FROM THE ARCHIVES: Ring Bell after Dark
None of us is where we are because things went according to plan.
Hey all—
My sidekick Zeke (the Console Queen) is out sick this week, so it’s a great time for a dip into the Going Solo archives. Riffs & Rants will post this weekend as usual, and we’ll be back to the regular essay schedule next Friday. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you in the comments and this week’s discussion on Threads! Have a great weekend. —M
One of the best things about not dying is that you wind up living long enough to prove yourself wrong.
And then, if you keep sticking around (my friend India said to me once, with evident relish and love, "Man, you just don't die! When the world ends, it's gonna be the cockroaches and you"), you prove yourself wrong so many times you stop getting real tied to the idea that you need to be right, because you won't be, and who cares anyway, since you never were. Best you can ask for is that you'll be less wrong more often, and maybe hit on an occasional truth.
Another thing that happens, if you both outstubborn your own stupidity and keep writing, is you find yourself reminded of lines you wrote when you didn't know a goddamn thing about a goddamn thing, lines that turned out decades later to have been ok. That happens to me now and then—I'll bump into a line I wrote and think, Good guess, and grudgingly acknowledge, if not exactly greet, my former self, the kid my teachers addressed as "punk."
Lines like this: "Everything had that late-August feeling of everyone having left."
I thought of that line one sunny Sunday afternoon in the dim back room of Randy's Diner in West Fargo, sitting on a too-low green pleather seat in a back booth, when the server leaned down over my table with his practice beard and his practice porno smile and practiced on me—not flirting, I was just some old broad eating an omelet and he just wanted to try out his new hip-shot lean—it was Badlands-level hot out and freezing in the diner, air conditioner blasting, there was a wide wall of windows but the sunlight was blocked by heavy drawn blinds.
Or lines like this: "There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose."
I'm here to tell you that while I didn't know fuck-all about freedom when I wrote that line, let alone how much there really was or one day would be to lose, or what it would feel like to have and then lose all those things, I think of that line every day, because I'll be damned, it's the truth.
The other night I went trekking over an ice-slick parking lot in blowing snow in an off-ramp town in Nevada with a 24-hour restaurant, a gas station, and a motel, because I was dumb and stubborn and drove too long on a road colloquially known as the Loneliest Highway and then it was too late to find somewhere to camp and then I hit the mountains and then it got dark and then the weather I'd been trying to get ahead of caught up with me and then I was singing Joplin in a blizzard so I tooled along at a relative crawl with my flashers on until I saw a glow on the horizon, and still, after the better part of a life spent wandering around in my car, every single goddamn time I see the lights of a town glowing in the distance, I think of Mary and Joseph and the manger, and even though it's January in Nevada on a highway packed with slow-moving semis, I'm singing to Zeke, "There's a star in the east on Christmas morn" as I drive west.
Nights like those, sometimes, it gets dark, it gets late, and right out of nowhere your brain decides to go digging through the Box of Lost and Mismatched Thoughts and starts hauling out whatever it finds just for fun, and then you're humming along at 75mph in a whiteout singing Tom Waits to the dog, Freeway, cars, and trucks, I'm riding with Lady Luck... and you're trying to think of the names of the last five people you walked out on at 3 a.m. because whatever it was that time, it was just one too many damn things, and failing to come up with names you try for the last five roads you drove away on or at least the last five rearview towns but all you can come up with is Toronto, Cincinnati, maybe? Asheville? didn't I hit Massachusetts in there somewhere? you're pulling over on a mountain pass because the wind's blowing so hard you're by no means assured of keeping your wheels on the road and now you're thinking Zeke, we're not in Kansas anymore, because you were definitely in Kansas last week, or maybe last month? or was that last year? and regardless you and your little dog too are about to be airborne and what if you fly right over Vegas? You think of Elvis, you think of Graceland, you remember the time you agreed to marry a dude who liked Jimmy Buffett and you went to Graceland with him and all you remember about the trip was the night you went out in New Orleans and he sat sullenly drinking and scowling while you danced and you've forgotten his name but remember—now, in the dark, sitting in your truck that might yet get blown clean off the Sierras, the pure, clean joy of dancing to zydeco in a white dress with a skirt that flared when you spun, and you mentally check your winter-readiness—you've got blankets, plenty of water, flares—and find it reassuring that if you and Zeke and the truck go a-sailing, you're probably good once you land, and still, all these years later, you don't understand why, how, someone could ever possibly be angry at someone for wanting to dance, and that's when a line you wrote years ago comes to mind:
"Everything starts perfectly. Everything is the answer that solves the previous question."
"Ring bell after dark."
