Karaoke Night At the Old Ships Mate
Its always desperate at this time of night, right before the start of the singing, when the host is drumming up support for what purports to be an evening filled with laudable yet irritating renditions of secretarian standards.
She's pleasantly elegant, almost out of place at the Ship's Mate. It's like a transplant from England, only its in Multomah Village, the floors have been stripped bare from the asbestos removal, but a few Louis and Clark students call it home, and the faculty meets here a few times each month to kvetch about improper renderings of narratives, mull over implausible plot lines, and bitch about insipid prose.
The bar staff is comforting in its brusqueness, warm in the way only family can get away with being that rude.
Dr. Pauley is the first one up, and soon after the aggressive chord changes of "American Idiot" is piped over the incapable soundsystem, her shoes come off, bright silver buckles kicked off, sliding underneath the skeletal pool tables.
Dr. Pauley does a faithful job, cackling in between verses. There's a face she holds, if just for a moment that speaks volumes.
"I'm up here, and this song for me, is not only a stab at the current administration, but for this cathartic moment that can only come after a hectic week. On Friday I can meet my colleagues, kick off my bright silver buckles, and thrash wholeheartedly to a song many of my students play as they consult their MLA manuals and try to find an outlet for the currents of electricity surging through their fevered minds.
Or maybe I say that. Because when she looks at me that way. And because I'm on my third I falsely interpret this as a come on, even though its not, its her getting lost in the moment, having a laugh, so for a moment she can forget about the fact that she continually undermines her desire to break out on her own, move out to the Andes, hiking and wandering amongst the old Mayan ruins.
She doesn't want to be in a sunless room, going over the finer points of Bartholemy to students so assuredly convinced of their own brilliance that they cant see passed the fact that life is always transparent, always has been. Anyone can put thoughts to paper. But Dr. Pauley, when she writes (I know because I've snuck into her study at dinner parties, in between lulls of conversation, while I'm supposed to be in the bathroom.) she conjures up the primitive yearnings in nature, connects the primordial energy into something more palpable. It's abstract, serious and deathly funny.
The song ends and with it the radiance the stage took while she occupied it. I'm realizing the feelings I have for her, and I have to step out of this realm for a moment, going down the street, looking at the glimmering reflection of the frost on the road.
Its like standing in the middle of an old coastal village, weather-beaten and impromptu. No matter what time of year I stand here, I always feel like I'm the only one alive, at the end of a long raw patch of land, waiting for the moon to carry me away.
She's standing behind me. I can feel her breath behind me, and the warm laugh that's about to come rolling out of her.
"Couldn't stand the singing?"
I turn around and envelop her, standing with arms around each other, we embrace and sink into a plush kiss. We both know we can't do this, Her husband seated in front of a bowl of mixed nuts one hundred feet away, and yet the racing of my heart, its pounding out all the thoughts that tell me otherwise. To run away, to stop now before it turns into something ugly. Stop and just savor the moment when it was all subtlety and innuendo.
But I cant. The longer we stand there, the more I'm keenly aware that her husband could walk out at any second. For me, the risk is comparatively minimal. I'm divorced. She is still married.
We stand there, submerged under the spell of the Multnomah Village moon, wondering when the moment will end, and we'll be back to watching the other faculty members sing lonely Neil Diamond covers.
It might be our last chance, if we didn't know any better.
She's pleasantly elegant, almost out of place at the Ship's Mate. It's like a transplant from England, only its in Multomah Village, the floors have been stripped bare from the asbestos removal, but a few Louis and Clark students call it home, and the faculty meets here a few times each month to kvetch about improper renderings of narratives, mull over implausible plot lines, and bitch about insipid prose.
The bar staff is comforting in its brusqueness, warm in the way only family can get away with being that rude.
Dr. Pauley is the first one up, and soon after the aggressive chord changes of "American Idiot" is piped over the incapable soundsystem, her shoes come off, bright silver buckles kicked off, sliding underneath the skeletal pool tables.
Dr. Pauley does a faithful job, cackling in between verses. There's a face she holds, if just for a moment that speaks volumes.
"I'm up here, and this song for me, is not only a stab at the current administration, but for this cathartic moment that can only come after a hectic week. On Friday I can meet my colleagues, kick off my bright silver buckles, and thrash wholeheartedly to a song many of my students play as they consult their MLA manuals and try to find an outlet for the currents of electricity surging through their fevered minds.
Or maybe I say that. Because when she looks at me that way. And because I'm on my third I falsely interpret this as a come on, even though its not, its her getting lost in the moment, having a laugh, so for a moment she can forget about the fact that she continually undermines her desire to break out on her own, move out to the Andes, hiking and wandering amongst the old Mayan ruins.
She doesn't want to be in a sunless room, going over the finer points of Bartholemy to students so assuredly convinced of their own brilliance that they cant see passed the fact that life is always transparent, always has been. Anyone can put thoughts to paper. But Dr. Pauley, when she writes (I know because I've snuck into her study at dinner parties, in between lulls of conversation, while I'm supposed to be in the bathroom.) she conjures up the primitive yearnings in nature, connects the primordial energy into something more palpable. It's abstract, serious and deathly funny.
The song ends and with it the radiance the stage took while she occupied it. I'm realizing the feelings I have for her, and I have to step out of this realm for a moment, going down the street, looking at the glimmering reflection of the frost on the road.
Its like standing in the middle of an old coastal village, weather-beaten and impromptu. No matter what time of year I stand here, I always feel like I'm the only one alive, at the end of a long raw patch of land, waiting for the moon to carry me away.
She's standing behind me. I can feel her breath behind me, and the warm laugh that's about to come rolling out of her.
"Couldn't stand the singing?"
I turn around and envelop her, standing with arms around each other, we embrace and sink into a plush kiss. We both know we can't do this, Her husband seated in front of a bowl of mixed nuts one hundred feet away, and yet the racing of my heart, its pounding out all the thoughts that tell me otherwise. To run away, to stop now before it turns into something ugly. Stop and just savor the moment when it was all subtlety and innuendo.
But I cant. The longer we stand there, the more I'm keenly aware that her husband could walk out at any second. For me, the risk is comparatively minimal. I'm divorced. She is still married.
We stand there, submerged under the spell of the Multnomah Village moon, wondering when the moment will end, and we'll be back to watching the other faculty members sing lonely Neil Diamond covers.
It might be our last chance, if we didn't know any better.
posted by Kronski | 8:26 AM
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