The Tale of a Bouncing Soul (August '07)

This past Friday night started out much better than most Friday nights.

Mrs. Yankee had gotten home early, so we ate a brief dinner, slipped into comfortable clothes, and began a relaxing evening of doing nothing much at all. We played a house variation of Backgammon, a few card games (we have no TV, so we interact with each other instead,) and had just finished up a round of Scrabble when my phone rang.

Now as many of you know, I've been out of work for a while. Many of you may also know that the last time I was out of work, I spent a few nights a week bouncing to help keep food upon the table and a roof o'er our Yankee heads. Bouncing is a slang term for bar/club security if any of you foreign devils are unfamiliar with the term. Being a bouncer was a mixed blessing. It's generally very easy work, and the pay--while not very good--is not terrible. On the other hand, I have to breathe copious amounts of cigarette smoke, listen to awful music at obscene volumes...and then there are the patrons. Oh, Lord above, the patrons...

Okay, back to the phone call before I get too far ahead of myself.

I looked down at my phone and saw that the call was from my good friend Guy. Guy is not only a great friend and great person. He was also my boss the last time I worked as a bouncer.

At this point I really didn't think anything of the call. Guy and I had chatted about my employment situation before, but the club we were working for was under new ownership and not keen on hiring employees who served under the previous regime. I had asked some questions about birthday gifts for Guy's adorable progeny, and I figured that he was either calling about that or just calling to shoot the breeze.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

"Hey man, can you work tonight?"

I checked with Mrs. Yankee to see if she had a problem with me taking a sudden leave of absence from our night of fun and relaxation. She asked me how much I was going to get paid, and then told me to have a great night. I went back to the phone.

"Yeah, I can do it. When do I need to be there?"

"Twenty-one hundred. The shift runs 'til three. Can you do that?"

I told him it was no problem and hung up. I walked back over to the living room and checked the wall clock as I passed by. It was 20:03. I had to shower, shave, and get dressed. All black, dress shirt, and possibly a jacket. The "uniform" hasn't changed despite the change in club ownership. I'm grateful.

I arrive a minute or so before nine and check the place out. At first glance, everything looks to be pretty much the same. Further inspection would reveal that the club has actually improved a great deal since I last set foot therein. Guy still hasn't arrived, so I took a chair outside on the patio to await his arrival. Guy is a Pacific Islander, and runs on "island time." He rolls up somewhere near the thirty-minute mark and gives me the rundown.

I'm going to be working indoors. Oh, boy. I get to breathe the smoke. That's just fantastic.

The gig typically works as follows. Everyone who enters the club has to come in through the fenced-in patio on the exterior of the building. One guy is stationed there. That's the "door guy." One or two other bouncers work inside covering the lounge and the club, or "working the inside."

Each job has positives and negatives. The door guy gets to sit outside in the open air and consequently avoids having to breathe in concentrated clouds of smoke. The door guy is also free from the ludicrously loud dance mixes being blasted in the club portion of the establishment. On the other hand, the door guy has to handle all of the money, make small talk with all of the customers in line, enforce an arbitrarily applied dress code, deal with every jackass in line who wants to argue about the cover charge or the dress code, and make decisions about everyone who comes through and claims to "know" someone who works there.

The guy who works the inside has to deal with the smoke and the noise, and if something untoward does happen, he has to deal with it solo in a room that at times holds a few hundred people. The inside guy also has to deal with the attentions of every talkative drunk and oversexed drunkette that happens to stroll by. On the upside, "working the inside" is essentially a do-nothing job 99% of the time. Getting paid to watch people drink and dance isn't the worst job a guy could get.

I spent the first hour outside with Guy just catching up and shooting the breeze. There were private parties in both the lounge and the dance club, and the general public hadn't really started arriving yet. I checked IDs and collected cover while Guy told me about what he's been up to since he got back from Iraq. We kicked around ideas for potential employment and made fun of patrons after they moved out of earshot. You know, just passing the time.

Finally, at about 22:30, the dance club opened to the public and I moved inside. I'll probably do a whole separate entry about the different types of patrons, but for the moment let it suffice to say that every type was represented on this night. All of the regulars drank too much and smoked too much. The visitors drank too much, smoked too much, and sat awkwardly around the edges of the room, waiting for people to come up and talk to them. Everyone went through the various stages of club attendance, and apart from one migrant worker dude who kept trying to grope girls on the dance floor, it was uneventful. A quick word or two in Spanish, and Señor Grabbyhands calmed himself right down. I didn't even have to throw him out, which was nice.
I hadn't been back to bouncing for quite some time, so I was surprised at how quickly I lapsed right back into pitying and feeling sorry for the patrons. Some of the patrons were just there to "have a good time." Most of these were unaccompanied women, and a few couples. That's fine. What's not so fine is that every single one of them was dependent on getting at least a buzz to have that good time. Dance a little, do a shot. Talk to your friends, have a cocktail. Get together and do a group shot. Cheer about the fact that you did a group shot. Do another. Laugh and congratulate yourselves on what a great time you're having while leaning on your chemical crutch together. Ignore the fact that the "great time" you have while "dancing" is apparently not such a great time without alcohol, and that dancing is now secondary to drinking and maintaining that level of intoxication. Act like a douchebag in public. It's okay, your friends will support you, and none of you will have any idea what you really looked like the next morning.

Most of the rest of the patrons were there to "hook up" in one way or another. The subtext is a desperate grasp for validation as an individual. For some, the validation that comes from getting a stranger to converse might be enough. Others hope for varying levels of physical affection. Watching them interact with each other, moving through the crowds, listening to snatches of conversation, the whole effect is sobering. Many of these people are here night after night, week in, and week out. If they are lucky, some acquaintance or some stranger will imbibe just enough of an intoxicating beverage to voluntarily enjoy mutual interaction for a time.

"Maybe if someone gets drunk enough, and the hour gets late enough, someone will care about me. Maybe someone will show me some affection. Maybe someone will treat me like I matter. Maybe someone will just spend some time with me. Just for a while…"

I think that watching these same sad scenes play out over and over is the hardest part about this job. I think it always will be.