The Doorman's Diary 7.28.17

As The Doorman at the jazz club I am seen differently by different people. To some, I am the welcome at the door. Others see me as a pan-handling filter collecting the door charge. And for many I am no different than an animated manikin to be overlooked and ignored.

A couple enter the club while the piano player is deep into his solo during a Dexter Gordon song. The woman whizzes past me as I attempt to greet her and collect the cover charge. I lapse into my best C-3PO and stop her male counterpart and tell him in an overpolite but precise manner that his lady friend is an unauthorized intruder until I receive her cover. With the same respect he shows an ATM, he produces the cash and joins her at the bar where he gives her a full-tongue, monitor-lizard kiss. 

They continue with their backseat-of-daddy's-car-parked-in-a-dark-parkway writhing and slobbering antics as the club continues to fill. Jazz patrons gingerly walk a wide arc around them. I didn't know whether I need to shine my 5-battery Maglite 17-inch police flashlight in their faces and bark "TIME TO MOVE ON" or what... Meanwhile a large man tries to avoid their passion aura and bumps into a small ornate table near me sending a couple of drinks, a candy dish, a candle, and neat pile of cocktail napkins the waitress pulls from when seating guests flying into our reception-area bench seat.

While I'm busy cleaning up the mess, the near-coupling couple slips out of the club leaving unfinished drinks and her red faux-leather handbag on the bar. Clearly, they are in a rush to get to the alley out back or a dark parkway or a sleazy motel room with its coin-fed vibrating bed.