NEW PROJECT WRITIN

I stand in line, waiting for a trio of hipsters (my kind, according to some) to buy their vinyl. Vinyl is a pure, physical manifestation of the music, they claim. We claim. The three bearded men, accompanied by bespectacled girlfriends, soon become none. This gives me the chance to tell the woman behind the counter to cough up a medium-sized t-shirt. She smiles caustically. I try to smile, really.

I turn around and exit through the front door. The entrance of the Grog Shop is also the entrance of a night-club called The B-side (vinyl’s everywhere, brah), and after a show, the surrounding sidewalk is almost always packed with hardcore partiers and hardcore hipsters. This mixture doesn’t usually elicit conflict, but it is still really damn easy to tell the difference between the two parties. I wade on through, pulling my keys out of my pocket even though I’m several hundred yards from my car. All the male clubbers look the same, I notice (as I have before). Clean cut and shaven, dressed in deliberately mangled blue jeans, white button-up shirts (untucked), and loafers. They talk about their workouts while sucking on cigs. Talk about girls and down their dranks. Talk to girls? Dance with girls.

“I’ma fuck him up,” says one tanned clubber to a group of taller, skinner, and paler homies. The speaker must be the alpha. His barks start the dialogue. The other dawgs follow his lead.

“Dude, I’m not gonna even try to stop you. That shit’s weak,” suggests a friend. And with that, the gate releases. OUR GREYHOUND IS ON THE RUN.

I watch as he strides towards an identical creature, dressed in clothes from the same brand. The agitated interrupts the stationary’s conversation by tossing out garbled insults. ALTRUISM IN THE NIGHT. He then punches the victim in the throat, precipitating a scuffle that ends with one man attempting (struggling, but with sobriety) to bash his twin’s head into the sidewalk. The whole ordeal (a real horrorshow, I tell ya, yell ya) lasts a couple of minutes before a group of slightly less inebriated clubbers, empowered by the anxious shrills of their girlfriends, breaks it up. I keep walking.

As I enter the parking garage and ascend the staircase to the top floor, I’m empty, and when I see my car I’m still empty. But then I see the cop near my car and I’m full of something. I mean, he’s full of shit, but I’m full of something angrier. The pig’s writing me a parking ticket, and I know for a fact that the meter only expired a few minutes ago. He tucks the pink slip of paper under the front windshield wiper, and I stay away. I don’t want conflict with a man who’s paid to break them up. That doesn’t mean I don’t want conflict, though.