\n\u2014 \u201cSomething in the Night,\u201d Bruce Springsteen<\/div>\n
<\/br> “You never know who\u2019s going to show at the Stone Pony,\u201d he taunts, tongue firmly in cheek.<\/p>\n Christine, the band\u2019s keyboardist, says, \u201cBruce\u2019s hair looks great tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n The crowd murmurs.\u00a0 Springsteen did a guest spot on one of Marah\u2019s albums so there\u2019s more reason than usual to hope for an appearance.<\/p>\n Next to me, James explains: \u201cTheir guitarist is named Bruce.\u00a0 His<\/em> hair.\u201d<\/p>\n I nod and laugh like I was in on the joke the whole time.<\/p>\n James and I spent most of our teens chasing phantom Springsteen appearances.\u00a0 We\u2019d cover the Pony, the Fast Lane, even the Trade Winds.\u00a0 After a while you just get a feel: the size of the crowd, the way security has the side of the stage blocked off.\u00a0 It\u2019s not going to happen tonight.<\/p>\n Honestly, it doesn\u2019t happen that much at all any more.<\/p>\n Marah\u2019s the main reason we\u2019re here.\u00a0 James is a long-time follower and Marah fans are a bit like evangelical Christians: they\u2019re not content just to be saved, they need to convert.\u00a0 I\u2019m not yet ready to profess belief, but I am enjoying them more than any band I\u2019ve seen in a long time.<\/p>\n I\u2019m enjoying the Pony too.\u00a0 The new owners have taken out the pillars that obstructed the stage view.\u00a0 It feels like they\u2019ve raised the ceiling.\u00a0 You can actually breathe in here now.\u00a0 Best of all, they leave the heating system off.\u00a0 It\u2019s December but the body heat does a nice job of keeping the place warm without being oppressive.<\/p>\n I remember coming home on winter break from college and going to Southside Johnny shows.\u00a0 It\u2019d be eighteen degrees outside and one-hundred-five inside the Pony.\u00a0 Instant pneumonia when you hit the parking lot.\u00a0 Except back then I was twenty and never got sick.<\/p>\n The crowd at the Pony is exactly how I remember it. \u00a0About half are young people, the kids you actually expect to be here.\u00a0 About half are Springsteen\u2019s contemporaries, fifty- and sixty-year olds reliving their glory days without any sense of irony.<\/p>\n James and I inhabit a late-thirties netherworld between the two groups.\u00a0 I look around at silver-haired men with pot-bellies poking out from the folds of their Levi\u2019s trucker jackets.\u00a0 I watch the twenty-year old brunette in black jeans grind her ass against the security barrier and wonder if I already look that way to her.<\/p>\n Aging sucks, as my bladder reminds me.<\/p>\n I tell James I\u2019ll be back and make my way to the men\u2019s room.\u00a0 People still move out of my way without me asking.\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to be big and strong.\u00a0 I think of my dad at the end, how terribly small he seemed.<\/p>\n The bathroom\u2019s been renovated too and I give the facilities a cursory exam.\u00a0 As I expected, they won\u2019t do.\u00a0 First of all, the urinals are packed too tightly together.\u00a0 You can\u2019t stand at them without rubbing shoulders.\u00a0 Second, there\u2019s an attendant handing out towels.\u00a0 He\u2019ll be staring at my back.\u00a0 Third, and most damning, there\u2019s not a proper door, just an over-sized hinged one that swings as you go through and only blocks half the doorway.\u00a0 You\u2019re practically standing in the crowd.\u00a0 Under the best of circumstances, I have a shy bladder.\u00a0 No urination will happen in this space.<\/p>\n If getting old has one advantage it\u2019s that you learn to embrace your limitations.<\/p>\n I have a plan.\u00a0 Out the front door and across the street is the Silver Ball Museum, a genuine, old-fashioned pinball parlor.\u00a0 It\u2019s open till one on the weekends.\u00a0 I spent some Saturday nights there when things weren\u2019t going well, nights when I knew I didn\u2019t want to be alone but when bars seemed like a bad idea.\u00a0 The place is nice, well lit.\u00a0 You can get lost in the old games.\u00a0 Best of all, the men\u2019s room is a single-person job, with the foaming kind of disinfectant soap in the dispenser.\u00a0 Admission is five bucks for half an hour, but I\u2019ll happily pay it to pee in peace.<\/p>\n James won\u2019t miss me.\u00a0 He probably knows where I\u2019m going.\u00a0 Even back in grade school I\u2019d use the stall instead of a urinal.\u00a0 That\u2019s the great thing about old friends: they\u2019re completely inured to your insanity.<\/p>\n I hold my wrist band up to the Pony\u2019s doorman to make sure I can get back in.\u00a0 Then I\u2019m outside, the cold momentarily refreshing.\u00a0 Ocean Avenue is deserted, but that\u2019s only because of the temperature.