It all started with the picture on the left.
No, 'lemme 'splain ...
All I was doing was coming home from helping a friend out in the early part of the evening. Sometimes a crisis or issue arises and you just get up and go.
So, with all that settled and a plate of cookies in my pocket - courtesy of a friend's two year old - and my car parked in the garage I was headed home to continue the seeming-endless job of unpacking and editing my poor life.
This took my by Geno's - my favorite brick and beer rock-and-roll bar. Big Bob the Bouncer was smoking by a sandwich board - "Love On the Run - A Valentine's Burlesque".
There is a lively - if rather basic - scene of "burlesque nouveaux" here in Little Paris By Casco Bay. I've been to some small productions held in various garages and on various street corners around the town - the Gothic sideshow and Excuse-Me Sir-cus are also attached - if not by the hip, then with lashings of imagination.
I admit it - I like looking at women who enjoy being naked - and, frankly, at anyone, male or female, who flat out knows that everyone is having a good time.
If someone does not like being naked it shows - pardon the expression.
Big Bob is persuasive - that's probably why he went into bouncing in the first place.
I bounced on in - and was aghast at how large the crowd was already. More importantly, no seats were free at the bar. Fortunately I found a free wooden barstool under the jukebox (the "iMusic" box, god help us...) and pulled it up.
The show was obnoxious and loud. Mostly the plot - with fewer threads than most of the girl's costumes - concerned two madams on the run from the law. This was conveyed through vignettes, mostly based on country (no pun intended - Shakespearean or otherwise) songs that served as motivations for the girls to get their kit off.
It was in the middle of all this madness that I was accosted by an old friend - BG - a dancer who had taught with me back in the early days in Cumberland. She's an accomplished modern dancer and a whiz with special-needs kids. She also helped glue-gun roses to one of the costumes and I know she did a great job doing it because those roses stayed on the costume when it hit the floor of the stage.
And it hit damned hard, too.
So it went. Since her friend was dancing in the "finale" - which was a thinly veiled (get it?) rip-off (get it?) of the cornfield (really get it?) joke-fest from the old "Hee Haw" show we had to stay for the evening.
I admit that what I could see from my vantage point by the bar - and behind the crowd - was hard to make out, except for one song - to the tune of "Dueling Banjos" - that started right ON the bar - which is when I took the pic above.
It made for a great, if tiring, evening and I'm actually glad I stayed to watch.
It was also fun to catch up with BG - she's a talkative, likeable person in a very difficult professional educational field. When the show was done I offered to walk her back across the entire West End to her flat as it was after 1:15 in the morning and not only was it the gentlemanly thing to do it was fun to see what that end of town was like so late in the evening.
Once BG was safely indoors I could turn my full attention to the incredible sound of the West End late in the night - after 1:30. It's not quiet, not in the least. As your hearing attunes you can hear motors going by on the freeway that borders Deering's Oaks. The longer you listen the more your ears adjust, the way eyes adjust to the dark.
Motors become cars and trucks, then station wagons, sports cars, 18-wheelers and bread trucks. Amazing.
I crossed the playground of the school where my friend W. teaches - swings gently, if disturbingly, twisted in the slight breeze. A tree caught the light behind the iron fence.
Lights plainly showing a bulkhead lying slightly ajar. Brightly lit but still a reminder of how late, how alone you are - anything - ANYthing could come out of that crooked bulkhead door.
AnyTHING.
It can reliably be said that I always see things this way - it's the effect of having read so much H.P, Lovecraft as an adolescent.
The temperature was bearable. Keeping at a brisk pace helped, I wrapped my pashmina tighter about me, pulled my hat down closer over my overworked head.
At the end of one stretch was a Cumberland Farms store, gas tanks pumping away, people inside buying large cases of beer in advance of the bar shut-down coming in a very few minutes - and all the stores would stop selling as well too.
Finally I turned the corner at the Cumby's and there was Longfellow Square, glowing bright orange and red in the distance.
I think they're starting to take the lights down now. The artist is of the opinion that such displays should be both public and temporary - we enjoy them for a season and then they go away.
Other art, other installations take their place, but this - this is a One Time Only deal, something that only exists for the one who are lucky enough to see it.
And so it went last night.
I feel lucky to have run into a Scotch, a stage full of (eventually) naked ladies, an old friend, good conversation, zany theatrics, naked ladies (did I already mention them) and all topped of with a walk both sinister and lovely.
I say "sinister" though there really was no more risk that we ever take when walking at such a time and in such place. But also sinister because you could imagine - or even actually feel - the age of the city around you, age that had nothing to do with the bricks, mortar and Mansard roofs of the houses.
No, there was a magic out that night. What it was I think I'll go mad over, if I ever totally see it.
It was all very lovely and very strange at the same time
The lights in Longfellow Square are part of it. I know the were not part of the experience of the City but there it is, called in to being as if by single sorcery, one person setting the trees alight to entertain the statue of Mr. Longfellow.
I suspect the statue gets up to talk at some times.
I wish I could be there to see. I cannot seem to stop the train, no matter how fast I try.
Maybe if I don't think about it - or go at it sideways - I might get it across.
We shall see.
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