On Going Out in Lawrence, Kansas

I’ll try my luck at the Taproom.

I pay the $3 cover and go in. The bartender knows my name. He’s been working there so long the place would seem empty without him. I order a pint of the Kansas City-made Boulevard Wheat and go downstairs to dance. A bachelorette party comes in. Strange. Usually they pass by and go next door to the Sandbar. Maybe they want to dance tonight. I know I do. The DJ knows his stuff. The downstairs of this dive bar is now a dancefloor.

Everyone’s dancing. The bachelorette party. The townies who have lived in Lawrence their entire lives and probably always will. The students from the University of Kansas out on the weekend getting their kicks. The drunk guy who is entirely oblivious to anyone else on the dancefloor flailing his arms and legs wildly to the beat of a song that perhaps only he hears.

I’m not here with anyone. You don’t have to be. After a couple of drinks, you start dancing and forget about everything else for a while anyway. You forget about the people upstairs playing pool. You forget about the people out on the patio smoking cigarettes. You forget about all the people drinking away their sorrows. All the hipsters trying to make the play on some girl they’re momentarily in love with. All the people with lousy jobs and thwarted creative drives. All the pretentious conversations that happen in a college town. Hopes and dreams, stuff that may never happen, fears and regrets and all the bullshit from the daily grind. It’s just you and the music. Just let me dance for a while, that’s all. Leave everything else outside.

The smoking ban. I step outside for a cigarette. Soon, I find myself surrounded by the bachelorettes. All of them are drinking mixed drinks through straws shaped like penises. All of them are smoking except for one. She says, “Smoking is a disgusting habit.” I can’t help but interject, “You’re saying this as you’re drinking through a penis straw?”

I’m made an honorary member of the bachelorette party. We all go back inside and dance.

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