It was the kind of place where you didn’t just become a regular, you became part of a group, a densely packed, oftentimes incestuous community—almost a clique but too big to really be considered one. Everyone knew everybody, and if you didn’t really know them, you knew of them.
It was my friend Brian who initially “brought me in” to Long Wong’s; he was the bassist in a band that my friend and fellow reporter at the newspaper was doing a story on, and I tagged along for one of their shows. Brian and I hit it off, became great friends, and there I was at Long Wong’s, meeting his girlfriend, Nikki, the bartender, Sara, and many of his other friends who soon became mine. These were the same friends I was walking down Mill Avenue with toward Long Wong’s one night, drunk and laughing, when one of us made a comment that we were silly idiots, and I chimed in, “We’re not just idiots. We’re the Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club!”
It seemed like we spent a million nights in that bar, eating wings, laughing, making eyes at cute boys who later turned out to be girls, watching our friends’ bands play, watching some of our friends get famous, watching their record go gold. Watching the one who started that band get left behind because of a drinking problem, hearing that he had deservedly punched the singer in the face on Christmas Eve, watching the band fizzle out without him.
It was the place where I spent some of the last nights of that friend’s life with him, smoking, still drinking, and then him screaming for the bartender on duty to change the station when his own song came on the radio over the speakers.
It was the place where I waited when I got stood up by the same guy again and again because I never sobered up long enough to not take his calls; the place I ran to when I saw the same guy, then my boyfriend, drive away to Seattle with my stereo in a van driven by his ex-girlfriend; the place where I saw my husband for the first time, and the place where I dropped a drink on his foot when he told me I was pretty.
It was the kind of place that, even more than a decade later, I could walk into at any time of the day or night and know someone. People just kept coming back; it was not just a watering hole but a watering home of sorts, a place where you could point to a corner and say, “Remember when Dave Bouchard hurled on the bar?” or “Remember when Doug Hopkins rammed the neck of his guitar into the ceiling?” or “Remember the night when a hippie put an iguana on your head and it shit in your hair?”
Not to say that in all of that time, Mill Avenue—the street that the building that housed Long Wong’s had sat on for over a hundred years—hadn’t changed. What was once a charming, vintage street with old storefronts occupied by indie record stores, diners, antique stores, independent bookstores, and two handfuls of music venues had been torn down and rebuilt again as million-dollar lofts, home to a Hooters, Gap, Aveda, and McDonald’s. In fact, the street that was once an ugly but super-friendly stepsister had, with the help of developers and a lynch mob of chain restaurants, turned into a flashy debutante. A retail swan.
From above, flying into Phoenix from the east, in a jumble of blue, red, and green lights, Mill Avenue looked like a Disney train wreck that interrupted the humble luminescence of the sur-rounding areas. It wasn’t the same place that had been a bigger part of my life than the house I went into to pass out at night.
It’s not that I oppose “progress,” it’s just that in the course of my lifetime, I’ve learned a thing or two. I’ve learned that it’s better to eat an overdone steak at a restaurant than one that’s been spit on, it’s never a wise idea to wear a dress if appearing on The Jerry Springer Show, and that whenever you find something that you think is pretty cool, it’s only a matter of time before someone comes along to ruin it.
Now, granted, the Mill Avenue I haunted wasn’t the mecca of financial prosperity it is today. You could walk up and down the three-block stretch and see at least twenty of your friends. Panhandlers and street kids were years away from hustling college kids and businesspeople for a buck. Back then they only asked for spare change. There was no such thing as a block party on New Year’s Eve, or a giant, teetering tortilla chip that plummeted into an immense bowl of fake salsa when the clock struck twelve, sponsored, of course, by Tostitos.
It was when Mill Avenue was still cool. It was a small but devoted community. It was real.
After I married that guy I met at Long Wong’s and started hanging out at home on Friday nights, eating movie theater butter microwave popcorn instead of seeing a band at a bar, it had been a couple of years since I’d been down to Mill. I had heard and read about the goings-on in Tempe but hadn’t been brave enough to see it until the night my husband decided to take a shortcut.
