I came to in a bit of a stupor, arriving at the ticket booth for the ferry that would take me across Lake Erie, startled awake by a vaguely gelatinous-looking man.
“Are you folks staying for a day or for the weekend?”
“The weekend.”
He glanced into the van.
“Ah! You must be musicians?”
“Oh, yes.”
One look at me, and a grin stretched across his face.
“They’re gonna eat you alive, young man.”
Bleary-eyed, I grabbed the money from our driver and passed it through the window. In return the man handed me our tickets in a crumpled bundle. Indeed, they would eat me alive that weekend, but I didn’t know it then. I had just turned nineteen and was fulfilling what had been, up to that point, a lifelong fantasy: hitting the road with a band to play music in a strange place.
Fantasy was now becoming stark reality as we hauled our creaking land-yacht of a van onto the ferry, a hulking, rusted monolith filled with diesel fumes and cellulite. To these people, two in the afternoon may as well have been two in the morning, and the din of inebriation reverberated through the vessel as we launched toward the island that would become my home for the next three days.
Our boat chugged along and the island inched ever closer. Upon arrival, the boat’s massive ramp descended slowly. Beyond it lay the center of the island. You see, that was where the bars were. The promised land.
A funny thing happens when you arrive on the island. You’re unloaded from the ferry like cattle, and then the great migration begins. We had our van, but the primary means of transportation for most island-goers is the golf cart. This inevitably leads to the sight of six or seven vacationers crammed into a cart built for four; the poor thing spits and sputters its way down the cramped roads at about five miles an hour while its occupants erupt in great, rumbling guffaws.
Driving behind them becomes a kind of game, wherein you weave around one overloaded cart after another in great arcs across the road, trying not to clip a wheel and send the bachelor party careening into a ditch in a fiery heap. Even if you did, it’s unlikely that most people would stop to notice.
When you reach Delaware Avenue, your night is neatly arranged in a straight line ahead of you. Bars stretch down the street in both directions. Sandwiched between The Beer Barrel and The Roundhouse was our destination: Frosty’s. Compared to the other bars on the island, Frosty’s was almost quaint. It wasn’t trying to be anything other than a bar. It had no gimmicks or grandiosity. For this reason alone, it was my favorite.
My first impression of Frosty’s was marked by a sign that hung above the small platform that acted as our stage:
“No indecent exposure”
We were slated to play for four hours under that sign, eight to midnight. When we started, the bar was nearly empty, peanut shells littered the floor from previous travelers, and the poor girl with the broom had to sweep up after them, big clouds of dust following in her wake from the cracked wooden floor.
But not long into our first set, I began to see the evening crowd through the enormous window behind us: forty-somethings, freshly awakened from their hangovers and out again for tonight’s exploits. Soon, people began to pour in, steady at first, then packing the bar from wall to wall. With the shift in the crowd came a shift in the setlist: ‘60’s and ‘70’s rock standards played to nobody gave way to country and alt-rock. Four requests for Four Non-Blondes, then a playthrough of “Mr. Brightside” to get the people moving.
In time, I could see sweat dripping off the walls. Beer spilled on the floor. Hawaiian shirts, beer guts. As the set drew on, the crowd surged back and forth like an ocean, and pretty soon I began to think that the ticket prophet might have been right. These people were falling over each other, and I thought they might soon begin to climb atop one another like a giant wave and swallow us whole.
One man found a tambourine and began to dance a kind of waltz around the floor, shaking it in people’s faces. One woman tried to jump onstage with us but was pushed away by our singer. She disappeared into the great expanse of the crowd, and I never saw her again. Our thin platform stage became a life raft, rocked back and forth by the stomping and rumbling of the patrons. Our set reached a fever pitch; “Fat-Bottomed Girls” into “Shine.” It was beautiful.
And then it was over.
Four hours in what felt like four minutes. No breaks. I took my bass off and felt a shooting pain down my back, one of the many perks of playing a ten-pound Fender. In those four hours, I had learned more about playing music than I had in years.
The comedown after a great gig is always a bit surreal. Being underage meant I was also the only sober one in the room, and possibly on the island itself. Strangers began to approach me. Not only was I the only sober one, I was also the youngest.
A man with dreadlocks and a wide, knowing smile had materialized in front of me.
“You’re a Taurus, aren’t you?”
I am not a Taurus. I’m a Pisces. But, for reasons known only to my younger self, I decided to help him along.
“My god,” I said. “How did you know?”
He nodded, clearly this sort of thing happened to him all the time.
“I’m an empath. I can read people. I go off their vibes.”
“No way.”
“It’s true, man. And your name is?”
He stuck out a hand. I shook it
“Nick.”
“Rick! Boy, you can really play. I’m eternally grateful to have met you here tonight; until we meet again.”
And then he was gone, swallowed up by the crowd that had produced him.
Not long after my talk with the guru, the band and I decided we should turn in for the night. Frosty’s had very kindly offered us a stay at the Put-In-Bay Hilton: a subterranean dormitory, complete with a couple of couches and water stains from the previous month’s flood, that would serve as our digs for the weekend. I didn’t care. Any vaguely-bed shaped object would do.
Exhaustion set in as soon as I was horizontal. I didn’t have the energy to make sense of the night, but I remember thinking that this was, technically, the dream. I had spent hours in my room practicing to nobody in particular and somehow, it had led to this: underground, sore, half-deaf, and paid. Maybe that was enough.
Nick Axene is a writer and musician from Columbus, Ohio. He’s twenty-two and is trying his best.
(ed’s note: Nick, our newest correspondent, works at Now Spinning Records; a cool little shop in Westerville, OH, that everybody should check out.)