house of mirrors

Illusion-thats really the business we are in. Having worked in restaurants, nightclubs and bars for the last 20 years, I had the opportunity to be around after the last guest left, after the bright lights came on, after the cleaning crew started their rounds. Each and every place is the same: a big room or rooms...empty, dead without the living, breathing, drinking, groping, laughing, eating humans who populated said space.

Its funny to me how a "hot" place can be considered the spot, the "it" place, a place where folks will wait in line forever, lie to get a reservation, plot to get in as a means to an end (getting laid usually comes to mind). I worked at a nightclub in Vegas called Chaz back in the 80's during college. In the hours between the time we opened and closed we created that illusion...full of throbbing beats, a light show, white man-made fog to match the haze of it's drunken occupants. Once the last person walked out/was carried out, the lights would come on and illuminate what was really just 4 walls, carpet, a few bars and a bunch of truly tired folks, enriched by their tips but ready to clean up and go home (or perhaps someone elses home depending on their luck in hooking up during the night). I realized after many of those nights that the measure of humans having a good time depended on so many factors: how they were treated, their expectations of being there, reputation of our place, the "scene", the music....but in the end, Chaz was just a big room with some nooks and crannies for folks to hide in and celebrate, drown sorrows, flirt, relax, you name it.

Steve Rubell, the late great impresario of Studio 54, had it right. In his clubs, he could take an unused linen room, add a few lights, some couches and pipe in the music spinning in the main part of the club, and if you made it so there was a condition to get in: a cover, a VIP card, a look, drugs, promise of sex...people would clamor to get in. Because it was a place that many coveted, but few were allowed. But in the end, it was a linen closet, and when the lights came on, and the precious few were hustled out onto the street, a sense of sadness and emptyness remains: emptyness at what is left behind...the detritus of glasses, ashtrays and the like, and the sadness that people would choose to believe that, for a moment, this place was special, and worth celebrating, and boasting about (guess where WE got in last night), and standing in line for, and paying exorbitant prices for.

In the end, we all long for community; the desire to be accepted, to be present and comfortable around their fellow man is what causes these interactions. For others, it is self-esteem: their worth is derived from what they appear to be or do, if only in their own heads. They may derive no true joy from their experience. It is merely enough to say they were THERE. For me, it is a job...perpetuating the illusion long enough for those there for the right reasons to escape the daily grind can relax and unwide, can share stories with friends or co-workers, can pretend that they, for a brief shining moment, aren't their job or their title or what they earn. They are there as part of a larger group of humans, sharing.

David