The Doorman’s Diary: 10.15-16.10

He tells me he turns 28 next Tuesday. We’re at closing time and I’m outside “folding up the sidewalk.” The sandwich board reads: LIVE JAZZ BLUES and the smoking table and chairs must be toted inside. He wants to talk. I want to listen. The trio inside is cooking on Horace Silver’s “Song for my Father,” a request I made earlier, being fulfilled. I should be sitting at the bar with a snifter of cognac, my latest, off-the-clock, free-drink obsession. The young guy tells me he’s a bouncer at a northside club.  “Sounds raw, do you like it?” He tells me he hates it and nods his head in the direction of three sweet-as-chocolate young ladies with skirts short enough to make grown men blind. They’re cackling drunk and stepping in spike heels like the sidewalk is a tightrope. “I’ve got two daughters, 7 and 8… never would I let them dress like that.” We hear his massive round friend, who reeked of whisky when I collected their five-buck covers earlier. The big guy’s inside the sparsely-filled jazz spot yelling, “Play it man…bend that bass!!” The club will be locked-up-dark in a half hour and the band appears to have finally found its groove, thanks to the exuberance of the well-lit giant, whose serious young friend shakes his head while watching little darlings spill out into the cool air of the neon bar across the street.