Riverside Revisited - The Last Chapter

That evening in Yaybars went by quickly. A series of fast moving incidents is the only blur I remember. Sitting at a deserted table with one of my sister's friends in Grade 11 and getting along famously and then moving closer to have a look at the problem she was having with her camera, looking up and seeing she had no interest in her zoom lens but looking at me and smiling. No words smokin', we melted into a warm unhurried kiss oblivious to all the passing smartass remarks. When we stopped, we found Mugs sitting at our table with his back to us. He turned around, looking bewildered, focused his eyes on my girl, seemingly not knowing I was even there and blurted out "And I didn't trip over second base! Well, fuck me dead Gertrude, that's just the way the game is played!"

She ran away at that and as I chased her to the womens' can, I knew I wouldn't see here again that night. So I thought to hell with it and decided to get drunk. I was standing at the bar in the backroom when the band started to play. I did my best to ignore them but even from the backroom of Yaybars that was hard to do. As with Yaybar's policy at the time, they were booked for the month and pretty bad.

To distract myself, I took to people-watching. Coates was sitting at a table a few feet away with a couple of rough-trade lookng girls. He seemed in the kind of contented funk I was familiar with - his hands folded in his lap and a smile on his face as his pretended to be interested in their conversation. Six Tequila Sunrises sat before them which I knew that Coates had paid for. They were the fashionable drink that year and Coates liked to impress with his cash on weekends.

At one point, he stopped their conversation mid-sentence by piping up out of nowhere an old song he had picked up somewhere - "Got to get my old tuxedo pressed/Gotta sew a button on my vest/Yeah, tonight I really gotta look my best/Lulu's back in town." He then leaned back with a satisfied smirk and the two girls gave each other frightened glances. But for me, the expression on his face topped with that damned derby made my night and for weeks afterwards, whenever I needed a good laugh, I would replay it in my mind just to cheer me up.

Meanwhile the band was getting progressively more atrocious. And it seemed like the entire football team were encouraging them with every song. When they launched into a rocking version of 'The Hokey-Pokey,' the jocks were muscled off the dance floor by the middleaged bowlers who regularly came to Yaybars after their games because back then the only way you could get alcohol in a bowling alley was if you stuffed a mickey inside your bowling shoe and snuck it in. The sight of them all putting one foot in and then the other and then shaking it all about was too much for me and I had to get out.

I went into the 'Gents' room to throw water on my face to clear my head but it didn't help. My departure was hastened by an overheard remark by two gents standing at the urinals, staring at the wall when one turned to the other and declares, "I don't care which, but I want to get in either a car accident or a fight tonight." The other solemly nodded in agreement.

Passing the dance-floor, the band broke into the inevitable cover of 'Johnny B. Goode,' whipping the entire space into a frenzy of high-school brawn and middleaged paunch. Controlled by mad impulse and forsaken of any rational thought as in 'common sense,' I calmly walked through the dancers, got up on the stage and taking the microphone in hand, yelled out the first thought that came into my head - "Rock and roll, you STUDS!"

The first punch hurt the worst. There were others but I was quickly hustled off the stage and thrown down the front steps onto Riverside Drive.

Two hours later, I found myself outside Bills Confectionary, downing a pop-machine can of Sport Cola. The streets were deserted and I was quite surprised when Coates came stolling down Wyndotte looking about as bad as I did.

"What happened to your hat?" was the first thought that came to me. The brown derby, which I had seen perched on twenty different heads that night was now back on Coates' head, dented in on one side as if someone had sat on it.

"Oh, I ran into a little bit of trouble back in Yaybars. Same time as you, as a matter of fact."

"Heard about that did you?"

"Hard not to Howie. I just came from Riverside Tavern and Mugs is still telling people about it and he was in the john at the time and missed all of it. Whatta stud."

"So what happened to you?"

"I didn't know the lyrics to a song."

"Oh."

It turned out that while I was being hustled out the door, Coates was in the back room oblivious to the commotion and puzzling over the second verse to 'Lulu's Back in Town.' To the great annoyance of the two girls he had been supplying with Tequila Sunrises, he would ask "Now, how's that go again?" And getting no answer, he would run through the song's opening, hope the next part would come to him and when it didn't he'd try again - "Second verse, same as the first."

The girls at his table tried to ignore him but he soon had all the neighbouring tables joining in and before long the second verse was completely forgotten about. That is, until two biker-looking types showed up at the table to reclaim their girlfriends. Coates was sitting with his back to them and didn't notice the girls' annoyed nods of 'go for it' when he came to his grand finish, fingers snapping, head bobbing back and forth and the most smug look you have ever seen as he instinctively spun around and faced the two black-leather clad gents and informed them that "Lulu's back in town."

On the gravel of the back parking lot, amidst the sound of the Detroit River slapping against the stones of shore, the sound of tires hitting the multiple potholes which were Yaybars' idea of a parking lot, the strange mixture coming from the bar's open windows of watered-down badly done Chuck Berry, could also be heard the sound of fists smashing into numb flesh and a soft thud like the silence of a bruise, of brown velour being crushed.

"Well, fuck me dead Mergatroid, I know those lyrics. I could have saved you a lot of trouble."

"Too late for that, Howie. Besides we're now both banned from Yaybars. No more return engagements."

"Good. Better class of people at the Royale Tavern anyway."

"Let's get out of here. I'm beat. How's that song end anyway?"

And so, down the dark streets leading away from the river and towards Schillers Bush and inevitably K-Mart Hill, I and my pal Wes Coates walked from one pool of light from one streetight to the next, like singers on a stage going from one spotlight into the dark and then the next magically appearing shaft of light, all the while singing "Gotta shine my shoes and slick my hair/Gotta find a hat I bought somewhere/Yeah, tonight I'll use a real boutonniere/cuz Lulu's back in town ..."

Not loudly. But also not giving a damn if it woke the whole street up.