the 941

It’s just another day for you and me in paradise.

Despite the pains endured by the homeless, their ways do hold a certain appeal to us now and then. Live under the sunshine and rest on the open grass. Never pay any bills or obsess over your ambitions. Just wander the earth writing poetry and getting toasted, watching the queer behavior of people and animals.

But this weekend, I got a reality check. I had the opportunity to dress up like a vagabond — toes splayed out of my shoes, grizzle-bearded face, torn-up “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple” T-shirt, paint spatter, et cetera — and try to make my way around Sarasota living what I thought would be a carefree hobo lifestyle.

I went to Orange Press’s “Richer or Poorer” art/rock show at Digital Three Studios, where if you dressed way-up or low-down you got half-off the cover charge. In one sense, it was a way to disarm rigid class distinctions by having fun with them. In another sense, it felt kind of condescending for the mostly bohemian-educated crowd to “dress down” in imitation of a lower class.

Some of my friends, when I approached them to ask for a cigarette or just say hi, just ignored me. Others gave me a cursory head nod or a strained but genial smile. (I was hard to recognize.) But it was at Memories Lounge afterward that I really got in touch with the ugly side of human nature.

“You can’t come in here with no sleeves on,” said man’s intolerance. “You got to get out.” You’ll notice he didn’t say “go home.”

“B-but, I was at a theme party!” I stammered. The guy looked at me like I was ranting about the government moustache-army or something.

[Did I mention already that this was Memories? All those nights I'd hung out at Memories, wondering why the clientèle was so exclusively classy. Little did I know that behind that perfect sheen there was a brutal screening process, keeping the riffraff out of Memories.]

I was moping out of the bar when a female friend offered me her little shoulder-vest thing. Two teeny leather wings that rested where my sleeves would have been. I walked back in and sneered at the barman. He was clearly disgusted, but legally there was nothing he could do.

Later we were standing around, waiting to sing our little songs, when this grizzled-looking guy wearing a baseball cap approached me.

“Man I seen that shit. I got a shirt in my truck you don’t got to wear that fuckin’ thing. Me and my friends man we come off work one time and tried to come in here and man that’s some bullshit.”

I didn’t say much in reply, so that he wouldn’t recognize my overly analytic rambling, my half-ironic mumbles, and pin me as the simpering middle-class fool that I was. I just pumped a fist and said, “Thanks, brother,” or something.

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