Pocket dispatch from host stand (bouncer diary)
Party of six. Pre-gamers at their final stop. Two of the girls drop their IDs when I card them. They’re carrying snacks and open containers, which I confiscate.
They’re celebrating a birthday, the answer to a question I didn’t ask. One of the boys, probably late 20’s, sizes me up. I pretend not to notice and say have a nice night as I click my counter six times, turn to the next group, and hold up my hand.
A lot of the art of my job is how you stop people. The nuances of that initial interaction set the tone for the whole exchange.
First I make the traditional stop sign, then I twist it in a sort of half queen’s wave as I make a little smile with one corner of my mouth. “How we doing tonight?” It tells people I’m in charge but makes them feel like maybe I’m happy to see them.
If the guest feels any sting of rejection, a fight’s begun whether or not either of you was looking for one. I can usually feel that heat radiating off them before they do, right when they step up to my stand. But I take the temperature of the situation again as I check each ID. I look them in the eye after looking over the card. They think I’m checking they match the card, but I’ve already done that. I’m looking them in the eye for a flash of indignation, or worse, a cold, dead stare and a clenched jaw. Those are the boys to look out for: more liquid confidence than sense, and plenty to prove. Usually there’s nothing more on board than a pocket knife and twitchy hands, but now and then there’s a gun in the waistband. Those types like clubs, so I see more guns at work than on the street.
The next group is a foursome. Some kind of double date, but casual. Too casual. The guys have ill-fitting jeans and their untucked button shirts are ten years late. At my last job, the crowd was more curated and I could turn people away for bad style. But I got the ax when new owners took over, and I didn’t have the kind of savings that would have allowed me to be choosy.
I card then and wave them in, soul patches and all. …
The truth is some people are already looking for a fight when they get up in the morning, it just doesn’t come out of them until they’re drunk and standing in line to get into my club. They swallow the feeling all day, go to work, fight traffic, take shit from their bosses and co-workers, then come home tired and try to shake it off for a night out so they can let loose. What exactly they’re letting loose is a surprise sometimes.
Pocket Dispatch from “Flying to America” by Marco Parisi
Was the soft pounding sound coming from the music, or the apartment above? Or was it inside my head? It was gentle enough, not unpleasant, but persistent and mysterious. My suspicion aroused, I strained obsessively to hear it.
The strings washed over the pounding sound, and over me. They could have been acoustic or synthetic. The slid up and down in a bath of reverb, making small waves, evoking an emotional response that surprised me. It was sad—I realized I was mourning something—but I welcomed it as the first strong feeling I’d had in days.
I closed my eyes and imagined the landscape this music evoked. I imagined the environment that inspired it, and the artist in the space where he created it. The title describes an international flight, and the artwork looks like a view of clouds from above, or maybe a view of sand in soft focus, rippled by yesterday’s high tide.
These images gave way to a montage of my own memories, real and imagined, of making art. Strong emotions giving way to dramatic expression. I remember it in colors and slices of moments, silenced and flitting by so quickly that some are indecipherable.
My life had recently stopped feeling like my own; my memory no longer autobiographical.
Pocket Dispatch From A Light Stroll
It’s a late spring day. The sun is shining and hot, and I am trying to incorporate more exercise into my life, so I will go for a walk outside.
The less I take, the better. I don’t want to be weighed down by heavy things, and it will be easier to clear my mind if my hands and pockets are empty, too. So I will only take my wallet.
And my phone. My responsibilities require me to be reachable most of the time in case something happens with the kids at school, plus I might forget something that’s on the calendar or need to answer a text message. But at least I’ll only have my phone and wallet.
A notebook would be good. What better way to enjoy being out in the neighborhood than by sitting down at a cafe and writing down some thoughts? I love to write in notebooks, especially with a simple ball point pen. Sometimes pencil is best, but if I take both, I’ll be set. Maybe a few colors of felt tip marker in case I need to emphasize something.
Actually, if I write something good, it would be great to be able to draft a text file in my writing app for revisions and maybe even posting later. The iPad is usually my favorite for that, but the keyboard case is in the office where my wife is taking a meeting, and I don’t like typing on the screen, so I’ll just take my laptop.
This is more than I originally meant to take, but it will all fit in my shoulder bag. Wallet, phone, laptop, notebook, pen, pencil, flair pens. This is fine.
I turn to the door and notice the book I’m supposed to drop off at a friend’s house a few streets over. This walk is the perfect occasion to take care of that.
Next to the book is my camera, which I’m trying to get better about carrying on me at all times now that the weather is good for street photography and people are out in interesting dress. I grab it.
My shoulder bag is overstuffed now and I’m a little worried about the camera falling out, so I clip its strap to the bag with a D hook.
I grab my pocket knife—you never know—as I turn back to the door, the bag’s strap digging into my shoulder. I slip into a pair of sneakers and start down the stairs, slightly unsteady under the weight.
This poor bastard is standing outside in a cold drizzle, wearing an ACLU vest and waving at strangers approaching him from 20 paces. He uses all the tricks from training to get their attention—“hey, Chrome bag, all right! High five. Hey, got a second for civil rights?” He’s always got his fist out for a friendly bump, but people point to their earbuds, making a banana with their thumb and pinky. Sorry, I’m having an important conversation with no one about how I’d rather cut off my own gangrenous foot than talk to you.
He’s young, but not young enough for this shit. Grad school must not have panned out. So he’s canvassing while he figures out how he’s going to make a difference in the world. Or if there’s any point in trying.
An older canvasser walks over. They talk sometimes when foot traffic slows down between trains. It’s hard to imagine they’re making small talk, since they make an exhaustive volume of it with the people they stop on the street. It seems more likely they’re trading tips or descriptions of the ones that just barely got away. Maybe they’ll be back. Most people pass back the same way later.
When he burns out and needs a break, he takes out his phone to make a call of his own, little bits of talking followed by long drags on a vape pen. I imagine a canvasser for some other charity walking up to him and trying to get him to talk. Do these guys ever prey on each other? What happens if you locked two of them in a room?
How does the recruitment process work for canvassers? Probably happened on a college campus. No doubt it involved other canvassers standing on sidewalks near the student center, under the train, outside the sociology department. But instead of looking for donations, they needed warm bodies to stand on sidewalks elsewhere. To find donations. Can it be a pyramid scheme if the compensation is hourly and low, or nonexistent?
I picture today’s canvasser walking out of one of those campus buildings, deflated and disillusioned, realizing he’ll never finish his thesis and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in the world if he did anyway. He probably had sad eyes and a slow, directionless gait. A look the recruiters are trained to spot and jump on. Fresh meat. An ideal candidate.
“Hey there,” I imagine them saying to him. “You look like you could use someone to talk to.” Or maybe, “Hey man, you want to help us make a difference out here in the real world?” Two day-long training sessions and a couple days of shadowing, and he and his clipboard are making the world a better place at last.
The way he points at passing women and beckons with his fingers for them to come over and talk to him seems barely distinguishable from catcalling. He is persistent, even as they say, “Sorry, no.” Sometimes he leans in toward their path, or follows them for pace or two.
Turns out you can get away with a lot when you’re wearing an ACLU vest. A similar windbreaker is available for purchase on the ACLU website. Actually it’s on sale.