It's easy to meet people except when it isn't. I think I'm on a tear right now. It's not quite an all-you-can-meet salad bar of life, but it's better lately.
It drives me nuts that I have such boutique tastes, especially for a Wilbo Hobo type. It makes it hard to meet people around West Michigan. I genuinely love Shakespeare and obsess about it the way my friends obsess about sports teams. I'm glad when the Red Wings or the Tigers or the Spartans enter a glorious playoff season so I can actually get swept up into fandom. But I'm not there for draft picks or college recruiting, so I qualify as a fair weather fan. My boutique tastes connected me to like-minded souls in magical places but not ordinary towns.
Shakespeare lust in Stratford is entirely normal. After theater, one can wander down to the aptly named Down the Street, not far from the Avon Theater, and one can strike up all kinds of delicious conversations about the Bard and his world with visiting professors from small American colleges, some of whom can talk knowingly about Erika Jong and have packed in their luggage, a thong. It's like a trip to Vegas for these scholarly women, a trip worth saving for all year long. I abstain from hallucinogenics of all kinds, but at Down the Street, the guys pack pipes at the bar and step out onto the street and smoke them as casually as tobacco pipes. Which happens outside bars, too, in Traverse City, thanks to the compassionate medical laws there. I have met some pretty remarkable smack talkers on the streets in Stratford,, and I rather envy the way brain chemistry is tweakable for them. I talk to them while I'm waiting for the professoras to show up. But I never take the pipe when it is passed to me. I usually have to step aside when a young actor from 8 PM performance marches through the sidewalk congregation, and the young actors clearly are practicing inebriation for their one man show. The seem to find the professoras pretty fast, but young turk actors are pretty scarce, maybe ten or twelve a season.
A good friend of mine is a sculptor, and he runs his own successful home remodeling business. His work is genius and his interiors suitable for Architectural Digest. He has built on a transitional street in a shrinking city his own compound, three houses enclosed by a privacy fence, one house dedicated to his workshop and an upstairs mancave. One house he shares with his wife and one house is for renters, who are all invariably cute. His wife began her time in this funky town, renting a room in his income house. His garden includes raised ponds for lily pads and coi and includes a grotto. First time I show up for a party, I'm passed a brass pipe, which I reject for a thousand reasons, one of which is I have a white collar job. That necessitates frequent drug tests. My friend laughs, takes a long inhale, and says, "we drug test all our new hires. We light up their s***, and we hire them if it gets us higher". Please excuse the digression.
On the other hand, when I attend Shakespeare in West Michigan, at times I think I'm entering a blue movie theater, with empty seats and audience members whose haberdashery could use a trip to the tailor or at least, Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Better clothing could be obtained at the thrift shop. One has to forgive that description because all of these folks stopped spending on clothing when they bought houses, now immaculate and cared for well. They're spend at homes who spend most of their free time at home, and they're better characters than I. Used books rest on their library shelves, but used books are shabby and noble. If only old clothing looked as good as used books.
Despite the utter absence of any chance to meet a woman who is single and who knows how to be single and who knows how to date, I am a highly involved audience for Shakespeare south of the Manistee National Forest, and I can prove it.
One sunny summer day, I was standing in front of the Book Nook in Montague, Michigan, waiting for showtime at the Howmet Theater. I was flying solo because usually when it comes to Shakespeare in West Michigan, bringing someone along is going to screw up matters somehow. Pigeon Creek doesn't play up there anymore, mostly because of the peep show attendance numbers, but that day, the troupe was offering an all female Julius Caesar, and I wasn't just going for the togas. I wanted to see the Et Tu Brutus scene played as a cat fight.
Out on the sidewalk, a woman walks by me in a light spring dress and she looks at me and smiles and I look back, smile back. I say hello, and we're in conversation. She's going to the bar, Jimmy's Biker Bar, by the book store and the yoga studio, and I don't mind when she invites me to join her. And sitting at a table, I pretty much figure out that all she wants to do with that early evening is drink endless pitchers of Budweiser Dark Lager, which is pretty good and cold, three dollars the pitcher. Pitcher two has shown up on the table, and I'm on my second glass. But she doesn't look like a heavy beer drinker, until that night. Her figure seems to suggest Chardonnay. The cut was fresh and the perm was from a salon. She hadn't dressed like a Jimmy's Customer, where leather riding clothes is de rigeur. Her dress suggesteds a complete wardrobe and most house trailers are not equipped with walk in closets. My intuition tells me divorcee her first week in the wild. But she doesn't want to use up good drinking time to see Julius Caeser, so she gives me her phone number and I split for the theater. It was an exceptional production, and I am glad I attended. Sadly, only stabbing and no hair pulling. As for the phone number, I never called it. That doesn't stay on the shelf very long at all. I'm sure my departure was noted by someone who can fix snowmobiles and Harleys, real vital skills, even from my perspective.
I dropped by Pub 111 after show and usually the actors sit at a huge round table in a room with two pool tables. I didn't see any friends or Romans in Togas around that table, so I assume the post-party had a secret location. Saw a lot of my countrymen, dressed up like county boys and girls. I never talk to an actor unless spoken to first. The relationship between and actor and her audience is best a highly subliminated one. So, I took my usual stool along the long bar, a wooden top constructed from an old bowling alley floor, considered the local talent and ordered a two dollar beer.
I've never had a bad evening Down the Street
Elvish Steele at Jimmy's Pub, Montague, Michigan
Hit the Creek:
How About That Howmet Theater:
Book Nook is off the hook:
White River Yoga is just north of the White River and south of Pentwater River:
I do a kind of yoga at Pub 111. I sit down barebacked on my bar stool.
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