Quiet evening at The Duplex, with the usual staff (Greg on the piano, Sarah behind the bar, Michael on the floor), perhaps a half-dozen regulars, and as many strangers. J.Random Dude comes downstairs (there's a bar up in the game room), and stands off to our right. Soren and I are vaguely aware of him, in that "there’s a stranger nearby, but our bags are out of reach, and he doesn't look psychotic' way that one gets in the city.
Greg is playing; my mind and gaze are wandering slightly when I hear a "WHAM!" and look up to see that J.Random Dude has stepped into the triangular space in front of the piano and thrown his bag to the floor. As we all focus on him, he's rather frenetically stepping out of his shoes.
"Weird," I think, "Greg's music usually doesn't inspire barefoot dancing...." Dude then undoes his belt, and begins -- even more frenetically -- pulling his pants off, turning them inside out carelessly, and then throwing them to the ground in our general direction. Fortunately, his shirt-tails are long enough that we can't see whether or not he has on underwear, but from the way he keeps grabbing them over his package, my guess is "no." He has skinny muscular legs, and grey socks; I'm not close enough to tell whether the socks started that color, though.
Michael and Sarah pick up their jaws, and tell the man that he has to take his clothes and leave. I hear him say, "A rat ran up my leg!" and he takes the pants by the waist and thrusts them at Michael, who, somehow, is reluctant to take them. We think that it's unlikely that a
rat has run up his pants; a waterbug might have been possible, but no one noticed anything emerging from his clothing (other than him).
Sarah gives him a five-count before she goes to call the cops; Michael finally gingerly takes his pants and throws them out the door. Ted, who is a tall, solid regular, gets up, and tells the guy, "You have to go," and he gets the message, picks up his shoes and bag, and leaves, and stands outside the club, on Christopher Street.
Greg, meanwhile, has been playing and singing all the way through this. The song ends, and he asks, "What just happened?" We'd all like to know that, too, but we try to explain, and Soren, Alison, and I look out the doors, and observe, "He's still there, still pantsless."
J.Random (I think we know enough about him to use first names, now) is taking off his socks, and throwing them on the ground. People are walking by, one or two with surprise, a few oblivious due to cell phones, but most with a "He seems preoccupied, and his hands are full; I can get across the street/up the block safely, so I Don't Care" look. Sarah doublechecks the actually street address of The Duplex (none of the staff actually know it, but I do) and calls the cops again.
Greg goes back to playing, we go back to listening and singing, but Soren, Alison, and I still have an excellent view of J. Random, so the breaks between songs are punctuated with:
"He's putting his pants back on."
"Aaaaaaaaaand, they're off again!"
"Now he's shaking his socks out and putting them on."
"Pants are back on."
"No, he’s taking them off
again."
(I think it was in here that the discussion of the Joe Cocker cover of a Randy Newman song came up – and he did, in fact, leave his hat on.)
Eventually, a cop car rolls up. Not because of Sarah's calls, but because Ted walked out and down a block, and flagged it down. They arrive in one of the pants-off moments, and, as far as we can tell, stay inside the car, and discuss with him the fact that it's customary for men to wear pants on Christopher Street, except during the Pride March, which was ten days ago. He puts his pants back on, and heads west on Christopher; the cop car leaves, and the night continues.
Later, the night takes a musical downturn, with the presence of a cheerfully drunk couple by the piano. Now, cheerfully drunk is not a sin. Cheerfully drunk and barely waiting until I put the microphone down to ask Greg for both "American Pie" (which he’d already sung perhaps a half hour earlier)
and "Brown-Eyed Girl" is Very Wrong. (That better have been a fifty-dollar tip, is all I can say.)
And then she got up to sing, and chose "Me and Bobby McGee." Now, my Triple-Play-From Hell in piano bars is "American Pie," "Brown-Eyed Girl," and "Sweet Caroline," all of which we heard on Tuesday night. My aversion to those songs, however, is but a candleflame as compared to the inferno that is Soren’s loathing for "Me and Bobby McGee." Despite the psychic beams of hatred incinerating the air, she took the microphone.
And was awful.
Bolluxing up the lyrics, making kissy-faces at the audience, flouncing her hair, and doing something that bore a vague relationship to the rhythm, and an even vaguer one to the melody. And the audience seemed to like it. Or perhaps they liked their memory of the song, and their own singing along, and accepted her as part of it.
Later, she tried "Nothing Compares 2 U," but you don’t want to know about that. Trust me.
It does leave me with questions, though. She was clearly off-pitch, out of key when she wasn't off-pitch, and out of rhythm, and yet the audience applauded enthusiastically. (I would not say that she got as much applause as Soren did, or I did, and much less than Sarah, but it was a healthy amount.) Is it the strength of the song? The three I hate are good songs -- I know that; it's just that I've heard them too often, and badly too often -- but is that another one? Is it strong enough that the mere evocation of it stirs people, and overrides reactions to the actual performance?
Soren and I have talked about this sort of response before, and I'm no closer to a conclusion. I do suspect that much of it is the song itself, as some sort of talisman that holds memories, so that just being around it causes that sort of response, but there’s more to it, I'm sure.
Tags: duplex, new york city, piano bars
