33

Adam stood in line outside the nightclub. Blah, blah, blah thumping music. Blah, blah, blah, laughing immature women, blah, blah, blah, self-important men with short hair and dress shirts, blah, blah, blah, bored looking bald headed bouncer stood feet shoulder width apart, clasping wrist in front of him, white curlicue wire stretching to his ear. Blah, blah, blah, a nightclub.

Adam was uninspired but dedicated. Conspicuously decked out in regular people clothes, he was a pigeon in a row of peacocks. If it were a police line-up, he‘d be toast for sure. He felt he must be the only interesting looking person in the line, being the only one who appeared different. No one paid much attention though, they looked, smiled and clucked with the other peacocks. He wasn’t sure why that depressed him.

The line shuffled forward, before too long it was his time to meet the gatekeeper.

The bouncer didn’t want to betray his tough guy countenance but couldn’t suppress a raised eyebrow as he was looking Adam up and down. Maybe he gave everybody curious glances.

“ID.”

Adam showed his ID. The bouncer scanned it carefully, chewing gum.

“Step forward. Raise your arms.”

Adam stepped forward and raised his arms out to the side, a caricature of Christ for the bouncer to search for weapons. Adam felt his pride swell, he had no weapons, he was a weapon. A weapon for a new age of enlightenment. Then again, maybe not so much anymore.

The bouncer waved his white, metal-detecting wand over Adam’s left arm. A slight whine. Over Adam’s right arm. Slight whine. Chest and back, multiple whines, legs, double whines. The bouncer looked doubtfully at his wand, gave it a shake. Second pass, whined again.

The bouncer patted Adam down thoroughly, getting rather personal in places.

“What,” the bouncer said, “you got piercing or surgical pins in you or something?”

“No.”

***

Inside, he screamed for two drinks. Double fisting, that was his policy. The trick was to drink both at once, so neither drink warmed to palm temperature.

The place was a dizzying array of loud light and bright noise.

People having fun.

People being people.

Dancing, flirting, laughing, yelling.

A lot of darkness followed by flashes and fast motion, blah, blah, blah, a nightclub.

He wanted so desperately to enjoy himself.

So blah, blah, blah, he talked, blah, blah, blah, and the women played with their cell phones fake distractedly, but not really, and gave him suspicious looks, blah, blah, blah, and no one had anything to say.

Blah, blah, blah, a nightclub.

The place was packed with emptiness. He’d been to clubs before. Plenty of times. When he was younger.

He had never been younger.

When the old Adam was younger. Anyway, he should have known. Should have remembered. Or reviewed the old Adam‘s memories. He would have known. This was the kind of scene that had got him off on his trip in the first place.

He ordered two more drinks. A Bud and a vodka and cranberry. Yeah it was a girly drink but who was he to judge? Girly drink or not, it was still a hard drink. A hard, watered-down drink, surrounded by hard, watered-down people. People who were hard like an eggshell.

He finished his drinks, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and left.