On The List — Lotus, Meatpacking District, Oct. 30, 2002

"Fuck yeah. What? Man, your cutting out on me. What? Yeah totally. No, I'm already in line dude. Yeah, I'll be there in a sec. Downstairs? Ok. You got me on the list right? Core. Dude, fuckin' order me a cosmo, yeah. No, a COSMO! Okay, I'll tell em."
It was one of those special nights, when the giant human crumb filter lays a cast-iron sheath over the doors of Lotus. When not just anybody with enough dough and a pair of shiny shoes can get in. One of those nights when everybody is a Producer or a Promoter or Mover or a Shaker — and if you're not — then you gotta know somebody. It was one of those nights when you gotta be On The List.
"Fuck dude, hold on a sec."
Had the phone been clamped securely between his plucky shoulder and his ear, he might've had to adjust in this situation. He might've slung the receiving end away from his mouth and pulled his index finger from his other ear. But he was wearing one of those things. You know, those things that make it so you don't have to actually hold the phone. That single vine-like cord wrapped its way from his tailored breast pocket into his ear like a dead stem. So all he did was throw his shoulders back and raise his chin to the gatekeepers because it was his turn for inspection.
"Yeah I'm On The List?"
When he said this he looked back behind him over the vast line, as if watching for some response.
"Ummm-hmmm?"
She — this giant stab-wound of a woman in front of the velvet rope — had an ink pen with a giant fluffy lighted fiber optic blossom bouncing around on top and she was chewing gum very hard. There was a gigantic bald-headed black man standing next to her. A low growl seemed to leak from his trap-door mouth, like something terrible was going on way, way down there.
"What's the name?" She asked.
Her smile was flat, business-like. She consulted her notebook. She was scribbling and checking off little notes — set in rows — on a pad enclosed in a metal clipboard. The clipboard had a hinge on the top, with a beveled metal lid. The lid could be used to sever succulent little fingers that got too greedy to see the list.
He leaned over as he told her, his head a mere three or four inches from hers. Her muscular meat-bound jaw clenched as he did this.
"Wait," he said as she ticked down the list. "What's that? Is that it?"
"Excuse me?" she said, staring at his outstretched finger. Then she repeated her self. "EXCUSE ME??"
"But that's it," he said.
"What's 'it'?" she said.
"That's my man. He's the promoter. That's who I'm with, he got me On The List" he said.
She poked the pen behind her ear and clapped the metal list down by its hinge.
"Lemme explain something to you, okay?" she said.
She had a very pronounced voice, and with this, a low and sustained roar ran through the ragged line of leather-clad hipsters hemmed into the velvet formation behind. They formed a giant, meaty flank on the sidewalk, pocked here and there with glowing cigarette ends and escaping breath, and it shivered with the Hudson gale. Leather hats started to bob out and over the rope like dodo birds, and below, creamy shoulders and cocoa-buttered skin brushed against the linings of Banana Republic leather and Gap blends. The sound resonated into an abrasive, expectant hum, punctuated with increasing urgency by the bleep and clap of cell phones. And it was this living, squatting creature stilted by a hundred pairs of designer shoes over which she reigned.
"See this?" she said, shaking the metal clipboard above her head like the commandments. "This is my fucking doodling pad, okay? It doesn't matter what's on this paper, okay?"
A quiet settled over the dodos.
"Look, why don't I just go get him," he said. "He's already downstairs. I'll bring him up here and he'll tell you. He's the Promoter."
Then she started laughing. Jowling in fact. And the lighted fiber optic blossom behind her ear shivered violently.
"OH! The Promoter huh?" she was absolutely maniacal. "Your man downstairs is the Promoter so you think you can just go get him huh? And then you're as good as On The List huh?"
As he was alone in line, he started looking around behind him in disbelief, perhaps trying to gather some kind of moral support. His posture stiffened and he suddenly looked enormously different. His tilted knit cap and scruffy blue-blood chin, his shiny Chelsea boots, his little scarf waving from his gaunt neck like a flag or a noose, his thin aluminum lapel buttons: 'Iggy Pop' and 'Quiet Riot' and '2-Tone,' and the union jack, his Black Framed Glasses: it all suddenly looked so heavy. So heavy. Like a little boy in his dad's clothes. Like he might fall down under the weight of his clownish disguise.
And all remained quiet for a moment.
Finally, with a sigh, she said: "Jesus Christ, I don't have fucking time for you little pricks."
Then she looked at him, and cracked a bemused smile, apparently eased.
"Sorry," she said. "Sometimes I just get so fucking zonked from sitting here trying to keep every shit-noser straight I just stop caring who's who, ya know?"
"Yeah totally," he said, smiling at her, as if to say: 'Hey, no hard feelings.'
She flipped open the metal case again and pulled the pen from behind her ear.
"Okay," she said, "Let's try that all over again?"
"Okay," he said good-naturedly.
"What's the name?"
"It's Moby," he said. "M-O-B-Y."
"Ummm … Hmmm." She ticked down the rows, over her doodles, but held fast over a name about halfway down the page. Then she looked up at him, and without taking her eyes off him she slashed a line through the name.
"Sorry," she said. "You're not on the list."

Happy Halloween! I'll be back next week.