F I R S T
PE R S O N
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME BY JOHN TOTTENHAM
Tinnitus hissed through the music, the laughter, the static. It wasn’t crowded in there, but it was loud. Two women at the bar, a few feet away, were engaged in a conversation that consisted of whooping and screeching at the top of their lungs in response to every exchange that passed between them, with no concern that others within such close proximity might not want to have their eardrums battered by gales of exaggerated merriment. In the middle of the room, standing around a small circular table, a group of beer-swilling men yelled at a ballgame that was broadcast on various TVs stationed around the walls, so that one’s gaze was never obliged to rest on anything motionless. Screaming screens, screaming people. It was six o’clock and they were letting off steam; it was their domain, and I was just a stranger—sitting, drinking, thinking, or trying not to—a silent island amid raucous camaraderie. I didn’t know what else to do until it was time to walk back to the hotel and retire to my room—out of which many dead bodies must have been carried during the hotel’s storied 80-year history—with the vertical red neon GAMBLING sign flashing on and off directly outside the window. The game ended, the young women left, the noise subsided, and I could hear the conversation to my immediate left. “I was in California hunting for meteorites...” a hairy man in bib overalls was saying to his mostly silent companion. “On the way back, I stopped in at the Cherry Patch. Great place... the girls were wandering around topless in the parking lot...” It was refreshing to be drinking in a bar for the first time in six months. Where I came from they were all closed, owing to COVID. I sat there, folding softly into medicinal warmth, savoring the increasingly perceptible glow. A tall, slim middle-aged man with long silver hair walked in and took the seat directly to my right. He wore rings on his fingers, several cigars poked out of his breast pocket, and he carried a book. The prospect of somebody reading a book at the bar cheered me. He lit a cigar and ordered a cocktail. A few minutes later, he was joined by a man with dyed jetblack hair, who wore a Black Flag T-shirt that exposed unusually muscular arms for somebody of his advanced age. He sat down on the other side of the Silver Fox, placed four books on the counter—all crime-related, with red-on-black lettering on their spines—lit a cigarette and ordered a cocktail. Something that sounded like John Lee Hooker, ramped up and crassified almost beyond recognition, blasted out of the jukebox. The title of the song, “Hot For Teacher,” was familiar but I had never heard it before, and had no desire to ever hear it again. Stray words, an occasional sentence, scraps of conversation drifted over in my direction. “... He was in a couple of Jarmusch movies,” said the Silver Fox in a gravelly accent, dragging out that cherished word, “Mooo-vies,” with salacious relish. “Overrated... coasting... he’s been sleepwalking for years... always the same role...” Clearly they were talking about Bill Murray.
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His companion mostly just nodded or muttered in agreement while idly playing video poker in a manner that suggested it was merely a pleasant way to throw away disposable time and income. Looking at him more closely, I recognized him as a well-known director, one of the few American filmmakers whose work stirred interest on the strength of his name. A quick search on my phone confirmed this impression. What was he doing in such a nondescript watering hole? Enjoying some sort of friendly, alcoholic business meeting with a screenwriter, by the looks of things, hence the exchange of books. “...You can get a decent lunch there,” the overalled dude to my left was saying. “It’s cheaper than a date and you know what you’re getting for your money.” In the bar mirror I took a closer look at the speaker. Gray hair sprouted from his sagging chin, beneath which a surgical mask dangled apathetically as he puffed on a generic cigarette. Social distancing: forget it. Looking down the bar, one head after another was bent over the individual video poker screens that lay at slightly mounted angles on the counter, providing booze-weakened patrons with the convenient temptation of digitized games of chance. Inglorious clouds of smoke, released from potentially diseased lungs, floated through the airless room. This mob weren’t drinking the COVID Kool-Aid. Lockdown... mockdown... meltdown. “Can’t you see me standing there with my back against the record machine...” Another blustering Van Halen song tore out of the jukebox—shrill, digitally distorted, disrupting the desired quietude. As David Lee Roth said, a jukebox was a “record machine.” It should contain a limited number of selections, pref-
