-Tristan Tomaselli is a not too old but not too young regular of Rochester’s counterculture nightlife. Former graphic designer turned aspiring English major, Tristan will be commenting on experiences and events in the local fringe scene with an emphasis on understanding the collective story of its occupants.

Plan-B Monday

It’s a plan-b kind of night. I start off choosing the BugJar at random. I was expecting one thing when I got there but found another. Angst ridden live music was billowing out onto Monroe Ave, my companion and I could hear it from the car. It wasn’t our thing. We looked at each other and just knew it. Knew that we had no idea where to go from here. So we stopped and smoked and watched.

We watched a minivan pull up with about five or six under age kids. Looking less and less like our scene. The driver got out, took off his shoes and with more care than I give myself shaving he put on a pair of retro 80’s checkerboard kicks. His green bandanna was pressing back a tuft of high school length hair, matching scarf, matching jersey sleeves. I looked at my companion, and we left. We opted for Lux, cheaper drinks if you’re willing to swill rotgut and PBRs. The bonus is no cover and no unders. It’s plan-b.

Sitting in the back of the bar I quietly scanned the crowd. I’m just back out on the scene. Back and fresh from three years of working nights. Back from four years of a committed relationship. Fresh with confusion and woe and adrenaline. I have no choice, really, but to take it all as it comes to me. The liquor, the people, girls and the games we play without speaking words, just by standing at opposite ends of a murky room that smells of hops and well whiskey.

This night is plan–b, as is my life has become plan-b, as have many other people’s lives and directions. Me? I’m the late bloomer literati, I’m the failed family man, the aging post-punk trainwreck who’s back at 33 to play twentysomthing games in a fringe culture scene who’s cohesiveness is waning, limping along on dreams and freedom and fumes. A culture struggling to grasp on to it’s own plan-b. I’ll follow the thread where it goes and where I can, and tell not so much about what’s going on but what we do and why.

Duran Duran began to play Rio on the jukebox, you can get away from minors but you can’t escape the 80’s. Oh well, I leaned back tied another one on while the world spun by. Maybe I’ll pick up a story or two about whom and what we, the wayward night people, are doing.

“What to come over and smoke a gravity bong?” a passing friend said.
“Only if we do it in the bathtub in our boxers like high school kids with the house for the weekend.” I responded
And for some reason my friend’s response to that was, “It’s like my mind is that tree and you’re those little elves.”
Yeah, sure, I…um…walked away, something I do a lot lately. But I did it with a smile.

I miss a lot of things that were in my life before plan-b, but when I was there I missed this adolescent thrill of having nothing to loose. Now that I’m here? Kids, the grass is not greener. It’s brown, smells like last night’s beer, looks in the mirror and asks if he’s too old for this. But I’m here and the next round is on me.

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