TALES FROM THE BARSTOOL
By: Clint Lien

Night Clubs - Why Bother?

I'm a bar guy. Nightclubs don't work for me. I worked in a nightclub for most of the eighties. Cocaine was king. AIDS had been invented, but we didn't know about it. The hair was big and the clothes were tight. There was a lot of sex. Good times were had by most. By the time I left that job in the early nineties, things had changed. Trojans weren't used as protection against painful peeing. They were used to keep you alive. Cocaine, it turned out, was not so fun after all. It was expensive, depressing and addictive. I remember catching a guy in the bathroom doing lines on the toilet paper dispenser. I knew the guy and quite liked him. He was funny man, a funny fat man. He was also one of the small time dealers who worked our establishment. He had the likely nickname of Pepsi. Pepsi knew the rules. We, meaning the doormen, were all well-versed in the philosophy of the three monkeys, but if faced with blatancy we had to respond. Pepsi apologized and didn't make a stink when I told him that he and his friend had to go. I didn't do the stuff myself but I had no moral stand against it. Live and let live I figured. I told Pepsi he could come back tomorrow. He shook my hand and left with his friend. Pepsi never really made good money in the cocaine game. He blew too much of his own snow. It must have been good stuff because he had burned a hole in the side of his left nostril. The next night I came to work and told the guys that if Pepsi came back he was allowed in, but let me know so I could give him the obligatory warning lecture. Gary said "Pepsi won't be coming back. He died last night in a cab in front of Harpo's." Pepsi and I weren't close, but I felt bad. He made me laugh.

It wasn't long after that I left the nightclub and moved to Hollywood. If I wasn't a fan of nightclubs before coming to Tinsel Town, I absolutely could not abide the scene in the land of silicone, collagen, and peroxide. I sniffed out the best dive bars on the strip; the places Jim Morrison puked in and Charles Bukowski was thrown out of- places where there were no pictures of movie stars on the wall and beer was two dollars a bottle if they bothered to charge you at all. The juke boxes played The Rolling Stones, but not so loud you couldn't hit on the good-looking bartenders.

I found a lot of inspiration in those dark rooms. I had some good conversation and met many interesting cats. I live in Malibu now and while there are a few nice dive bars here, I don't seem to have the time anymore - one of the curses of getting what you ask for.

Last week I had occasion to spend four nights in Las Vegas with my parents. We donated money to the nickel slot machines and ate massive quantities of buffet fare. Coincidently my young cousin Andrew was there as well. Now Andrew had been an exceedingly cute little baby. Before he was three he had several little songs memorized and would launch into them on demand. My aunt used to baby-sit me whenever school was out, as I had two working parents. I liked playing with Andrew. I used to pack him around. I hadn't seen much of him over the last thirty years and not at all over the last five, until we stood as pall bearers on either side of our Grandmother's coffin a month ago. Now he owns a home, has a wife and a receding hair line. Here we were in Vegas at the same time. We agreed to get together. It was decided we would go to a night club at the MGM Grand called Studio 54. Not very original, but I guess name recognition is worth something. The line-up was long and the cover charge high. As we entered the joint I was curious to see how much nightclubs had changed since my days. A lot of people tried to get in without paying the cover. That hadn't changed. My initial observation upon getting in was that little had changed. The music was too loud to talk over. The crowd was too thick to move freely and the price of a drink was four times what it should have been.

By some whim of the gods we managed to get a comfortable table near the dance floor. I planted myself and didn't move for close to three hours. Sitting less than four feet away from us was a beautiful young woman with less than four ounces of clothing on. She was remarkable in the fact that she was draped with a seven foot albino python. It was alive and if you wanted you could go up and pet it. As I stated earlier, I didn't get out of my chair. Many did stroke the reptile though. Some things will always be a mystery to me.

After an hour or so of taking mental notes it began to occur to me that something had changed. I wasn't really sure what it was. It was just a feeling but one I mulled over for some time.

Sure the fashion was different, but there was still the standard issue of posers - those guys and girls who spend hours in front of the mirror selecting the exact right ensemble to wear, with all the right accessories. They have their hair teased and gelled to perfection. These posers behave exactly as they did eighteen years ago. They find a spot to stand in, dance by themselves and keep a sharp eye out to see who is watching. They get watched all right - just like monkeys masturbating in the zoo. It seems one of the latest trends is to wear sunglasses in the dark. I saw more than one super cool bitchin' guy stumble over a chair because he couldn't see more than six inches in front of his face. It's amazing how quickly they right themselves and move on as though nothing happened.

I had a view of the bathroom door from where I sat. Many of the folks going to relieve themselves came out with the sniffles. Cocaine, it seems, is still in the royal family. I saw two young bucks puff out their chests and brace each other. As in the eighties, they didn't really want to fight and the moment their friends jumped in and afforded them the luxury of walking away with their dignity they took the opportunity. So what had changed?

For one thing, they now play just one song. I'm not kidding. After about a half an hour of being there I realized the same thing was making my ears bleed as when I entered. I mentioned this to my cousin. He told me that's all that gets played at night clubs now. It's called techno. Techno it might be, but music it is barely. There's a drum machine banging out a danceable beat. Screeches of electronic noise and the occasional undecipherable oration round out the sound. I guess they save money on DJs. I wrote it off to my age. I had become my father, who could not understand why anyone would want to listen to Pink Floyd or The Rolling Stones. A dramatic demonstration of how wrong I was surfaced for several seconds some time later. The "music" was technoing along when suddenly the eminently recognizable beginning beats of Van Halen's "Jump" began. Now I've never been a big Van Halen fan, but they were okay and you could certainly dance to them. The place erupted. The dance floor was rushed. Every square inch was filled with feet. Despite the volume an audible roar of approval ran through the place. It turned out to be a psych. The first few bars of the old ditty had been sampled. Seconds later the song quickly reverted back to the drum machine without David Lee Roth shouting out a single note. The crowd visibly deflated. Many migrated back to their seats - embarrassed and angry at being fooled.

Yes, the music had changed, that was for sure, but that wasn't what I was sensing. It came to me in an epiphany. For all the beautiful people and all their youth I think one would find more sexual heat in a Tibetan monastery. In my day the primal waves of feral energy was thick. People came together in our club. They left together and sometimes didn't wait to leave. Looking around me I saw men and women avoiding each other's dangerous stares. Maybe that's why so many of them were wearing sunglasses. I considered the fact that maybe it was just me. I'm thirty pounds heavier and almost two decades older. Perhaps the youthful intensity simply wasn't focused at me and that's why I didn't feel it. I quickly dismissed that notion. The place was sterile. Simple as that. What had happened? Had AIDS done this? Jerry Falwell? My cousin was no help.This was the only way he had known things to be. No amount of speculation produced any kind of satisfying answer.

I suppose it's better. Meaningless sex is overrated anyway, but with that out of the equation, why bother going to a nightclub at all? Give me a nice spot at the bar on a red vinyl stool with The Doors playing in the background. I was happy to get out of that night club and I suspect it will be quite some time before I find myself in one again.

Reactions? Comments? Write me at barfly@netlistings.com