Sweating and proud, I managed to track down a sink in the one single room backstage with Mable in her case and begging to be played more. I filled the first glass I could find, while people I ain’t never seen before in my life looked on aimlessly, some not wearing any clothes. Two girls were giggling in the corner uncontrollably, guess they don’t handle their shit too well. “Want my advice,” I said, “drink this.”, I pointed at my murky water glass and stepped out. There was a flight of stairs that climbed upwards from behind the second curtain. I walked up overlooking the third act, the last band before Ida’s Pearls and friends hit. There was a tiny, rickety catwalk that extended a little over halfway up; it bled out to the light rig and trusses, which at the time was managing itself somehow, and out to the stage/audience curtain. I kept climbing to a door marked “SL – 7th St. East”. I pushed it open and was bathed in street and moon light, cleansing me pure. No longer buried under the city, flipping dimes and pounding back green juice in an underground Jazz club. A taxi rolled by with its fins lit, prowling for prey. The door was embedded into the side of a building which towered over the river-bed, mostly abandoned from the looks of it. Then again, I suppose people die and come here every single day… Hour… Second. Need all the space we can muster. The pavement underfoot was vibrating slightly from the low-end of the club, and the sewer grates on my side of the street were emitting dirty yellow light chains from below. Negative space, columns of light. I lit a smoke and breathed deep. They say these things kill ya, but what if you’re already dead?
-Sonny
