Hello? Can anyone hear me? Sound doesn’t travel where I am: the Century Bar and Bites in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta INTL Airport. Fam, the vibes are off. Caught between a semi-used conference space in a Marriott and an abandoned industrial kitchen, this bar is an incredible and terrifying example of Liminal Space.
The only redeeming factor is Lorenzo, the snake ring-wearing bartender who has stolen my heart. When I told him I liked his ring, he beamed and said “ Well, I LOVE snakes,” and I said “ME TOO!” even though I am historically pretty neutral about them. Everyone in this bar/shipping container knows I’m fangirling, and that’s fine by me.
Seconds before I started this essay, I coughed and choked on my 18-dollar Blue Moon, spraying malty liquid all over my already stained computer screen1. Lorenzo nor the man directly next to me said anything, extending a rare and polite kindness to me, a beer sprinkler. It was one of those moments that teeters on the edge of embarrassing, and depending on how much you were bullied in middle school, you either call it out before anyone else can, or carry on and pretend as if nothing weird happened. Nothing weird has ever happened, actually.
“Woa!” I yelled, looking around, beer dripping from my chin. The man next to me, nothing. Lorenzo, immediate care and concern.
“I feel like I have to tell you what just happened,” I said, which, if you were wondering, is a very cool way to start a conversation with a stranger.
“Oh…?” Lorenzo responded, keeping a fair amount of distance from me.
“Yeah! I just spit,” I said, putting an ill-timed pause in the middle of my sentence. “My beer. I just spit out, well, my beer, I spit my beer out”. I end to no applause.
“Ok!” Lorenzo said, putting the kibosh on the encounter.
“Yah!” I said, starting it back up again. “Look at the cameras!”
You ever say a thing and then cock your own head at yourself? Like a real “Huh, you’re still talking, aren’t ya?” moment but to yourself, as words pour out of your mouth and onto the ground, making a real mess.
Lorenzo looks up at the security camera I’m pointing to. I should stop, I really really should, but I don’t. “Later, I mean. Look at them later.” I cough again on the residual hops left over in my throat. “Have a real laugh (“Have a real laugh”?????) on me (“on me”?????)”.
The man next to me downs his Makers and leaves. Lorenzo hands me at least 30 cocktail napkins. He is the best person I have ever met2.
I’ve written about this before: the weird, unsettling magic of airport travel. I am stuck in an airport more often than not, so much so that it’s begun to provide a saccharine sort of comfort each time the captain sighs on the intercom and tells us we have to get off the plane and head back towards the gate. It’s sort of a Peetree dish example of the wider world- you interact with the world around you, and it’ll interact with you back.
There are some times that I say a big NO THANK YOU to interacting with the world around me. The songs on my Isolation Playlist and staring at my phone like it’s trying to send me a secret message are enough for me, thanks! But there are more times that I say Yes, Hell, why not, and I am better for it. My life becomes more interesting and my memories more full.
Without saying yes, I wouldn’t have seen my Hinge date do not one but three separate backflips on our date last week. I would have gone home after bowling, but instead I followed my curiosity to a Polish bar turned dance club3, then a bar4, then the sidewalk5 where I asked him to show me some of his old college cheerleading moves, and he raised me above his head Bring It On style.
I wouldn’t have my famous I Went On A Date With A Hells Angel story if I had hightailed it outta that oyster bar at the first mention of “own a laundry matt” and “mysteriously burned down”. No no no, that’s when you lean in. That’s when you ask more questions. When will I ever again have a man unbutton his shirt on a first date to show me his HELLS ANGELS FOREVER6 chest tattoo?
I wouldn’t have ended a truly LAME date in which the man’s response to “What’s your red flag?” (a rhetorical question to his question, btw) was “I care too much” and immediately jumped in Sierra’s car after if I hadn’t said yes to her text of “want me to pick you up? I’m already outside HEHE”. I wouldn’t have felt true unbridled joy, the kind of joy that screams LIFE IS FULL OF EXPERIENCES AND YOU ARE COLLECTING THEM if we didn’t sink into our seats and maniacally giggle to avoid his gaze as he walked to the train. I wouldn’t have had the exhaustion of modern dating smoothed over by the true love of adult friendship. I wouldn’t feel that no matter what, the love I seek is already right here.
But this is not about strange dates, trust me; that is for a different post/book. This is about those liminal moments in between. The moments that have you tetering on the edge of then and now in a strange purgatory state of consciousness. Moments like being stranded for a few hours in an airport, on the phone with a service representative, sitting in the waiting room of a car dealership while your cars being serviced. These are moments that can swallow our days whole. They can feel as if they steal time or smooth our brains over. The same way that scrolling through screens or seeing our own faces too much does. Or, there are moments, if given the chance, we can choose to lean over and tumble into engagement. Most people want to engage. Most people are curious. Most people are interesting. These interactions make me feel present in the absurdity of life. Or the banality. Either or, both are always in tandem.
