bank account with that woman two weeks later and we later married, but the last time I saw Manny I was crossing Highway 50 to the pawnshop with a handful of video games and he was stopped at the red light. I looked directly at him, and then looked away as if I truly did not care, because I truly did not. He had betrayed me financially, and worse, my secrets to the owner, and the whole time money was flowing there I was, me, with my hands cupped on my knees begging for another beer won’t someone gimme a smoke anyone got a dollar? I need a bag of pretzels broke all time-- and as I look directly into his eyes, I no longer care.
I did what I came to do: I partied and I sang until love collided with me; shoot, I’d thrown it out there enough in the right enough way for it to have wrapped all the way back to me, I guess.
For what I know, Vinnie had a stroke; he can’t drink anymore and it’s hard for him to talk.
Angela, the stripper whom I saved from certain death by tackling an oncoming intending to get his revenge for being so put down in her rejection of him, he was running, carrying a stick with nails poking out of it, she died. Pills and booze.
Johnny still smokes, is not still married.
Gary disappeared.
Lori, she nearly married Chris, but they were both beyond hope and addicted to the machines or the needle both.
Angie with the oxygen tank who like when I would walk her home after she’d had enough vodka and virginia slims to help a pervert r**e a horse is long dead. She’d buy my drink once a day if I sang that ‘Superman’ song.
There was a lady who came in one night to play pool, brought her girl friend, seemed very interested in me. Asked a strange number of questions to the point where I read her a poem almost as a challenge to discover if she was a true investigator, or flirting, or just strange. Turns out Google says she was a crime reporter for the loca paper. Innnnnteresting.
I do remember the half-song, half-poem I shared with her. I will not now repeat it, except to say that the melody is one you will likely find adorable and disturbing together.
Terry still owns the “Lounge,” as he calls it now. He never did get that special license that allows him to make girls show their p***y by requiring they not wear underwear under their mandatorily short skirts he got away with making his girls wear for a while as a condition of their employment, he still has his hidden microphones and cameras to wack it to up in the office. He kept asking the city for it WHILE making this requirement, but never understood why the city kept saying no. The attraction of off-duty st*****rs tending bar and flashing beave was profitable for quite a while. He seems to be barely afloat, I noticed when I visited last. No pool tables, very dark, no corners for conversation. I sang “better man” and left before he could send a ho**er to kick me out, as he had done previously.
Brian and his buddy Jerry came to Reno, blew $140,000, and died, each at a different time in a sad, slow way. Used to see Brian pushing a shopping cart. He once told me he was mad he couldn’t work at a financial security company; he’d been turned down even though he’s worked in security before…
Crystal and her kids died in a trailer fire. She fell asleep smoking and had mattresses piled in front of the doors, to make parenting easier, I guess.
J.T. used to come in and drop hundreds; he jumped off a bridge during that spring when the river was high, no more J.T.
Many different married couples, watch them come in, have their almost choreographed fights and their almost choreographed make-up, upon which time they would go home for hopefully fulfilling marital relations. One such married couple, the husband, used to have me back to sing at his house for parties, but almost punched me out for staying the night and sleeping with his cousin.
A guy named Jason gave me a garbage bag full of shake for thirty dollars, but he delivered it to my work at the gas station, which certainly tainted my chances for success as well at that job.
The landlord on Bell St. put m**h in my 7-Up, offered me the drink saying it had cold medicine in it. I didn’t murder him for that, even though he later made an attempt to tempt me further into a murderous enterprise by stealing, then releasing, my guitar. The one I bought for $30 when I had $35 in my pocket. That’s me trusting the universe, right there. I like to think that’s the universe trusting me back, too. I didn't punch the man who rabbit punched me as I crossed the street admiring an amazing sunrise when I noticed a brother with a bag of pretzels. Let's say I, got too familiar. And he rabbit punched me, but a little girl saw it happen as she walked down the street with her mom, and it scared me more what she might see me do to him than what she had seen him do to me. So I took it, and kept walking.
I learned that it is never a party until I break a string.
The bikers who used the bar as a storage place for their 'stuff’, heck, who knows what happened to them. They straight controlled that place for a while, had the door, the bar, the management, the incoming beer and liqour, the drugs, girls, for real party spot. Not the place to be, the place to go.
Cops never came in unless they were undercover, and LOTS of undercover cops and cops off-duty came to drink there. Taxi drivers and casino workers all eventually at least stopped by to see what the hubbub was. Our silly karaoke show was the hubbub; we had speakers outside to attract clientele...see, the Comstock across the street finally got so full of straight up bad bidness (I hung with a guy named Do-Dirt there, no joke. No joke. Do-Dirt. That was his nickname.) that it shut down all the way to ‘someday maybe it will be a museum’ status. I believe it is sold as condos now, but then, it ceased to operate and therefore drag people down to the Sands by way of the El Cortez. So. The speakers.
And it worked. A series of business, all various dance clubs, ho**ah clubs, jazz clubs, opened up next door...stole some of our singers...then, went boarded up. Meanwhile, I was singing “Yellow” and “I’m Sorry Miss Jackson” and we are expanding to another club and another club until we were singing almost all day almost all week. For quite a while.
You learn som**hing about yourself when you sing, especially when you wish you had written a particular song. You learn som**hing about the waitress, too, in how she decides whether or not to begin unconsciously dancing instead of rushing to fill orders. You learn som**hing about the drinker and the smoker and the watcher and that there is an order to the endless stupid chaotic drunkenness and you can chase that truth until the truth itself makes a lie of itself you won’t completely find it. Just saying.
They all listened. They and all the other mores were the party-goers who made my singing sound just right, and yes, they have gone away. But still remember how freeing it felt to live by singing every night, to eat because at least I was making an effort to truly read the crowd, at least I was really trying to make them move. They moved. I know how to make them move. I don't set fires anymore. I'm still learning how to sing. Singing is still fun.
Address
Sacramento, CA
Website
Alerts
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when On It Right Now posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
