Growing up and then even older

in the coat check line.

There are people who find God in experimental music and I’ve always envied them. When I’m surrounded by songs that don’t end, forever evolving into echoes of the same beats, I start to feel claustrophobic in the slow pace of time. 

Once in awhile, I go dancing anyway. There’s always some new place to go, some visiting DJ that everyone else knows and worships. This place last week was Public Records, an “entirely vegan, minimal waste champion of diverse trans-genre programming across various art practices.” (Sometimes I want to bop every copywriter on the head and remind them that things can be just normal). 

I ended up having fun, but all the songs were not songs — just noises. Me and Chris were requesting our favorites, “play ee er ee er ee er!” or “play squeak squeak squeak!” 

As kids, my brother and I loved this stop-motion musical called “Bzots: Escape A Go-Go!” about a group of socialist-coded robots who attempt to unionize their factory to protest against its harsh working conditions. In the end, they quit the factory and start a band. (That’s a spoiler, but it doesn’t matter, because as we later learned, Bzots was not a real movie, but a home video our neighbor made and distributed only a few copies of). Public Records plays the kind of music the Bzots would make. 

The line to get in is sometimes the nicest part of a night out. Meeting up with friends, you’re full of energy. In the Uber, it’s your job to entertain and keep spirits high. The music, as I’ve said, places you in too tight a place in spacetime. Waiting to get in, you’re allowed a moment to zone out and think. So, I offered to wait in the coat check line with Halley, while everyone else went inside. 

If you’re vigilant, once every few years, you wake up and realize you’ve outgrown your place in life. I decided at the end of last year that I need to move. The need for change is urgent once it appears. Everyday forward, there’s cognitive dissonance. Your internal life doesn’t have a home in the world around it. 

I’ve been searching for places that feel like they could house my new mindset, trying to decide on a next destination. As we stood in line for the coat check, I took stock of the surroundings: people our age and older with sophisticated haircuts, genuine leather jackets, and a softly lit garden with a brick patio wrapping around London Plane trees. 

Halley interrupted my dreaming, “would you go inside and see what the temperature is like? Maybe this line isn’t worth it.”

I left her in line and wandered into the foggy entryway. It would have been overwhelming had I not seen Chris’s face first among the crowd. It’s a comfort to step into the future with familiar faces. 

The temperature seemed fine, but I wanted to get an accurate reading for my friend, so I continued on into the “sound room” (dance floor). 

Everything in the sound room is custom built wood, glazed in honey. Perfectly symmetrical sharp lines cut across the room, which is lit in the same shade of gold. There’s a smooth sophistication and an otherworldly warmth.

Too much warmth… Halley wouldn’t survive an hour in her puffer jacket. 

I left the center of things and headed to the bathroom. 

And in there is where it really hit me, the beauty of growing up. Because in this place, where a club can have a garden, where things are built with custom wood, where your friends are still there at every turn, there is also a sink in each stall.

I flashed back to nights out past: empty soap dispensers, wet floors, and communal sinks clogged with wet paper towels. There aren’t stalls and floors in adulthood. There are “sound rooms” and “bathrooms.”

A friend recently sent me that Joan Didion essay, which opens, “it’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.” In this private sink, I saw clearly the end of my early-twenties.

And then I remembered Halley, who had only sent me inside to check the temperature and was still waiting outside for my analysis. 

I dispensed soap into my palm — an excess, because it was available. 

But when I pulled the cold knob, my vision for the future fell off its hinges, because so did the sink.

I stared, soap in my hands and egg on my face, at the sink hanging loose in front of me. “The golden rhythm was broken, and I’m not that young anymore,” Didion said later in that essay. Maybe everywhere is the same.

There was a knock on my stall door, so I opened it with slippery hands. It was Colin, who’s eyes went immediately to my open palms. In a gesture of love and generosity… or pity, they offered me the use of their dry shirt.

“No! It’s not water. It’s soap.” I said, stepping back to save them from my fate.

We got back in line and waited for a place to rinse our hands together. 

By the time I returned to Halley, she thought I had forgotten about her. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to go on a journey of my own. It is too hot in there, and bad in other ways too, and you should keep waiting in line to check your coat.” 

Is God Watching Over?

The other day, I sat stunned as an adult couple at Peter Pan Donuts sent back their matching bagel order (lightly toasted plain bagel, LOTS of jam, little butter) three times. Twice, for being too toasted and once, for having too much jam.

The server made their bagels over and over and over, never letting her smile crack, as the two of them muttered “too toasted this time…” or “she’s about to add too much butter…”

Later that day, my dad texted this photo:

And now I do believe in God. And I believe he is just. And in order to move on with my life, I have to believe that there are now two former patrons of Peter Pan donuts who have been condemned to live on for eternity as angry jars of jam.

Counterpart Update (the Counterpart origin story is here, if you’re new)

No answers, only more questions. What does it mean to receive a counterpart? Is it a bad omen or a sign of good luck?

Friday Scripture

Halley surprised me for my birthday by designing and printing a few copies of this newsletter as zines. We might do something with them or print a new edition after this next batch of posts, but for now: some photos so you can appreciate her work! 

“The design is inspired by religious printed matter. Elements from classic bible design & layout are married with the irreverence of 2022 internet culture, speaking to the way we collectively worship in the modern age.”

- @halleyhusted

xx,

Healy