There was a song that played on the video music channel a lot that year. I had three low paying jobs that took up my time. One job had me mopping out a few different bars this Irish guy owned. And the last bar was a Tranny bar. It usually had already been cleaned by the bartenders, proud of their space, and protective of it too. They kept it clean. All I had to do was sprinkle some ammonia on the floor and push it around with the wet mop and then sit back pour myself keg beer and watch the tube for an hour. After the last half hour of CHiPs ended I’d switch over to videos. Sometimes the juke would kick on of its own accord, hoping to lure some lonesome drinker over to its side of the darkness.
Most of the hair metal bands had disintegrated by then. And so the videos went back to symbolism, back to storytelling. And this one vid had a split screen, and it functioned as miniature cinema, touching on Hitchcock’s Rope and Faulkner and the loss of youth all in the space of a few minutes. And so there I was, drinking morning beers and fondling memories of college film class until the thing ended. Then I’d hop on my bike and slip into the morning traffic hoping it would switch off my ambition for a little bit longer.
Images by Devri Richmond
Story by Hank Cherry
This is really beautiful.
thanks, I needed that.