So Here I Go Again, On My Own
"Walking down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. And I've made up my mind, I've wasted enough time..." or something. Those are lyrics from a once popular White Snake song, "Here I Go Again," which was my mantra and personal moto for many years. Perhaps it still continues to be. It's a nice rationalization, or musical verbalization, of that alone feeling I often get.
At one point the song was also my favorite ballad to request at the Swan's Tuesday Karioke Night. The Swan was an "older persons" bar over on West 15th street that served food during the day and catered to old, alcoholic regulars at night. The owner would often be stumbling around, drunkenly ranting about the bar's new wall paper and his wife's inability (or unwillingness) to leave their apartment upstairs. He was drunk and old enough to allow people to smoke cigarettes inside the bar, despite the illegality of it, and this is what initially attracted my friends and I there. Then we found out that Tuesday's were Karioke night and we became once-a-week regulars.
My boyfriend at the time, an aspiring singer and musician, would usually get up sing some Sublime song:
"Early in the morning, rising to my feet, light me up that cigarette and I got shoes on my feet." He sung it with such passion, as if to prove his validity as a singer to a bar full of no-one-listening-except-me. Even though his seriousness peeved me, I would always congratulate him with a kiss and a few words of praise. Personally, I was, and still am, too bashful to sing in front of an "audience" without being 3+ drinks deep, so I would often pass the responsibility onto an Asian bartender with a good voice. This bartender enjoyed Karioke, sung whenever customers weren't, and would sing my favorite White Snake ballad when I requested him to. He once complained that it was a difficult song to sing, but despite this he always sung it amazingly. In my head I would sing along and secretly criticize myself for relating to an 80's hair-metal song so intensely.
Sometimes, if had surpased my 3+ drink threshold, I would get up and sing Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," but that was on rare occassions. I remember believing that my boyfriend was embarrassed of my bad voice, and while feeling slightly discouraged by this insecurity, I would sing in defiance to it, wanting to prove to him that Karioke was basically invented for drunken fools with bad voices, and not only aspiring singers.
Alas, much has changed since those days. That was in highschool, and during the first two years of college. We stopped going to the Swan when Tuesdays were converted from Karioke-Night to Tranny's-Fraternize-with-Sexually-Deviant-Old-Men-Night. My friends and I discovered this the hard way, by walking into the bar and being glared at by a community of people we clearly did not belong to, and feeling extremely out of place for around 30 seconds before leaving and saying to eachother, "What the fuck was that?" But we all knew what it was: it was the end of our Tuesday tradition.
Whether the Swan still exists or not, I don't know. Last I heard it was going out of business. Perhaps the Tranny-Night was a last ditch effort to attract a new and more lucrative crowd. Who knows.
I do know that I ran into the Asian bartender approximately a year after the Tuesday tradition had ended. I was out one night, at some "hipster" bar like Sweet & Vicious, and spotted him in the back of the room. I ran over to him excitedly (and certainly over my 3+ drink threshold of bashfulness) and asked him if he remembered me, the girl who always asked him to sing Whitesnake at the Swan. He looked at me, nodded, and turned away. I don't know if the nod was meant to communicate "Yes I remember you," or "Whatever you just said, I don't really care," or "Don't mention my Karioke fetish in front of my friends." But I took the rejection quietly and slumped away, thinking of how odd it is, the different resonances that the same moments have, shared amongst the same people. He was just a man, singing on the job. And I was just a girl, looking for answers in a ridiculous song.
At one point the song was also my favorite ballad to request at the Swan's Tuesday Karioke Night. The Swan was an "older persons" bar over on West 15th street that served food during the day and catered to old, alcoholic regulars at night. The owner would often be stumbling around, drunkenly ranting about the bar's new wall paper and his wife's inability (or unwillingness) to leave their apartment upstairs. He was drunk and old enough to allow people to smoke cigarettes inside the bar, despite the illegality of it, and this is what initially attracted my friends and I there. Then we found out that Tuesday's were Karioke night and we became once-a-week regulars.
My boyfriend at the time, an aspiring singer and musician, would usually get up sing some Sublime song:
"Early in the morning, rising to my feet, light me up that cigarette and I got shoes on my feet." He sung it with such passion, as if to prove his validity as a singer to a bar full of no-one-listening-except-me. Even though his seriousness peeved me, I would always congratulate him with a kiss and a few words of praise. Personally, I was, and still am, too bashful to sing in front of an "audience" without being 3+ drinks deep, so I would often pass the responsibility onto an Asian bartender with a good voice. This bartender enjoyed Karioke, sung whenever customers weren't, and would sing my favorite White Snake ballad when I requested him to. He once complained that it was a difficult song to sing, but despite this he always sung it amazingly. In my head I would sing along and secretly criticize myself for relating to an 80's hair-metal song so intensely.
Sometimes, if had surpased my 3+ drink threshold, I would get up and sing Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," but that was on rare occassions. I remember believing that my boyfriend was embarrassed of my bad voice, and while feeling slightly discouraged by this insecurity, I would sing in defiance to it, wanting to prove to him that Karioke was basically invented for drunken fools with bad voices, and not only aspiring singers.
Alas, much has changed since those days. That was in highschool, and during the first two years of college. We stopped going to the Swan when Tuesdays were converted from Karioke-Night to Tranny's-Fraternize-with-Sexually-Deviant-Old-Men-Night. My friends and I discovered this the hard way, by walking into the bar and being glared at by a community of people we clearly did not belong to, and feeling extremely out of place for around 30 seconds before leaving and saying to eachother, "What the fuck was that?" But we all knew what it was: it was the end of our Tuesday tradition.
Whether the Swan still exists or not, I don't know. Last I heard it was going out of business. Perhaps the Tranny-Night was a last ditch effort to attract a new and more lucrative crowd. Who knows.
I do know that I ran into the Asian bartender approximately a year after the Tuesday tradition had ended. I was out one night, at some "hipster" bar like Sweet & Vicious, and spotted him in the back of the room. I ran over to him excitedly (and certainly over my 3+ drink threshold of bashfulness) and asked him if he remembered me, the girl who always asked him to sing Whitesnake at the Swan. He looked at me, nodded, and turned away. I don't know if the nod was meant to communicate "Yes I remember you," or "Whatever you just said, I don't really care," or "Don't mention my Karioke fetish in front of my friends." But I took the rejection quietly and slumped away, thinking of how odd it is, the different resonances that the same moments have, shared amongst the same people. He was just a man, singing on the job. And I was just a girl, looking for answers in a ridiculous song.
posted by Sophia at 1:57 PM
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