The last time I walked out of the Urban Lounge, I hopped on my bicycle and had no idea it would be two years before I would return.
In this short amount of time I’ve moved to and from Antarctica and in and out of Salt Lake City. More importantly though, I’ve grown two years older, and I’m beginning to see the top of a hill that soon I will be over.
Getting older means getting things like orthopedic insoles in my shoes to correct what one doctor called “a funny walk.” Getting a luxury sedan instead of a muscle car. And, getting a job with benefits.
There’s a big difference between having a friend “with benefits” and having a job with benefits. When you have a friend with benefits, you get screwed without any expectations or demands. When you have a job with benefits you also get screwed, but you’re expected to show up for work and it’s demanded that you stay in your cubicle. After working in my last cubicle job for three months, I began to realize it was no coincidence the walls of a cubicle are padded: I was going crazy.
Then my boss sent an e-mail that read, “We may have a new investor in the USA, and potentially a new competitor. ... Not a dull momentum!” I realized the “momentum” may not be dull, but the minutes sure seemed to drag, so I put in my two-weeks’ notice.
With only 14 days to take advantage of this company’s benefit package, I started making doctor’s appointments with nearly every specialist in town.
When I called to make the all-important prostate appointment, the receptionist asked, “Do you mind having a woman doctor?”
“Mind? Are you kidding? That would be great.” All I could think was “slender fingers.”
“Your appointment is in three days with Dr. Claudette.”
Seventy-two hours—or 4,320 minutes—later, as I sat in the examination room waiting for Dr. Claudette, it seemed like nurses and technicians and even the janitor came to check on me.
Then, a woman who was at the hospital to get her physical to see if she was fit enough to become Miss America, mistakenly came into my room to see how I was doing. It took a moment to realize this beauty, this goddess of a person wasn’t there to get a physical—this was Dr. Claudette.
There was no need to pull out my pocket caliper to check the diameter of her fingers. She was like a small porcelain doll and she quickly put me at ease. I even forgot she was my doctor.
She thumped on my knee and checked my racing heart. I told her I was going to see the band Interpol later that night. The music I listened to was on her iPod. The books I read were on her shelf.
This was not like meeting a doctor; this was like meeting a new friend at the bar.
We’d covered music and literature, so I figured the next questions might be about restaurants or the different arts we both enjoyed. Instead, she said, “There’s no easy way to say this, but you need to drop your pants and face the wall.”
Later that night, after seeing Interpol at the alcohol-free setting of Kingsbury Hall, I needed a drink, so I pointed my bike downhill and walked back through the doors of the Urban Lounge.
I told Mike, the bartender, that I really liked the new booths lining the walls of this open and spacious bar. He said they got those “new” booths months ago.
It had been a while.
The bands at the Urban Lounge were called Wooden Wand and Vanishing Voice. Maybe it was because the Jack Daniels had finally erased the sound of a latex glove snapping over little fingers, but seeing this band on a whim and a bicycle in the intimate surroundings of the Urban Lounge was better than the night I had planned with Interpol.
I know it’s OK to get older. I just need to get to the Urban Lounge more often than once every two years. Consider it doctor’s orders.