A few days before I am spitting up on Lorenzo’s place of work like a milk-drunk baby, I am sipping coffee while I’m on the phone with Tariq, the manager of the Burgess Hotel in Atlanta. I am calling to last-minute cancel my hotel room so I can stay at Mary’s house instead of a hotel the night of her wedding. I assume I will not get out of this without being charged. I am playing up the dramatics as best I can.
“The bride needs me,” I sigh, bracing myself for the (fair) rebuttal that I booked the hotel; therefore, I HAVE to use it.
“Oh, of course,” Tariq responds. “We need each other in this life.”
I pause. “Yes… we do,” I respond. Tariq is not done. He takes a breath. I imagine him pulling back the curtain of a window, placing his baby-soft hand on the glass. Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed A Dream or whale sounds play in the background. He is wearing a bow tie and has never had a blemish.
“You have to create memories,” he says. “In the end, memories are all we have”
“They…are,” I say, blinking extra hard as some other sleepy bridesmaids join me on the couch. There is a brief pause. What do I say next? Do I tell Tariq that my dad is in a memory care unit, a place that robs memories? Do I tell him thank you for saying the one thing I need to hear, the one thing I always need to hear? Do I tell him how being back in Atlanta brings back the feeling of driving with my dad to soccer, the windows down, the smell of honeysuckles wafting in. Do I tell him that I drove by my childhood home earlier this week? Do I tell him that seeing that the new owners kept the fig tree my parents planted made me want to cry? Do I thank him? Tell him I love him?
“Anything else I can help you with, Layne?” his voice brings me back.
“No. No, no no, this was so nice”, I say, clearing my throat. “Thank you, Tariq”.
“Of course,” he says, his voice like room-temp honey. “Make memories tonight, have fun with your friends, that’s why you’re here.”
Before I chance to ask Tariq if he will be my new dad, the line ends.
Sitting in Bar N Bites, I order another Blue Moon. I’m stuck here for another hour, according to the text that Delta just sent me. I can hear the gate agents booming over the intercom from the gate around the corner.
Lorenzo drops the Blue Moon off by my computer. I bite my tongue and resist asking for a bib.
“Headed home?” he asks. I tell him, yes, I’m headed back to Chicago.
“What’s Chicago like?” he asks. God, he really is the best. How do I get a million dollars and give it to him?
I tell him that Chicago is the best big American city, hands down. I tell him how my alleyway is its own ecosystem. When I walk Jeff, 8 out of 10 of the garages are always open. 5 out of 8 of those garages are full of people I know, and we always say hi. I describe the old couple who used to run an auto repair business out of their garage. They mostly just walk their little white dog around now. There are three main sentences we always say to each other. “How are you?”, “Beautiful day, huh?” and “Enjoy the game!” when he is watching soccer on his garage TV. If I am gone for longer than 4 days, he tells me he was worried about me, and his wife nods and murmurs, “he was”. I tell Lorenzo how one time I saw a rat so big I thought it was a beaver. I tell him how three weeks ago I walked by a man peeing by his car and how he bashfully apologized, saying “Oh god, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you, it was an emergency, beautiful dog by the way!” making it the most wholesome public urination encounter I’ve ever had. Honestly, I tell Lorenzo too much.
“Well. I’ll have to visit”, he says, with a vigorous nod that reads SOS. My phone buzzes, telling me it’s time to head toward my flight. I debate leaving Lorenzo in my will and instead leave him a 30% tip. I walk back towards my gate. The woman I was sitting next to, a woman I have not yet spoken to due to the NO THANK YOU state of mind I boarded the plane with, is standing by a snack Kiosk that has no snacks. She is shifting her body weight from one leg to the other with her arms crossed. I wonder to myself if she is a lacrosse coach. My lacrosse coach did this. We make eye contact and smile. As I get to our gate, the gate agent already has the PA in his hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the weather in Chicago really must be going wild, because we unfortunately have another delay.” The crowd groans. I debate going back to Bar N Bites, but decide both bothering Lorenzo and another beer are not needed. I decide to wander. There’s gotta be a Chili’s here, or some other knockoff version with seats that could have only been repurposed from an abandoned amusement park. Sliders sound good. And maybe I’ll sit at the bar, take my headphones out. Be open to this strange world. Maybe I’ll strike up a conversation with a stranger, learn something new, leave with a feeling I didn’t have before.
Something good and real to make this whole thing worthwhile.
Butter etc
A real this moment from Joe Vs Volcano for me
Backflip #1
Backflip #2
Backflip #3
Byline was 2009-2014 aka he was retired from his drug-fueled hog-riding, baseball-bat-toting days, I think!
"It was one of those moments that teeters on the edge of embarrassing, and depending on how much you were bullied in middle school, you either call it out before anyone else can, or carry on and pretend as if nothing weird happened."
This combination of words just made my Saturday.
Tariq! I love him 💜