The midnight hour

December 28, 1980

Each day begins the same with the rising of the sun, a rush of wind through the alley, the call of birds from trees I cannot immediately see looking out from my window.

Outside, the white sky promises to wash away the stains of the world with its promise of snow.

Cars still struggle from the remnants of previous storms, wheels whirling over patches of ice the plow could not scrap off the asphalt, sliding back a foot for every two foot forward.

Today is Pauly’s birthday, and he said last night he feels a lot like how the day today feels: old and gray.

He sat at the bar holding a glass of orange juice and an expression of anguish over losing the love of his life. Jane left for a new life in Philadelphia, leaving Pauly to repeat the old routines here, making none of the progress he expected to make back when we all still saw our future as bright.

“I’ve been in this place all of my life,” he said, glancing over at the women seated at the other end of the bar, women who smile at him because they know he’s with the band, but he turns away.

None of them are for him, nor is the rock and roll life that they are attracted to. He’s a veteran of that scene already.

“I feel like a rag that has been used over and over,” he said. “There’s nothing left of me but thread. I’ve got to do something. I got to get out of this world.”

Garrick, sitting on the stool on the other side of Paul, nodded his head. He was celebrating his birthday, one day ahead of Pauly. He grins, but it’s not a grin that has any mirth, filled with the grim humor of resignation we all feel.

We’ve been coming here or to places like this for nearly a decade, band after band coming to the edge of success but never over it.

Garrick’s eyes said it all, a nice guy afraid of commitment in a scene where every moment is s commitment, if only for one night at a time.

Pauly’s fears other things, the loneliness of old age, and the dread of watching Jane move inch by inch away until she has moved too far away for him tor reach, she still loving him, but not enough to stay.

Love isn’t enough to bridge the separate worlds in which they live, or perhaps universes, her’s expanding, his contracting, she needing to know everything about everything, while he concentrated on a narrow thread of self-interest, needing to know a lot about very little.

Jane’s newfound faith also tears them apart, the chants of her new religion as haunting at the Hari Krishna stuff we used to here constantly in the village so many years ago. She fully believes she can change the world through chant; Pauly says she can’t.

Not that he dispelled the practice entirely. He saw it as some kind of magic with which he can change the physical world, where Jane floated in some spiritual limbo, he has no way to understand.

His was a mind over matter contemplation, she understood even less.

But the conflict started long before the chanting, one or the other finding some reason to burn their bridges, trying desperately later to rebuild them only to burn them down again. But this time, neither seems willing to try, and the miles between here and Philadelphia creates a gap that might not let them try in the future.

Garrick waits for midnight to come for that one second when he and Pauly share the same birthday, his ending, Pauly’s starting as the clock eats away at time one click at a time.

“I’m 32, Al,” Pauly told me as if there was nothing else to say, both of us growing older and grayer, watching our dreams shred like old rags, Pauly finally ordering a real drink in the hopes of catching up with Garrick who by that time was already drunk – two birthday boys too old for birthdays yet too young to die.