\u00a0 After spending two decades as a ghost town, Asbury Park\u2019s resurgence finally took hold in the Aughts.\u00a0 The New York Times<\/em> compares it to South Beach now.<\/p>\n I look down the avenue to where the Palace used to stand, the one beyond which hemi-powered drones once famously screamed.\u00a0 I had my first date there.\u00a0 We played skee ball.\u00a0 Her name was even Wendy.<\/p>\n The cold has shifted from refreshing to biting and my bladder reminds me why I\u2019m out here.\u00a0 I put my back to the Palace and start walking towards the Silver Ball Museum.<\/p>\n The new restaurants and shops block the view of the Temple of Knowledge, the boardwalk shack where Madame Marie once told fortunes.\u00a0 I had my palm read by her when I was nineteen; she said I\u2019d live to be ninety-two.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Her voice alarms me.\u00a0 Not the words, so much as the simple fact of it being.\u00a0 I swore I was alone out here.<\/p>\n She\u2019s standing on the corner of Second Avenue.\u00a0 She\u2019s small.\u00a0 Pretty, I think.\u00a0 The street lights shadow her face.\u00a0 She turns and walks north towards Kingsley.<\/p>\n Figurin\u2019 I\u2019ll get a drink.<\/em><\/p>\n My alarm fades.\u00a0 It\u2019s more amusement now.\u00a0 After all, I\u2019m big and strong.<\/p>\n Her gait is light, easy.\u00a0 It\u2019s practically a skip.<\/p>\n I walk behind her and my eyes memorize her curves.\u00a0 She pulls her leather jacket tight against the cold and it goes taught against her backside.\u00a0 I think of black jeans.<\/p>\n We\u2019re walking hand-in-hand down wide, amber-lit sidewalks in Greenwich Village.\u00a0 We sit at a table to the side of the stage and watch a woman with an impossibly sallow face rail against Patty Hearst.\u00a0 There\u2019s so goddamn much smoke in here.<\/p>\n Horses, now.\u00a0 Horses<\/em>.<\/p>\n We reach Kingsley and stand in the middle of the empty intersection.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve forgotten about Marah, about James, even about my bladder.<\/p>\n I watch my breath cloud the night.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see hers.<\/p>\n Her eyes are like crystals, ice blue and deep.\u00a0 I look into them and we dance along rooftops overlooking Central Park.\u00a0 She\u2019s looking for that one ledge and when she finds it she shrieks with glee and pulls me down.\u00a0 Inside the window, the room is blinding.\u00a0 On the couch, a white man cuddles an Asian woman.\u00a0 She gets up to walk to the kitchen and when he calls after her his voice is the most wonderful sing-song.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how long her teeth have been in my shoulder.<\/p>\n I drop to my knees and her feet return to the ground.<\/p>\n I look at her and my mind conjures a picture of my sister as a baby: she\u2019s eating tomatoes.<\/p>\n \u201cWill I live forever?\u201d<\/p>\n She shakes her head and her crystal blue eyes seem genuinely sad.<\/p>\n She kisses crimson down my throat.\u00a0 I cough and we laugh together.<\/p>\n Her fangs crush my Adam\u2019s apple.<\/p>\n Bruce has finally shown but he has a beard and looks like he weighs ninety pounds soaking wet.\u00a0 He removes his oversized newsboy hat and lays down on the stage as just the piano plays.\u00a0 His hair looks great.<\/p>\n Dry you eyes\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m at the Palace and Wendy looks at me in horror.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t want to kiss.<\/p>\n Spotlight on supine Bruce.<\/p>\n Baby, dry your eyes\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m seventeen and hovering at the bottom of the deep end of my family\u2019s pool.\u00a0 I want to open my mouth and breathe deep because someone won\u2019t kiss me.<\/p>\n For just one kiss\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n I make for the surface but someone\u2019s moved the air.\u00a0 The water\u2019s so very warm.<\/p>\n I swore I\u2019d drive all night\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n I taste pennies and hear a last gurgle.<\/p>\n It\u2019s December 1992 and for the first and last time I see Springsteen at the Pony.\u00a0 He and Southside Johnny harmonize: We were never gonna get old. <\/em><\/p>\n I fall like loose bricks onto the frozen street. by Mike Sweeney I\u2019m riding down Kingsley, \/ figurin\u2019 I\u2019ll get a drink \u2014 \u201cSomething in the Night,\u201d Bruce Springsteen On stage, Dave Bielanko is propagating the myth. “You never know who\u2019s going to show at the Stone Pony,\u201d he … Continue reading
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<\/a>On stage, Dave Bielanko is propagating the myth.<\/p>\n
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\nMIKE SWEENEY<\/strong> lives in Central New Jersey where he writes constantly but never quite enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"