Writing Exercise 5 - Kyle

The bar was completely full of people drinking and smoking even though it was no against the law to smoke in bars in New York. The same applied to Brooklyn. But here in the bar, here in Union Pool, the kids smoked. Careless. Reckless they were. They lifted cans of Pabst and styled glass bottles of High Life to their pouted lips. They laughed and kissed and writhed on the dance floor to the music the DJ was spinning. Heavy on the bass and drums. What you needed to dance. Something to sweat to.

Walt and Harold and Claire and I watched all this happening. We sat in the corner, the darkest corner we could find. In this way we convinced ourselves we were separate and distinguished from it all. Our table was cluttered with empty cocktail glasses, beer cans, cigarette ash, spilled beer. There were rings on the table, you could see them if it hadn’t been so dark. But then we wouldn’t have been there. Harold and Claire were talking about something or other. They always were. I didn’t pay any attention. And neither did Walt. He was staring at the bartender at the front of the room. This tall girl with tattoos up and down her arms. The black strap of her bra kept falling from her shoulder and she pushed it back into place, tucked it under her white tank-top. That and she kept tossing her head to keep the hair out of her eyes. Eyes like black holes with just the slightest points of light at their centers. Some guy I’d never seen before came in the front door and leaned over the bar. He put his forearms on the bar and leaned forward, one foot off the ground. He motioned to Walt’s bartender with two fingers and she went right over. They spoke to each other in low voices, passing secrets. A moment later he was gone, back out onto the street, the collar of his pea coat up around his neck. I watched it all happening. This is how it always happened: It was whispered in ears and traveled through the bar in seconds, the rumor: Bowie was at Warsaw. Heads lifted and drinks were finished off in haste. People went for their coats. The crowd went out the door to the sidewalk and as if by some miracle, as if the very rumor of Bowie at Warsaw had summoned them, Union Avenue was lined with shining black livery cabs. It required no effort, this leaving of a place for another, more desirable one. It was as easy as getting in a cab and going. They slipped into the back seats of the black Lincolns snubbing just-lit cigarettes with the toes of their scuffed and pointed leather boots, their canvas sneakers. The Lincolns uncurled from the sidewalk as one long black ribbon. It entered traffic northbound for Warsaw and for Bowie. One car pulled away from the curb into traffic and another pulled up in its place. In this manner Union Pool was emptied in minutes. This is how it always happened. I watched it all happen. I always did. The line at Warsaw extended around the block. Walt went in through the back like he always did when Remy was working the door. A little pat on Remy’s chest. Remy winking and holding the door propped to let out the smoke of the joint he was holding. Good see you. You too. The hallway was darkened but for a red light fixed in the ceiling which cast down a weird glow. Also a sense of heat. Walt smelled the press of bodies before he saw it: sweat, manic energy, smoke, the sourness of beer and mash. He passed the bathrooms and entered the main room, where the disco globes spun and spun. The booths were against the wall. The tables had been pushed up against them to accommodate the larger parties but also to free the dance floor. Another DJ. No band tonight. And perhaps the most ironic situation imaginable presented itself to Walt: they were spinning Bowie’s records. As if the man needed that, wanted that. “Moonage Daydream” from the six-foot speakers up by the stage. Walt turned his body sideways to get through the awkward thrashing of the young bodies. He leaned against the bar. A practiced slouch. There were more than enough half-drunk drinks scattering the length of the bar and he picked up one of these and began to drink. Something sweet and with a wrinkled cherry at the bottom. Walt finished it and found another one. An almost full Pabst. He looked around Warsaw to confirm or deny the rumor. The blinking lights and the confusion of the twinkling globes and the fact that the man’s own voice was everywhere, it surrounded them; there was no certainty of any of it. More people flooded in. The doors were opened onto the street. The doorman tried to hold them back. He spoke into the headset and spread his arms as if to catch them. The crowd surged through. He was not strong enough. There. The middle of the dance floor. Amid the disjointed steps of the young and the beautiful of Brooklyn, there. Bowie. Like an idol. Bathed in golden light. Hair smoothed from a marble forehead. His body lithe and moving with a nobility made liquid in the light. His minions pushing close but then repulsed again and again as if by an invisible wall. It was impossible to get too close; he was too perfect for them all. He existed in a different world, one that could not be bridged on the dance floor of Warsaw. Except that Walt took another pull from the found Pabst and met Bowie’s eyes, and Walt set down the emptied beer on the bar and the crowd parted for him. He’d been touched with the godliness of the man. He, too, was now untouchable. And so he moved quickly through the ordinariness of Warsaw, moved right through them all until he was face-to-face with Bowie. Both of them now bathed in that light like golden milk. “I like your shirt,” Walt said. “What?” said Bowie. “This old thing?” He plucked at the burgundy silk like it was nothing. His eyes were lined in black, which accentuated the tremendous light coming from them and that pulled Walt (and all those other helpless nobodies) farther toward Bowie. Their noses were nearly touching.

“How do I look?” Walt said as they began to dance, arms raised, attention paid to one’s hips. “How do I look?”

“Oh! You Pretty Thing.”

Their bodies moved and fit together until it was difficult to see one for the other. Walt became Bowie and Bowie became Walt. As if they’d been cleaved from the same loaf and now rejoined. The hopes of the others – the crowd – were lowered and lowered. I was one of them, of course.