downtown club
sound of a sax stabs 

the neon glow

                           - JW, 5-24-14

The Doorman's Diary 5.24.14

A slight chill in the air as I enter the jazz club. It is near empty, but the bartender is ready for anything. I straighten my vintage tie and count my wedge to make sure I have the starter amount for my doorman night. With the regular bass player back on stage, the quint is into a well-oiled groove. It is impossible for them to sound better. They’re playing Freddie Hubbard “Little Sunflower” and the normally dour drummer is actually smiling. It’s a frightening sight so I back closer to the door just in case his apparent glee sparks a cosmic realignment. I nearly back into a middle-age couple entering the club. The gentleman is dressed in 30-year-old dapper clothes…a dark sport coat with an assortment of lapel pins boasting Kiwanis or Moose Lodge membership and attendance at various conventions and a small flag pin from an East European country. His slacks maintain a sharp crease that only a high percentage of poly can maintain. He’s wearing a black fedora. Beneath his bearded friendly smile I spot an odd-looking tie that could have come from The Doorman’s collection. I say: “Splendid tie.” He smiles and hands me a pair of Lincolns for their cover. I’m disappointed, because he struck me as a two-dollar bill kind of guy. The club fills with a range spanning from a table of barely legals to a pair of couples from Quebec (to which I say, “so you parly-vou,” and one of the cute women sidles up to me and says in French, probably something like “that’s right dofus” – she sounds sexy) to an 81-year-old jazz crooner who later is asked to hobble up to the stage to sing a couple of tunes. I reconnect with the dapper eccentric gent and learn that he and his lady friend were sweethearts as seniors in high school, led separate lives, married others, each have a daughter, she divorces, his wife dies of cancer, and as the phenomena of fate happens… they reconnect at the 40-year-HS-reunion. He says: “We took it cautiously slow at first but it became apparent we have so much in common AND the spark between us is still there.” Amazing… truly amazing.