DONKEY SHAVE

Last night marked the end of an era for me and several people I know. After fourteen years (can it really be that long? I would swear it was only twelve or thirteen…) The Warehouse nightclub has closed its doors for the last time.

Having frequented the bar since it opened (my partner joked that he was wearing his hair exactly the way he had worn it at the pre-opening party all those years ago), we got Grandma to come watch the baby and went out for our first night on the town since she was born. Coincidentally, it was my partner’s birthday as well, so the timing worked out all the way around.

Unlike the “old days,” this time we arrived in a minivan and kept constant vigilance for the vibrating of our cell phones which would go off if our daughter had any problems which needed our attention. Myo, who sat next to the base of the car seat on the way there, laughed at how times had changed.

The Warehouse shutting its doors for the last time is a little like “Cheers” closing – for more than a decade, there was always somewhere I could go and find friends very late at night. Frankly, for more than half of my life I’ve had a place to go like that… a place where I could dance, drink for free and hang out with people I knew and liked.

I’ve always loved to dance, so as a young adult, nightclubs were the obvious choice. Unfortunately, I’ve never liked Top 40 mainstream music, so it was often difficult to find a place to dance where the music didn’t just grate on my nerves.

When I was fifteen, that meant The Metro, a gay bar whose front door was in a back alley downtown. I had a fake ID and spent a good deal of time dancing in a cage for free drinks. I loved it there because there was very little chance that anyone would hit on me – all of my friends were gay men so I felt perfectly safe.

There was also a bar called Tapps which occasionally (and I mean very occasionally) played anything worth dancing to. Luckily, I knew the bartenders (the real reason I went there so often) and the DJ, so I drank for free and got to hear at least a few things that I liked. This was the period of time when I drank entirely too much… maybe that’s the real reason that the music sometimes seemed acceptable.

A couple of years and no fake ID later (it was stolen when my car was broken into), I ended up at a truly terrible sports bar in Delhi whose only redeeming qualities were the DJ and a very lax policy of (not) carding people for beer. The DJ worked (had worked?) at the Metro, so behind all of those Journey albums she had stashed Romeo Void and The Smiths. Needless to say, in 1988 in this particular venue she had very few requests for this type of music, so when she did she was more than happy to oblige. The softball teams in for a pitcher (haha) after the game had no idea what to make of all this…

By the end of that year I had found Mr. K’s, which would be my haunt of choice for a few years. Again, I quickly got to know the staff, which was always helpful in the “free drinks and good music” department. I drank significantly less these days, but I had also become Very Angry. Usually good natured, this was the period of time when I started beating up very large men for sport.

Though this sounds like an innocent enough hobby – I always picked out the most annoying sexist sons of beachballs I could find – the degree to which this behavior was encouraged was probably not particularly healthy for me. The bouncers thought that it was great fun to see the drunk idiots who lurched around feeling up the female clientele finally hit on the wrong woman. (You touch me, I’ll touch you back.)

In fact, when one of these poor, misguided beasts was out on the dance floor drooling and pawing, the staff would often come get me and send me out as bait. They hoped, I think, that perhaps Mr. Caveman would be more inclined to think about the possible consequences of his actions and reconsider his level of respect for women while he was laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, having just been beaten to a pulp and humiliated by a fairly short busty blonde.

It was, I admit, great fun, but the very real possibility of jail finally led me to get a hold of my temper and address the reasons why I felt compelled to beat the crap out of not very smart members of the opposite sex. I mean really – I can’t find every male idiot in the world and beat him senseless – there are simply way too many of them.

So, a little therapy later I started going to R Club. (Ironically, it was in the same building as Tapps and was owned by the same family as Mr. K’s. Notice the inbreeding…) The music was usually good and I already knew everybody who went there and worked there.

Then, years later, came The Warehouse. It was downtown in the “most dangerous” part of the city (though here that’s not really saying a whole lot) in a huge space which had hosted several parties throughout the years. Their tag line, “it isn’t very pretty,” certainly rang true.

