A Day in the Life By Nate Hazen
My eyes, bloodshot and heavy with sleep, burst open at the sound of my alarm. I stare stupidly at my phone, struggling to focus my eyes in the dark long enough to see what ungodly hour it is. 6 p.m. "Goddammit," I mutter, "it can't be time already." But it is indeed time, already. If I try to sleep any longer, I’ll wind up late for work. My bed pleads with me to stay as I get up, groaning. I consider it a moment, but I have bills to pay—no rest for the wicked. I plod up the stairs to the bathroom, my knees and the stairs creak together in miserable harmony as profanity tumbles from my mouth in lyrical contribution to the creaky duet. I shower under the hottest water I can tolerate in hopes of feeling something other than back pain and sciatica.
By 7:30, I’m ready to head out. I tell my cat, Shredder, that I'm leaving for work now, inform her that she's in charge while I'm gone, and admonish her to make good decisions in my absence. It's a silly ritual, but it's one I carry out religiously—an absurd act that prepares my mindset for work. I unlock my piece of shit car, put the key in the ignition, and&...nothing. I'm used to this by now, but that doesn’t make it any less obnoxious. Online research on the problem has informed me that this particular year range of this particular make and model has a mystery gremlin in the electronics that drains the battery. Well, fuck. Luckily, I keep a battery jumper in my car for exactly this reason. I jump-start the car, and I'm on my way. I stop at a gas station en route to pick up my nightly fix of caffeine and nicotine, which, along with anger and a severely unhealthy diet, act as the fuel that keeps me going night in and night out.
I arrive at work just a few minutes before 8 p.m., the club's opening time. I pop the hood and disconnect the cable from one terminal of my car's battery, so I won't have to jump-start the fucker again at the end of the night. The homeless people, indigenous to the neighborhood, seem extra lively this evening—none of their usual zombie-like shuffling. There must be a good batch going around. This ought to be fun. One such specimen hunkers inside the club’s smoking patio, scorching a piece of aluminum foil with a butane torch. I threaten to administer one of the doses of Narcan I keep in my backpack, inspiring the man to fuck off with admirable haste. Faced with the choice of staying put or staying high, the foil smokers will always choose to stay high.
I clock in and begin setting up. I lug tables, chairs, and a propane heater out to the patio, turn on the exterior lights, and all at once, we’re open for business. For a good hour and a half, there are only three customers; two of them wander in, buy a shot, and walk back out. The other eagerly turns fifty bucks into zero bucks at the video lotto machines. I take a seat at the booth closest to the front door, open my laptop, and work on my article for next month's magazine, which is now two days past the deadline. I write a couple sentences and immediately delete them in frustration. As I begin my attempt at writing pretty much the same thing but better, my friend Beau, a cook from the seafood joint half a block down, walks in carrying a carafe of coffee.
I close my laptop and stash it in the kitchen, grateful for the opportunity to procrastinate. He offers me coffee, and I grab a mug from behind the bar. We adjourn to the patio to drink our coffee while he smokes a cigarette, and I puff on some fruity-flavored vape. Our conversation is interrupted every few minutes by yet another person asking if either of us can spare a cigarette. These people are one of the biggest reasons I switched to vapes. Beau, on the other hand, stubbornly sticks to cigarettes, so he bears the brunt of the bumming. He tells the circling buzzards that he can't afford to just give cigarettes away, but he'd be happy to sell them one. The currency they offer isn't to Beau's satisfaction: half-empty lighters, permanent markers, a downright filthy bandana, and sunglasses with one of the lenses broken out. One man eventually produces a dirty, crumpled dollar bill, and Beau rewards him with several cigarettes.
By 11 p.m., we finally have a handful of customers. We'd have more, but a funny thing keeps happening. A guy will walk in, see half a dozen dancers and only one or two customers, and he'll immediately walk back out, and I can't help but wonder whether he just prefers to get his boners with way more people around. I bet he loved getting called up to the blackboard in junior high. I make a mental note to tell the next guy to come on in anyway; if he's patient enough, soon the room will be full of boner buddies to share in the weird group arousal he seems to seek. I shake my head vigorously back and forth as though resetting an Etch A Sketch, desperately attempting to derail that entire train of thought.
Sometime just before midnight, a customer at the rack starts getting grabby. I roll my eyes and march to the stage. “Hey bro, lust with your eyes, not with your hands,” I tell him. He pretends to be apologetic, but I’ve had my eye on him since he came in; gut instinct has been warning me he might become a problem at some point, and I get the impression that what he’s actually sorry about is getting caught. He’s been warned. I won’t be warning him again. I post up in a spot where I can watch him, and every so often, I see his head turn over his shoulder to see if I'm still nearby. His eyes find mine, and he knows I won't be letting him get away with his bullshit. He tosses a couple more dollars on the stage, stands up, and walks out. “Good riddance,” I think. "Let Uncle Touchy go test boundaries at some other club. He was a shitty tipper anyway."
At a quarter to 1, a fight breaks out on the sidewalk outside. I have no clue how or why it starts, but I do know it has nothing to do with anyone at the club; it's just a couple of random dingdongs whose egos clearly outweigh their intelligence. The spectacle of these nutsacks attempting to widen that ego/intelligence gap by punching IQ points out of each other's heads, like Mario punching coins out of bricks, makes it clear why gladiators were so popular in ancient Rome. Customers and dancers hanging out on the patio stop what they’re doing and focus their attention on the kerfuffle, laughing and joking all the while. One dancer begins talking shit and yells at the guys to stop being such pussies and finish it already. Others join her in a chorus of jeers. As if on cue, one guy lands a punch that knocks the other out cold.
The last hour and a half of the night is slow and uneventful until 2:10 a.m. For some reason, people love showing up just in time for last call. "Why the fuck can't we be this busy all night?" I wonder. Oh well, at least this last-minute rush means we aren't all leaving here empty-handed. 2:30 arrives at long last. I begin herding customers to the door, but closing time affects customers in much the same way as bedtime does toddlers; people who were completely fine just moments ago, now faced with having to leave, suddenly possess bladders that are full to bursting and rush to the bathroom.
We finish closing an hour later, but as seems to be our way, the bartender, DJ, and I end up staying long past that, bullshitting and recounting the events of the night. We finally lock up at nearly 5 a.m., the color of the horizon heralding the impending arrival of the rising sun. We say our goodbyes and get in our respective vehicles. I pop the hood again, reconnect the battery, and make my way east across the Burnside Bridge. I park my car, unplug the battery, and unlock the front door of my house. When I reach my room, I relieve Shredder of duty, kick off my shoes and pants, and climb into bed. "Did you miss me?" I ask my bed. "Yeah, I missed you too."
Nate Hazen is a bouncer, writer, artist, and cat owner who is currently in a highly codependent relationship with his bed.
