Doing the Wadoosay

SATURDAY

My girlfriend, Kat, were badly needing a night out - it'd been too long since we'd seen a good band, hung out at a bar and engaged in a really good bout of intellectual cattiness. On this night, we had a date with a gay friend of ours, Steve. I'd met Steve at a non-profit job I got when I first moved to the City. He and I discovered that we shared a mutual-obsession with indie rock music and basically kept each other's spirits up by endlessly talking about new bands that we'd 'discover'. On this night, Steve was celebrating his 35th birthday and in a fit of Midwestern generosity, had treated Kat and me to a night at the Bowery Ballroom where we'd toast to his birthday and see The Fiery Furnaces. We were flattered, greedy and immediately leapt at the offer. Even when the gig was transferred to the Evil Concert Venue of New York City (also known as Webster Hall), we were eager to enjoy a debauched evening of music and drinking-enablement. We were so psyched for a night out, we even succumbed to a 1 ½ hour subway commute to Brooklyn (Steve's home turf) to help him feel at-home in his favorite, local haunt.

I'd been trying to be good about my drinking. Fitness had become my new obsession and I was determined to make myself presentable for a summertime beach. Of course, there had been one or two lapses including one night last week that involved a mishap with too many extra-dry martini, but overall I'd found been successful and I was focused on staying that way. Steve was not laboring behind my self-deluding rules. It took exactly one round for his agenda to become my agenda and soon I was pounding back pints of Stella at Brooklyn prices (50% off). These were the salad days (hours) of my weekend. I remember them fondly- I was so much younger then. I recall it as if it had happened only a few days ago. We laughed, we raged and in true Zelig-like fashion I found my inner-swish. Kat politely sipped her beer, lounged into the faux-leather lounger, and enjoyed display of two, self-involved music snobs in their mid 30's. Soon, we were hip deep in Joy Division, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop references.

As time raged on beneath our drama-filled banter, Kat grew restless. The last hour ran about like this:

KAT: "Wow. I didn't know that Iggy Pop was that disgusting or what a careering bitch Patti Smith was, but weren't we going to a concert or something?"
STEVE: "What time is it now?"
DECKARD: "Do you want another?"
STEVE: "Ooo! Ooo! Are they playing The Cure? Whatever happened to good Goth music?"
KAT:"Weren't we going to a concert or something?"
DECKARD: "We have plenty of time. Do you want another pint?"
STEVE: "It's my turn- what are you drinking?"

Finally, Kat managed to focus us into the 'now' long enough to herd us into the street... sort of. Steve was spun into a feeding frenzy of Indie music euphoria and the birthday boy had forbade us from leaving Brooklyn until we had listening to the MOST FanTAStic Song In The EnTIRE World by The Kaiser Chiefs. Six cigarettes, four blocks to Steve's apartment, 3 pee-breaks, a long listening, and 4 more bocks to the subway later, we regained our course and headed into Manhattan.

Webster Hall sucks ass. The last time I'd visited this club was when I tried to watch Sonic Youth. This place is designed like the mines of Moria with doors and stairwells that move from one performance/bar/club space to another. All the spaces are pretty dumpy but hell, I can do dumpy if there's a cool staff, cheap drinks, etc. The Sonic Youth gig was over-booked to the point where the back of the theater felt like standing in the front row at a U2 concert. The bouncers were complete ass-clowns who had certainly trained at the Sopranos School of Fuck-You Bouncing. The Bowery Ballroom, my favorite venue in Manhattan must have signed some boneheaded deal a year ago with Webster Hall so that bigger bands could play in a larger venue. At this point, I simply cannot believe that the same people could be running my beloved Bowery Ballroom and the Frankenstein monster of concert venues called Webster Hall.

Steve went to will call to pick up his tickets and that's when we realized that the concert had started a full 2 hours earlier than any other concert in Manhattan. We rushed upstairs to the only remaining view in the hall. We were just in time for the last 2 songs of the encore, a "thank you for coming to such an early show", then the quick exit of The Fiery Furnaces, leaving us enjoy a 'what the fuck' moment. Dejected and even without the time to order another beer, we chain-gang shuffled our way to the bottlenecked stairwell and down into the lobby. Kat and Steve rushed downstairs to the restroom while I stood guard beside a trashcan and tried to spot any hint of a T-shirt salesman.

What happened next was a cluster-fuck at the hands of the emotionally-challenged. A squat, dour blond barked at me that it was time to leave. My hesitation prompted second, squat-assistant to join in and reiterate, for my convenience. A bouncer, wielding a metal barricade, trudged through the now-vacant lobby and offered his two bits of derisiveness. I turned to the blond goblin and tried to explain that I was waiting for my friends to get back from the restroom and that I was standing out of the way. Not satisfied with my lack of cowed behavior, both women moved into my personal space. Fed up with trying to hold my ground behind a garbage can, I retreated to the far corner of the lobby and barked that they didn't have to act like such assholes about it. Well, that tore it. What followed was a staccato waterfall of hoots and chest-beating from the barricade-toting bouncer who dropped his gate and scrambled after me, all the while screeching "What did you say?!". Again and again the words looped over and over as if I had any chance of getting a word in edgewise until it began to morph into a rambling conjunction of "Wadoosay?!". The call had been sent out... Wadoosay... wadoosay, in the deep. Bouncers clambered from every stairwell and doorway.Fool that I was, I had moved from my vantage behind the garbage and had allowed myself to be cornered with no Fellowship and not even a good buzz to numb the imminent flurry of self-righteous blows. Remarkably, I was able to able to maintain some semblance of composure. I tried to slow things down- bring down the energy level another notch. Speak slower, so every would understand my position. I was just. waiting. for. my. friends. who. are. in. the. restroom. I was certain that I could feel, in the heels of my feet, the distant rumble of a Balrog.

