The Haunt

Last night Jon and I went on a little late-night without-child expedition to a club we used to go to regularly when we first met 3 years ago, to drink and make out and be joyfully oblivious to things like the rest of life, work the next day, etc.. I must report that the doorman, God bless him, thought I was under 21 for a second or two (as I was running out to the car to get my wallet, he remarked to Jon, "when she comes back, will she be old enough?"). But we were (I was) too old for the place when we went years ago; now, it is just a sick, sad travesty.

Example: watery drinks in plastic cups mostly full of ice. They couldn't make my signature drink, the chocolate martini, because they didn't have any of the ingredients. Example: whenever a song I liked came on, and I went out to the dance floor (alone--thanks, Jon), I was always pretty much the only one dancing, since everyone else was up to 15 years younger and had never heard the songs. When songs I didn't know were played--always aggressive, sultry rap that sounded like it was created for the sole purpose of hooking up to--that's when the few people in the place trickled onto the floor to collide into each other. There was a black and white photo on the wall of The Haunt in its earlier incarnation in another, smaller building downtown, which was packed pretty much every night with swaying bodies in its golden days of, like, 1994-1998. I remember going there for 80's night on Saturdays and hardly being able to dance because of the crush of limbs all around me...but that was the fun. Now, even at midnight, the place is a ghost town and everyone who is there looks kind of ghetto (there have been a couple of stabbing / gun issues in the past few years), not to mention that the women are either wearing light-up shoes or flowing tackily out of their skintight tops and jeans.

One truly funny moment: a large guy humping a chair on stage, and then somehow diving across the chair so that his wiggling legs and butt were facing the audience. (I think he was doing the breaststroke.)

Today I just feel kind of gross (though, luckily, not hungover because lately I am incapable of doing that anymore, now that there is a baby and a disabled cat waiting for me at home). And aware that a chapter of life has closed and that the wild freedom of 30 has progressed to the responsible domesticity of the mid-30's. Or maybe it's more that The Haunt has just gone sharply downhill, like it is now a gross distortion of my memories of it. It's funny that the same place or person can keep existing yet change so much, filling with and emptying of the meanings that I put on them. And then there is Jon's take on things, spoken last night at our table with stools overlooking the dance floor, with a shitty-tasting Long Island Iced Tea and Redbull and vodka in front of us: "The past is gone. Why hang onto it?"