Mad Donna’s, sipping on an ice water watching costumed hipsters ascend the stairs for their nights entertainment. Alcohol was a no-go; we opted for the cheese dip instead. When the budget is thin you have to be skimpy with such things. A turkey melt, a meat loaf sandwich, a couple half bowls of mac n’ cheese, and air thick with rumbling sound-check over head and a healthy mix of turned up Lightning 100-esque tunes were all that was between us, and we didn’t quite mind raising our voices to be heard.
A mere four months removed from one last binge of single player FIFA tournaments and AA-battery murdering Game Boy Advance Pokemon, and Mad Donna was bringing down the house as I took bites of my melt. Four months ago I learned how to use a steam cleaner on the fly to fix up my secondhand 90’s chair. Bought that chair for 30 bucks. My fingers drummed on my 70 dollar table (chairs included) for at least a month before that. Prior months of excitement were behind me. Last hoorahs were had. Stages walked. Hearts won. It was all capped by striding beneath Eiffel’s greatest gem. By watching smoke billow from shops in the canal city. By standing where Caesar himself once stood. Excitement lay ahead too, but instead of Caesar it is Cash and instead of a monument named for Eiffel it is a monument named for…well… Batman. I was in the middle, dormant, waiting for the next series of moments.
We ate our cheesy mac and watched as tables spoke between themselves and migrated between the floors. Many knew the band, who were still thumping away at their bass drum upstairs. The natives, I thought. Surely these are the ones who are the city. Cultured personality exuded from the staircase. The entire place wreaked of the hip and the now.
Sitting in a Woodmont traffic jam, I was still recovering. The apartment was neatly aligned, vision intact. The marshals were yet to arrest my neighbor, my 2000 Jeep Cherokee had yet to take its break from purring like a hippopotamus. Wide eyed I had combed the city for days, run unshackled through so-so hoods excusing the 90’s temperature, knowing home would have added ten more degrees. Lost constantly, living out new starts with the same honey, taking in all the moments. I drove through turkey herds and watched a fox scurry, stared back at bucks on a rainy day in steamy woods, the new home to my exploring legs. I took in everything, contemplated it all as I spent my Woodmont hour.
We bid farewell to our lanky, pierced waitress and walked a block to my hippo. Old houses mixed with new, on all sides, we commented on as we meandered our way through the East side. The home of the hip isn’t so hipstery if one pays attention to the houses. Big and small, some colorful, some not. Cute. But normal. People, not ideas of them, abide there. If Mad Donna’s is where people come to be as they feel they are supposed to be, her surroundings are what they really are. Like the throngs of Broadway tourists, the east hipsters go home. They go back to being people.
Just people. When I packed the Penske and pulled away I thought I was done with them. A land of personalities awaited and I was to be one of their ranks. And personalities did await. New faces, new ways of doing things. Hipsters in the masks they like to wear and tourists with their backpacks full of maps and guitar keychains. These are the people I knew I was bound to meet and my polo-wearing, college graduate self was quite excited. They were the reasons I wanted so badly to explore and to see.
The regulars at Donna’s. The flocks of squawking bachelorettes at Tootsie’s. The weekend warriors in the mornings at Rose Park. The white collars stuck in traffic on Woodmont. The billionaires with city views from the top of Batman. They still go home. So does the salesman who hooked us up with our Penske. And the Home Depot worker who showed me which buttons to press on my steam cleaner. So do the Africans peddling selfie sticks at the Eiffel Tower. So do the Iraqis and the Syrians who were with us on the train in Germany. They may not have had a home to go to, but they were looking for one.
My apartment is no longer pristine, with the rise of grad school commitment has come the degradation of living space; I can’t even remember how to do the dishes. The temperature has fallen but so have my exploratory running escapades slacked. I spend that time at the top of Massey watching mist cover the skyline rather than feeling it for myself. I don’t put on my mask and party at Donna’s, either. I have evolved from an observer to a participant, not at Broadway ragers or Kenny Chesney concerts, but simply in the space I occupy. The more I see, the more hipsters, tourists, domestic salesman, and foreign workers I meet, the more I know we are all alike in the end. The differences are worth seeing. The uniqueness is worth the experience. More than worth alone, it is necessary and fun to see the masks. The more masks you see the more you see beyond them.
little plane little plane 