At first, they didn’t have a liquor license and only served pop, water and juice. By this time, I didn’t drink anymore anyway, so I could have cared less. It was actually very refreshing to go to a bar and not have to deal with drunken idiots, since alcohol consumption seems to rise in direct correlation to a drop in IQ points. It was dark, it was loud, it was full of the strangest people in the area – I felt very much at home.

This is where I danced, laughed, met and divorced one husband, came to find my friends when life was going great or when it wasn’t going well at all. I celebrated finishing my first novel, mourned the death of a friend and hosted my wedding reception within those dirty walls.

Eventually, since I was there all the time anyway, I decided that I might as well get paid for it. I bartended for a couple of years, which had its ups and downs. On the good side, I liked the hours, already knew and liked my co-workers and on a good night could make quite a bit of money. On the other hand, it hurt my feet, the music was too loud and on a bad night I may as well have worked at Wendy’s.

My partner also bartended and worked security at The Warehouse, and for a while we owned a smaller bar across the street. It was a very social lifestyle, which while it can be tremendous fun, also lacks in privacy. Not to mention that there is only so much cigarette smoke, vomit and whisky which one set of nostrils can take in a lifetime.

Bartending at The Warehouse, I learned that it is one thing to go to a place for fun and leave whenever the fun ran out. It is quite another to be stuck there, sans any fun whatsoever, until four thirty in the morning.

I also learned to really dislike alcohol – I never want to be drunk ever again as long as I live. Physical misery notwithstanding, watching a room full of drunks night after night when you are completely sober teaches a few valuable lessons. Wow… was I really that annoying when I was drunk? Probably.

Do you have any idea how filthy drunk people are? I didn’t until I worked there.

The tag line “it isn’t very pretty” was never more true than when the lights would come on at the end of a long night. Sweaty intoxicated people are significantly less attractive under bright lights than they had been in the ambiguous haze of flashing lights and fake smoke, and the mess they made was atrocious.

I realized how really disgustingly dirty the place was one night while I was helping clean up and found myself washing my hands before I went to the bathroom. In the name of all that is hygienic, it was the only sane choice.

Eventually, my feet insisted that I quit and I never regretted the decision. Once upon a time, my system could handle – nay, enjoy – really loud music pumping through it several times a week. But after a while, it just became painful. However, I knew The Warehouse was still there if ever I should have reason to return to it.

Up until last night, that is. Now it is gone, never to return, much like that era of my life.

I should be sad, I suppose, but really I’m not. Nothing lasts forever, and though it was fun while it lasted, all seasons must come to an end. I’m really glad that we were there to say farewell, but as my partner said “there really isn’t any reason to say goodbye to something I’ve already left.”

It was a ceremonial closure of sorts, and certainly it was very nice to see many people who we hadn’t seen for a long time, some of whom we will probably never see again.

I danced until I was sweaty, which was always the main point of going there for me. In a way, that is the only part I will miss – I just love to dance. On the other hand, I’ve found that I can dance pretty much anywhere – I don’t need flashing lights and really loud music to do it. And, in the past few years, I’ve found that I actually prefer dancing outdoors near a fire to live drumming – the air is significantly clearer and there are no drunk people running into me.

As the lights came on and everybody hugged goodbye, I realized that this might be the last time that I’m ever standing in a bar when the lights come up. For more than half of my life, dancing in nightclubs has been one of my options for social entertainment. I’ve had a great time – I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve learned, I’ve laughed, I’ve loved, I’ve cried and now I’ll go do that someplace else.

In the immortal words of every bar employee who’s ever tried to shovel the chatty drunks out of the front door at the end of the night, “if you don’t work here, if you don’t sleep here, if you don’t sleep with someone who works here, then get the *#$! out.”

Danke schoen, der Warehouse. May you rest in peace.