Part I
I just came from a reception that followed a performance at the Red Eye Theatre, here in Minneapolis. There were three highlight works: two of which made me laugh out loud(very rare for me in a space like this one, where I barely get through some performances by fantasizing about leaping over the patrons in front of me and maniacally bolting for the door screaming, “Free! I’m Free!!! Hahahahahahahahaha!”), and one beautiful, creepy, and nostalgic piece created and performed by fellow dancer and friend, Leslie Oneil.
Anyway, back to the post show performance.
They had one of the best spreads I have ever had at a reception like this! Cheese and meat, of course, with little slices of sour dough. But also little mini-chocolate covered cakes and wonderful cream-filled puffs that exploded in your mouth like little, chilled spore sacs. There were pickled things and steamed things and fermented things. Three choices of wine! There was also beer.
I had a Summit Pale Ale for the first time and it wasn’t bad. I have found an affinity for Rolling Rock and for a few others, one being this excellent Oatmeal Stout that has a dark chocolate aftertaste brewed at the Town Hall Brewery, but Summit had a new and interesting flavor that I could appreciate. Drinking beer is a fairly new thing for me. I’ve only been able to find it amiable in the last year or so. The buzz from it is nice, but the largest benefit, I’ve found, is how it creates social bonds. People you hardly know, before the beer even has a chance to chemically affect them, open their conversation to you like a twist off cap. It’s amazing to me. It’s totally cultural and beautiful. Maybe it’s the psychology of having somewhere to put your hands that puts people at ease, but it can’t only be that because for it to work both parties need something in front of them. And it’s primarily beer that has this queer bonding affect. You know, one of the guys. Old tavern chums. Barley brothers. You have history with someone when you share an ale.
That was happening tonight. A friend of mine at the show brought her boyfriend, whom I know only slightly. He’s from Brazil and his English is spotty, but we had beer. We had beer! So when his girlfriend left to talk with the starving artists, we had beer! Hey friend*clink*! We relaxed because we had little brown bottles filled with bitter liquid. I am so bad at small talk that I generally feel an awkward distance between my eyes and their eyes. But with a bottled brew I feel partly understood and partly understanding. And I am the king of nursing, so a beer can easily last me an hour, which can translate into working the house! Wine is similar, but with it comes also the pressure of intelligent conversation and pompousness. Not with beer! With beer, burping becomes part of the conversation!
So, we talked and maybe understood every other word the other said, but we felt at ease. We felt like brothers. We just came back from the hunt, the lake, the pooper, and we are trading stories of the one that got away!
Part II
So, I was walking home from the theatre(oh, a thing of beauty to live in the city) and saw a couple of guys that seemed a little freaked out. One of them, a guy I always see on Fridays cooking ribs out back, also lived next door to me. They were peering into his apartment complex when the guy I didn’t know saw me and said, “Hey, this dude looks like he could help us out.” I recognized my neighbor and walked up to them. They proceeded to tell me there was a flying rodent, a bat, no less, stuck in the hallway. Sure enough, I look in and I see a fluttering black shadow patrolling the first floor.
The guy I knew propped open the doors to leave a way for the bat to get out. This scared off his friend and my neighbor quickly retreated as well. I suddenly had a flashback of John Candy in The Great Outdoors as I snuck into the hallway. I had lost track of the bat and was half expecting it to dive down and cling to the back of my shirt while while Dan Akroyd pummels me with a tennis racket.
The hallway was lit with incandescent light at either ends, so when I saw the black, furry mammal coming at me it’s silhouette was huge and it’s flight pattern was totally unpredictable. I thought to myself, “What the heck did I think I was going to do when I got near it. I sure as heck was not going to catch it with my bare hands.” So I found the most logical form of defense/net I could find: a hallway rug. A dirty, light blue one, to be exact. So I made a swirling fan out of it thinking I could round the bat up, like a border collie, and force it out the door. I mean, they do sense sonically right? And if I spin the rug fast enough his little sound waves will bounce back at him and he’ll figure he’s about to hit a wall and turn back, right? Well, unfortunately he didn’t hear my wall and he didn’t turn back, so I ended up whipping him to the floor. No worries, he was all right. I know this because as I went to pick him up he took to the air and clipped right past my head, heading back the wrong way down the hallway.
By this time a shirtless Latino joined me in the hall and tried to swipe the bat down as it passed him. He missed and quizzically looked at me as if to say, “What was that? That wasn’t a bird!” He kindly let me take care of it as he pointed to the window screen the bat was grappled to. As I inched toward it I started wondering if bats know when someone is sneaking up on them. Although, he did seem pretty certain, nudged against the corner of the window frame, that he was invisible. He didn’t even flinch when I placed the rug over him. He just clung to it like baby blanket.
It was so tiny. Those wings made it look like Batman himself was swooping through corridor. I showed it to the Mexican guy as I passed him, his eyes widened, but then he followed me down the hallway as if he were my Sancho Panza. I took the bat outside and the two men hollered from across the street, “You got it? Awww, das right? You it, man. You it!” I set the bat on some mulch beside the building and it got right up and danced down First Ave.
Coming back into the building, I slipped the rug back in front of the door from which I confiscated it. The Mexican guy triumphantly came walking towards me, smiling, about ready to shake my hand. And as he moseyed past me he seemed so happy that I almost invited him over for a beer…
…but I didnt. He didnt have a shirt on. And I only had milk.