Adventures in Knowing - You Can't Go Home Again

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"You know, the guy without ID should just go home and get it, and catch up with us later." I'm pointing out the obvious because I can't understand why the obvious isn't just happening without my help.

"I know, but that isn't going to happen. We're going to have to go somewhere else, and wherever we go, he's going to get ID'd again, and then we're going to have to leave." Reese appraises the situation with the sort of analytical rigour that those a few drinks ahead of us are currently unable to muster.

Having spent our share of time in bars, we have long since learned that nobody ever gave anybody a refund, however, some members of our team feel differently and they spend the next ten minutes arguing with an increasingly hostile bar staff until finally we are encouraged to leave the premises, freeing us to go and repeat the experience at other locations of jovial beverage vending.

...we are encouraged to leave the premises, freeing us to go and repeat the experience at other locations of jovial beverage vending.

A lively debate in the street follows, surrounding possible options for where to go next. A majority of the contingent selects a very popular nightclub in the heart of downtown. Several of us express concern about driving all the way over to it, knowing that we won't get in. We suggest some more ID-friendly locations but are quickly overruled due to the high cool factor of the inner city club. Resigning ourselves to more unpleasantness, we load into cars and head over.

Upon arriving at The Fox, we are informed that our ID-challenged compatriots have elected to just go home, having faced the fact that they won't be able to get in. This comes a bit too late for those of us who would have just liked to stay put where we were, but it's too late to cry about it, so we endure a mercifully brief wait in line, pay fresh cover charges and coat check fees, and then plunge into another dark, smoky, club.

We dance for awhile. We drink overpriced and overnamed shooters while our shoes stick to the thick syrup that coats the floors. We bump shoulders with the crowd, inhale half a pack of light cigarettes straight out of the air, and endure endless streams of repetitive electronic dance music. We pump money into a pool table that provides no balls in exchange, make a half-hearted attempt at convincing indifferent bouncers that we've been ripped off, and we start to remember why we stopped coming to these places. At some point in the straining evening we migrate to the basement of the bar to see what lies beneath.

In the basement of the bar we find several small tables wrapped in hazy darkness and sagging red light, a pool table skinned with stained, torn felt, and a growing pool of water emanating from the bathroom doors.

I'm intrigued. "What's going on with the water?"

Soon, several early-twenties bar staff are wandering into the bathroom, emerging seconds later, shrieking and wet, while the pool of water expands to encircle the pool table. While the under-equipped bar staff struggle to find a way to turn off the water to the fire sprinklers that someone has managed to activate in the washrooms, other young males wander in, appraise the shivering, spreading pool of dark liquid, comment on how disgusting it is, then wade in to play pool in several inches of water, spilled beer, and assorted other bar-floor liquids. From the dry safety of the far side of the bar we watch with equal growing amusement.