And I saw it for myself. As we drove slowly down the avenue, through the valley of neon and reflective towers of glass, I hardly recognized it. I scanned the faces of the people on the sidewalks but didn’t see one that I knew. Then we passed an ultra-hip restaurant in an ultra-hip, newly constructed building, and as I looked at it with my mouth hanging open, I realized I couldn’t remember what used to be there.
I guess although I didn’t haunt Mill Avenue anymore, I kind of counted on it to haunt me whenever I felt a little lonely for the old stomping grounds, whenever I wanted to remember the things I was terrified that I would forget.
And now, it was time for Long Wong’s to serve itself up in the name of progress. We all knew it was a matter of time, and the lease of the building was up.
Sara, now the manager, threw a shindig for Long Wong’s departure. The parking lot was cleared and two stages were set up; bands from my day and beyond were scheduled to play.
This time, I had the ten bucks for the cover charge, and as soon as I went in, I met old friends I hadn’t seen in years, people I threw up in front of, people I sat up until sunrise laughing with, people who had moved across the country and came back for this night, people who would pick me up at the airport every time I came back from running away, people I took care of when they were in trouble, people who took care of me, and people who still owed me a drink. People it felt good to see.
I noticed after I had been there for a while that a place looks different if you know it’s the last time you’re ever going to see it. Long Wong’s looked legendary that night, as I remembered all of the things that had happened there, all of the people I met there, and all of the people I saw for the last time there. Sometimes a building is just a building, but even with its rotting pipes, wobbling toilets, and unintentionally springy floor, that place wasn’t just a building; it was a base camp. I had always counted on it to be there when I wanted to come home and see my old friends who knew me and liked me no matter what, but in another way, it held the stage for many things that I missed dearly and would give anything to have back. There’s something about a place that has your history heavily wrapped up in it that makes it hard to let go, and I had always felt that way about this place, even after I had stopped hanging out there every night. I always knew it was there, and I found great comfort in it—and felt great obligation to it as well. Sometimes, when all you have of something or someone is the memory, the place where those memories were created ties you to it, sometimes tightly, and makes it hard to go too far from it.
At the same time it stood stoutly with a legendary air, it also seemed vulnerable and shoddy around the edges, almost like a devoted dog that was being dropped off at the pound. When I decided it was time to go home, I knew I wanted to see inside one more time before I left for good. I was standing near the stage, where my friends’ bands used to play as we would crowd into the tiny place to watch them. I bet I sat in every single one of these chairs, I thought to myself as I looked around, alone, and I was giggling to myself when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“This is a restricted area,” one of the security staff Sara had hired said to me in a voice I knew had to be seven octaves lower than his real voice. “You’ll have to leave.”
“That’s fine,” I said, as I looked around one last time, then started up the steps to the bar a
rea. I had just reached the top when I felt another tap on the shoulder.
“Christ, I’m leaving, okay?” I snapped as I turned around, and there was a someone I hadn’t seen in almost ten years.
My friend Tom. A friend, something more than that—sometimes where you draw the line is a little fuzzy, and it was with us, too. We were close friends for a long time, as he was one of Brian’s roommates and I spent a lot of time at their house, mostly mornings waking up and trying to find my car keys. Tom was a good friend. A really good friend. But things changed and suddenly another girl appeared who paid him attention and was prettier than me, so the whole thing ended badly. We hadn’t talked or seen each other since.
“Oh my God,” I said, stunned. “Wow.”
“I’m so glad to see you,” he said as we met in a mutual hug. “We should get a drink!”
We had only been at the bar for a little while when the lights flashed and people were being herded out by the rent-a-cops.
“I’m not leaving,” Tom said as he grabbed my arm and sat me back down on the bar stool. “And neither are you.”
I laughed, finished the rest of my drink.
“I still have the whole set of luggage I bought with the Marlboro Miles I got from picking up all of the empty cigarette packs in your car,” he laughed. “One time I picked up eighty of them on the passenger side alone! It took hours to find them all in that filthy car of yours, and it’s amazing I didn’t catch a staph infection just from breathing in there. That car should have been condemned!”
“Screw you,” I replied. “I’m the one who made the investment. I smoked all of those packs! All you had to do was cut them out and send them in. All I ever got from that was a keychain and discolored teeth. I could brush my teeth with Soft Scrub and they’d still be Marlboro yellow!”