The bouncer was feverish from the success of his wadoosay chant and was ready to go in for the kill. Unfortunately, he overextended his repertoire when he tried to switch to put-down mode. "You wanna see an asshole," he demanded. This momentarily threw me off. I had expected to be lifted from the carpet and trown clear of the front doors like you see in Three Stooges or Marx Brothers films. A question? Was he serious? What sort of an answer should I offer? From the flinty twitch in his eye, I could tell that I was taking too long to answer. The zinger - he had to land the zinger. "Turn around and look in that mirror! You'll see an asshole, then!"

'There is a mirror behind me,' I asked myself. I suppressed the impulse to turn and see for I feared that the bouncer's sense of humor would cry out for more and he would take the opportunity to try out a physical joke involving my underwear. The bouncer army must have thought his joke to be a sufficient punishment for my belligerence for soon after he landed his zinger, the mob began to disperse. The squat woman and her assistant returned to their ticketing boxes at the entrance and the bouncers shuffled back to the hollows from which they had sprung. The Great, insult-joke bouncer strutted back to his lonely barricade, lifted it triumphantly upon his shoulder, then disappeared out the front door.

Kat was cheerful, relieved and utterly oblivious when she appeared at my side. I might have been able to cover up the entire incident, but when she asked me if I was ready to go, I began to fire off sentences like a rail gun from a Blackhawk. She glanced about the lobby and noted the scowls and snears that came from the darker corners. "What happened," she asked. I tried to explain but there was simply too much adrenaline in my system. The story burst from my mouth in a gigantic twitch of incoherence and fury. Kat nodded and placed a calming hand on my arm (she studies Buddhism). "Let's go," she said.

"Where's Steve," Kat asked. My mind immediately lept to only the most graphic scenarios. Was he, at this very moment, enduring gruesome wrongs at the hands of that hulking, cave troll I'd seen in the restroom when we first arrived? He was standing behind a ramshackle stand, selling overpriced candy in a black-light dim of urinals and booths. I had survived the verbal thrashing of Moria and I'd be damned if I was going to abandon my good, gay friend who wouldn't possibly harm a fly. I scrambled down the stairs and into the john. I was prepared to grab an errant mop or glass jar of peppermints to drive off the foul perpetrators, but the room was silent. An Hispanic janitor stood at the candy stand, poised at the apex of an evil, Spanish-laced conspiracy that he was about to unleash upon the candy troll. Suspicious eyes tracked my movements as eI stepped to the vacant stalls. No doubt, they had received word of the altercation upstaris and were waiting for me to unsuspectingly stroll into one of the stalls where I would be relentlessly violated by the business end of a switchblade or, at least, be administered a brutal swirly upon my head.

Where had he gone? Had he already been beaten senseless and thrown out of the Hall for being associated with the Great Troublemaker of 'Aught-Five'? I grabbed Kat's hand and sped for the Exit. outside, a fresh line of victims were eagerly awaiting the verbal de-pantsing and economic pick-pocketing they would soon find inside. I had escaped from my foolish escapade.. and, to my startlement, so had Steve. Standing on the shore, beyond the bouncers and barricades and eager naiveté, stood Steve. He had witnessed my incident in progress and like any good citizen, immediately dashed from the building and awaited the pitching of my gouged and spintered remains onto the pavement.

I was disheartened and far to sober to have witnessed such wildly-confirming displays of human nature. Clearly, the most consistent handicap of the evening had been my sobriety. I needed a drink- check that, I needed a concoction that would be crippling in its potency. I wanted the shortest path from A to Z. I had to be laid so low that I would actually learn from this debacle and sear into my brain this lesson so it would be never repeated. We wandering the unaffordable streets of the Village and my impatience grew to an imperative. Finally, at the bequest of Steve, we collapsed behind the neon-beckoning window of Dallas BBQ- an interesting choice for one gay man, one gangling, angry, degenerate looking to get loaded and one elfish, young woman who happens to be a vegetarian.

It was apparent what when we were in for when the menus arrived. Actually, they were already in front of us - paper place mats. I only lacked the mini-Mason jar of crayons to complete one of my childhood nightmares. The experience reached another tier of heinous when I discovered that only booze choices are pricy bottles of Bud Light or hyperneon-colored, frozen concoctions involving decorations of unripe pineapple. I chose the latter. That, along with the coleslaw and macaroni & cheese concoction I consumed, succeeded in laying me low for the next 2 days and teaching me, once again, lessons... about something.

Good times.