Past loves resurface: Karaoke.

So, that day after meeting my colleague from art school for dinner, I went newbarhopping in order to finish up a draft of a pop article and then grade student papers.

I did that first at a hotel bar, and then a bar that had flipped over and re-opened as something else.

I had talked with the suited (townie) (hispanic) doorman on the way in, saying I was going to correct student papers over beer, so he should make sure that I didn't spill any on the papers, otherwise I'd have to figure out a way to cover up the beer smell like maybe squirting some cologne on them.

So, later, on the way out, he was like, "Good night, Professor!".

"Come on," I was like, "Don't call me 'Professor', what kind of professor grades at a bar."

Then, I was like, "But you know, I'm pretty happy, most of the students did a pretty good job on this new paper, I got to say.  I kept reading them and I couldn't believe how good they were."

"It's either that or the beer," he was like.  "Give them the benefit of the doubt."

After that, I popped into a gay bar that had flipped and actually become a (straight) (businessperson) piano bar upstairs and downstairs down this staircase you'd slip a dimly lit (gay) bar with karaoke.

On the way in, I found out from the doorman that the overall gay bar had done good its first 5 years (it had been a gay bar before that too, but under a different name, maybe), but then internet sex apps helped kill it.

He explained then that people don't come out to bars for sex anymore, and the downtown swanky gays are fashion chasers, and for the 1st few months after a new swanky hotel rooftop bar opens up, the place tends to be like two-thirds gay a lot of the time, and everyone just hops from bar to bar, and if you do happen to meet someone there, you can always say during the rest of the time that you're seeing that person that you met them at such-and-such a place, namedropping that fashionable luxury bar name.

(It really is this superficial rich gay white male obsession writ large onto bars, isn't it?)

So, he continued, because conventioneers tend to go to the gay neighborhood, you really got to build a casual work crowd, where people can come and relax and it's a place to regularly stop through.

When I got there, one person was leaving, and one person had just got there, and otherwise it was this (young) (gay) (white) male bartender singing a new song on karaoke every 2 minutes.

"I really like this atmosphere," I was like to the doorman, gesturing towards the staircase, from which you had to slip down through the (straight) (businessperson) piano bar.  "You've brought the forbidden back to gay."

Mostly, though, besides talking to him, I went in and sat there and intensively corrected some papers, and the bartender asked me to sing, but I said only after every 2 papers.

Then, after the first 2 papers, I sang the Carpenters' "Superstar", which the bartender didn't know, he was too young.

Later, too, after some other people came in, I broke down and asked to sing "Weekend in New England", which they didn't have, and so I ended up singing "Mandy", which he also didn't know, and which threw me from other times that I've sung it, since it's been a long time since I listened to the song, and I guess I never quite realized that after the bridge and the big swell the voice and instrumentals get out of synch and the voice has to power through with the instrumentals hitting offbeats.

Then, after another half a paper, I broke down and asked the bartender to put on Blondie's "Dreaming" or "Atomic", neither of which they had, but he offered that I could sing "Rapture", "Tide is High", or "One Way or Another," none of which I think would be that good for karaoke.

"A long time ago I tried singing 'Tide is High'," I was like, "But I really fucked it up."

"So this is your chance at redemption," he was like.

"Okay," I was like, "Put it on," and I discovered after the first verse that the song works pretty well if you drop it down an octave to your lower register and sing it in Teutonic lock-step with Debbie Harry's original vocal phrasings (if you try to play with the verses and sing your own phrasings, you die and just sound awful).

After that, I made myself go home, and arrived back there like 1am after the subway and then the bus and then walking 2 blocks across quiet sidewalks dotted with melted snow and absolutely no-one around, and as I was outside after I had checked my mailbox and was opening my front door, the door right next to that that goes to my downstairs stoner neighbor's apartment opened, and there he was, standing in his bathrobe, just like when he came up to my apartment the previous week to say I fucked up their vacuum after I used it and I had to tell him to clean the filter, it fills up fast.

"Hey man," he was like.

"Hey," I was like.  "Do I have to clean the vacuum or something?"

"No man," he was like, "Not that, I haven't checked the filter yet."

"Okay," I was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "I wanted to let you know, our band's going to be practicing ten tomorrow morning."

"That's no problem," I was like, "I have to leave for school by nine or so anyways."

"Cool man," and then he laughed.  "So if you hear us, that means you overslept."

"Yep," I was like, and then he asked me how my night was, and I began gushing about my karaoke discoveries and led off with my discovery about the beats post-bridge in Mandy.

"Wow, sounds jazzy," he was like.

. . .

...his band plays jazz, you see...