The motel was just a motel, nondescript, motelish, nothing notable about it save the crowded parking lot, mostly work trucks, a row of semis lined up along the perimeter. This was the only motel between high hell and who knows where, and I hadn't seen a truck stop in hours. I stepped out of the truck and into a dense swirl of snow, the kind that feels inescapable, heavy, more like rain. Caught in the snow-swirled beams of headlights and streetlights, I was another shadowy figure in a well-lit lot full of shadowy figures, all bent against the weather and shapeless with layers, leaning into truck cabs, locking down covers, snapping tarp straps, climbing up and lashing rope, hands patting chest pockets, D-rings, hip holsters, clips. I loaded out, grabbed the dog, who looked extra ridiculous in her tiny red dog parka, and ran for the door.
I believe it to be a truth universally acknowledged that every night hotel clerk is in want of more information than they really need, and this belief ensures that I am able to make myself seem sketchy even when I am not, even when I have no nefarious intent, even when I most earnestly plan to be well behaved, so while I will spare you the particulars of this evening's check-in exchange, I will allow that I sustained my unbroken streak of alienating every desk clerk of every hotel in which I have ever stayed, from Ritz-Carletons covered by company accounts to Red Roof Inns where I paid with change I dug out from under the seat.
Bags dropped, face washed, Zeke tucked into bed, I jogged down the stairs and struck out into the howling wilds of Nevada's most remote wherever, squinting through the snow for glints of neon—a Denny's, an IHOP, an all-night McDonald's, some sign of life.
There was nothing. Beyond the glow of the gas station/motel, it was 360 degrees of snowy dark.
Across the parking lot from where I stood was a low-slung flat-roofed two-story building with darkened windows and a sign that said 24-HOUR SPORTS BAR.
I headed across the lot. I was hungry, and it was the only neon for miles.
If I'm being honest, it's not that I'm brave, it's that I'm not very bright.
Pulled the door, door was locked, I thought what the fuck, then saw a small sign that said, "Ring bell after dark." I was about to ring the bell when a grouchy looking young guy shouldered his way through the door and past me, into the night, the weather, the wind; I ducked under his arm and sank into a warm bath of a room—dim, quiet, spotlessly clean, and glowing faintly green.
There were no people, at least that I could see, just lights and a pervasive hush. Rows of slot machines blinked but did not beep or ding; silent crowds cheered silent basketball games on silent big-screen TVs that hung above the well-spaced high-top tables that lined the walls, each table with two leather stools and one clean black ashtray holding one fresh pack of matches. I wove my way through a row of gorgeous regulation pool tables looking for the cue racks as I headed for an unmanned counter in the far corner of the room.
One of the things you notice when you spend most of your time alone is that you get really weird when you spend most of your time alone, or you stop having to pretend you're not weird, so you stop pretending, but then you have to go back to the peopled world sometimes, and reentry can be clunky, so the feeling of being out of place, which is for one thing inherent to being human, isn't unusual or really even worth noting, so you don't think much of it when you're sitting around feeling weird and out of place, because you feel that way all the time, because you kind of are, and it's fine, because who cares? This isn't eighth grade, everyone's weird, so you're in situations pretty much like this all the time, you're just standing at the counter in a 24-hour sports bar in a blizzard in Nowheresville, Nevada and you notice that the menu board consists of a lengthy list of complicated daiquiris with semi-adorable names, so when a dude of fiftyish or sixtyish comes ambling out of the back room of this tidy establishment, you ask him if he's got a menu, and when he stares at you like you're from another planet, you add, "A food menu," and while he's digging around under the counter, you say, "Slow night! Weather, huh?" which startles him and he hits his head on the underside of the counter and you apologize profusely and then you're startled and he's startled and he slides a laminated one-page menu across the counter to you and now you're awkward so you order a hot dog, which sounds ok but it's not what you meant, so you say "No I meant a hamburger," and he's awkward and you're awkward and you also really want some fries and frankly also a brownie sundae but you say "and some chips" and you know damn well that once again your epic social awkwardity is going to mean you'll go slogging back to some random midnight hotel room alone and a few hours from now you'll wake up half hungry and then it'll be the thing where you wind up in the vending machine room at the end of the hotel hall with a bunch of dudes in their socks and pajama bottoms and Carhartt coats and you're all embarrassed and mad because all any of you fucking wanted was a candy bar and some cheese and peanut butter crackers and now it's this fucking 3 a.m. social occasion from hell and none of you has on your glasses and everybody's half asleep and lonely and armed.
I slunk off to one of the high-top tables, climbed into the offensively tall high-top seat, and hefted my backpack onto the table like a latchkey kid trying to blend in at the corner bar, drinking Cokes and smoking Marlboro's after school.
I stared at the ashtray on my table for a while before I called out the dude at the counter, "Can I smoke in here?"
"Yeah," he called back, and laughed. "This is Nevada. You can do anything you want."
I lit a cigarette with my own lighter and pocketed the fresh pack of matches like a thief.
