Smells Like Thirty-Something

Sitting in front of us on the bus is a overweight young woman in a black hoodie and yoga pants. Perched between her legs and between a book is an iPod playing the Game of Thrones. She is both watching and texting on her large smart phone at the same time. My fiancee Jane is beside me and our down jackets still glisten from the cold rain. Lights of downtown traffic blur in the fogged windows and I quickly loose track of where we are. The young woman swats the yellow stop cord, gathers her stuff with one earphone dangling, pushes the door open and stomps into a puddle.

We get off at the industrial park. As we dash down a dimly lit road, I wonder if Google Maps has played some horrible prank on us again. “No,” Jane says, “this is it”.

Two tweens are sitting at a high top table in the entranceway. One remains unmoved holding her head with her hand when we approach, “five-bucks,” the other one says.

It is a “Tribute to Grunge” night and some thick Canadian boys, the band, have assembled wearing plaid. They are talking among the crowd: friends and family by the looks of it.

I’m relieved to avoid this scene when Jane wants to get a drink at the bar in the adjacent room. No one is in here, except for a middle-aged couple sitting in silence between a pitcher of beer, and nothing is on the high, shiny, cement walls, except for a few pieces of random sports memorabilia. A young woman with a slim figure and long curly black hair, gets our drinks: a can of IPA beer and red wine served in a plastic cub. “Do you have anything other than popcorn and nachos?” Jane asks her.

Jane chats with a friendly stalky man, the bassist and I stand on the perimeter of the conversation. I learn that he works for the government and in one of the same tall grey buildings I do.

At last the boys take the stage and I notice they are all wearing t-shirts of real grunge bands under their open plaid. “There’s really no other place to start,” the lead singer says. He adjusts his glasses and nods along stiffly to the band. His smart watch dangles down his wrist as he reaches for the microphone and sings, “come as you are,” with a well practised strain. The public servant circles his head rhythmically with his eyes closed, just like the real thing. I assure myself, even though I have never so much as even attempted to learn an instrument, that if I were in a band, I would never reduce myself to cover songs.

“I always saw myself as the lead singer,” I said to Jane. “You?” she laughed, “You’re more of a roady.”

There is a child lying down on a bench in the hallway, her winter boots dangle over the armrest as she stares into an iPad sketching a picture on a notebook. I pass by her, heading downstairs to the washroom when the smell of ammonia hits me. The stench is even more powerful at the urinal and I cover my nose with my shirt. The room is so bright it wobbles me and I remember then that Jane and I split a weed candy before we left.

More middle-class millennials arrive and I watch as two women herd a small bearded man to a table and a bald guy in a retro NASA shirt gets up to film the band on an iPad. Standing out is a veteran in formal military wear sitting by himself.

In the middle of Interstate Love Song,  the child appears beside the stage clutching a large McDonald’s soda with a well chewed-straw and just stands there for sometime. Even more people arrive, the veteran is up from his seat air-guitaring and Jane returns from the bar with Nachos in a thin black plastic tray. But just as they have us, the boys call an intermission for “refuelling.”

The bassist sits at our table again with a beer and we all pay him complements. But by the second act, I want to change the station, scroll through my phone, or storm into a teenager’s room and tell him to get over it.

Jane has no objections about leaving and in minutes our Uber driver VJ arrives in a new black Toyota Corolla. I look out to the dark void of the industrial park, still except for the rain cutting through the streetlights. In the back seat, we talk about the possibility of stopping for pizza. VJ drives in silence and only nods when I ask him if it's been a busy night. 

Instead of pizza, Jane melts vegan cheese over toasted gluten-free bread and we eat it over glass plates in bed. Still chewing, she raises a slice, “Black hole sun, won’t cha come, won’t cha come….”