I was a couple of bites into my burger, elbows on the table because who's gonna stop me, mustard on my face because who cares, looking around the room without really paying attention, when I set the burger on the tiny styrofoam plate, wiped my hands on my jeans, and texted a friend, "So I'm accidentally at a brothel."
I looked up: above the warm, dim, faintly green room, above the extensive daiquiri menu board, above the pretty no-pay pool tables and the silent blinking slot machines, above the big-screen TVs and their World of Silent Thrilling Sports, an internal balcony wrapped all the way around the upper level of the room; off that balcony was a series of softly lit doors, each etched with a shadow of a woman's form.
The lights that hung over the pool tables, I finally noticed, were soft, maybe 40 watts.
Who doesn't look good in neon?
I picked up my burger and ate it, watching the dude wipe down the counter again and again. After a while I heard the sound of a soft automated chime. The man at the counter tapped his phone; the sound stopped.
It was quiet as a cloister, quiet as a cell. It was, for a moment, the quietest place I've ever been.
Upstairs, doors began to softly open, and softly click closed.
I finished my burger and ran my fingers around the plate, smoking and licking my fingers clean of mayo and salt and vinegar crumbs. I kept my head down and watched the floor as one by one—I felt their presence first—pairs of boots and sets of shoulders bent by heavy coats went by, past me, past the man at the counter, past the pool tables and the slot machines, and over to the door, where they stopped, not looking back, just staring at the door and waiting like little boys to be let out.
He buzzed them out, one by one, and one by one they blew off into the snow.
Everything starts perfectly. Everything is the answer that solves the previous question.
If this journey I'm on is the answer—and I believe that it is—what, exactly, is the question it solves?
Couple months back—I don't remember when, time warps and bends, it was warm, might have been summer, might have been the desert, might have been the south, I don't know—I drove past a billboard that read:
NEXT EXIT!
RV Park — Motel — Massage
Rooms $29.99/hour
I signaled, exited, and followed the signs.
What I was after, really, was a cup of coffee and whatever conversation I could find, and that's what I found; there was a diner tacked to the east facing wall of the one-story motel. It was early, but the sun was up. Some of the customers—a couple of booths with three, four guys seated together—were in hunter orange hats and vests. I stood in the doorway a second, keys in my hand, then clipped them to my belt loop and half-sat on a seat at the counter, swiveling sideways a little, one foot on the floor. My back was to the room, which I don't like, but those were the only open seats.
The waitress had my coffee poured and the menu in front of me by the time I looked down.
"They don't bite," she said.
"Hell they don't," I said.
"Arright," she said, eyes catching mine like a snag in the rug, "they ain't gone bite you."
"Best not," I said.
"Eggs and toast?"
"Over medium. White."
"Butter?"
"What I look like, some skinny no-butter bitch?"
She laughed out loud. The men looked up. She turned her back so fast I thought her head had spun.
Some fool took it in his head to come up and see about a sweet roll.
"You ain't gettin no sweet roll, Dale.”
Dale leaned my way and grinned.
"Who's this?" he asked her.
"How I know?" she asked.
"Whatcha hunting?" I asked him.
"Duck," he said. "You got a knife," he added, nodding at my belt. "You know how to clean a duck?"
"I know how to clean a hunter, if I need to," I said.
His buddies yawped. The waitress pushed past him with four sweet rolls, spun them onto his table like she was rolling dice, and snapped at him, "Siddown."
She filled my coffee cup. "You're not from around here," she said.
"Neither are you," I replied.
The sun was right in her face. She squinted and raised a hand to shade her eyes so she could see the door. "Naw," she said. "But I stayed."
"You do what you gotta do," I said.
"It is what it is," she said.
I nodded, one foot on the floor, a hand on my hip, looking past her the same way she was looking past me, the way you do with a skittish dog.
"That it is," I said, sipping coffee. "That it is."
She set my plate in front of me and rolled silverware in napkins while I ate.
"Not my place," I said, "but that motel hourly I saw next door is way below market rate."
She gave a slight nod.
"What's your cut?" I asked. "Two-thirds?"
"Half," she said. She dropped the fistful of flatware in the tub with a sharp tin clang, put her hands on the counter, and said, "And would you believe these fuckers still tip me in ones?"
"What's that buy you," I asked. "Load of laundry?"
"If."
I ran my toast crusts through the yolk on my plate. The sun got high enough that I could see her face. I watched her fill a take-out cup and set it by my plate.
"Where you headed next?" she asked.
"Girl, I don't even know how I got here," I said. I paid my bill, put a little extra under the plate, and stood to go.
"You know how it is," I said, and grinned. "None of us is where we are because things went according to plan."
She laughed. I could still hear her laughing when the door jangled closed.
I’m trying to get this: “ Everything is the answer that solves the previous question.” it’s a work in progress
Whooo. Very Ricki Lee jones. Or Baghdad Cafe. Whatever —love it.