“TIME TO GO!” the bartender, someone I didn’t know, yelled again, and this time we didn’t have a choice of whether we were staying or not. As “security” (the bald, morbidly obese fake-voice man and a toothpick of a used-up woman who looked like a chicken nervously guarding her sole egg) pushed from the back, we sat as long as humanly possible, but when it came down to the wire, both Tom and I reluctantly got up after the crowd had passed.
“Let’s GO! LET’S GO!” the security guard yelled, and I had to laugh.
“I never thought I’d spend my last moments at Wong’s being chased by Baby Huey in an ‘Event Staff’ shirt,” I said as they pushed us along, out through the bar, into the restaurant, and through the main door, and as Tom and I walked through it, we smiled. We were the very last two people, ever, in history, to be kicked out of Long Wong’s.
“I liked that,” I said. “This was a good ending. I’m glad we finally got one.”
We walked through the huge crowd that had gathered in the parking lot and said our good-byes to whomever we saw, and I pulled out my car keys to get ready to go.
“Whoa. You two. Is the fistfight over? Did I miss it?” Brian said when we ran into him, and we laughed. “Patti’s having an after-hours party! What’s a night at Wong’s without an after-hours party?”
“A night when I won’t have to find the number of a divorce lawyer in the morning,” I replied. “I’m old. I’m tired. Tonight I broke my five-year record of staying up past Saturday Night Live.”
“You’re not old, you’re dead,” Brian replied. “The Laurie Notaro I know would either have to be in the back of a cop car or unconscious to miss an after-hours party. Let’s go, it’s only one-thirty, the night is still young. Last night at Wong’s, Laurie. Last night. You should go.”
Patti’s party wouldn’t be at his shit-hole apartment, however; it would be at the house he bought a couple of years ago, around the corner from the apartment, where his now-wife was famous for putting on quite a spread.
I was debating whether or not I should go; I was content with having seen everyone, and with the way I had said my good-byes. Besides, my husband was home, waiting for me, and I had to get up early the next morning to pack boxes.
“Naw. I have a big day tomorrow,” I told him. “I have to finish packing up the kitchen.”
“Why are you moving to Oregon?” Brian responded with disgust. “No one knows you there.”
Tom begged off, too, and we headed off to where he had parked his bike and I had parked my car.
It really was great to see him. I had always felt horrible about the way things concluded all those years ago, and I waved as he rode away, albeit a bit wobbly, on his bike because he had an inkling he might not have been in any condition to drive by the night’s end.
“God, we have gotten old,” I called.
When I got to my car, I already had my keys in my hand, and I flipped through the ring to find the one belonging to the car. I flipped through it once, twice, three times before I realized it was really missing and the split ring it had been attached to was gaping open and oddly bent.
Oh shit, I thought to myself as I started to panic, it’s gone. It’s gone. For the first time in a decade I’m sober enough to drive after leaving the bar and I can’t find the goddamn key and it’s late and my husband is sleeping and I’ll have to call a cab and I don’t have enough cash for that—it would be at least a thirty-dollar fare. Shit, oh shit. It had to have fallen out in my purse.
I dumped the entire contents of my purse on the ground next to my car and searched through it all like I was panning for gold. The key was gone. I shoved everything quickly back into my bag and ran up the steps of the parking garage, back to the street level that exited right across from Long Wong’s parking lot, hoping I could get a ride to Patti’s party, where I could figure out how to get home.
The parking lot was empty. In the same place where hundreds of people were milling about only ten minutes before, now there wasn’t a soul around. The parking lot was eerily empty, even the security guards had vanished. It was creepy and quiet, and I decided the only thing I could do was retrace my steps in the hope that I might find my missing car key somewhere on the ground, though I doubted it. If it had fallen on the street or sidewalk, I knew I would have heard it.
I scanned the ground all the way back to Wong’s, looking for anything shiny, when suddenly a car whipped around the corner, breaking the silence and shining its headlights on me in the dark.
It was Brian.
“I lost my car key,” I explained frantically as I stood next to his driver’s-side window. “Can you believe it? It’s just gone from the ring, it fell off.”
“You’re never going to find it,” Brian predicted. “Where do you think you lost it?”
“God, I don’t know,” I said, exasperated. “It’s just gone. What am I going to do? I’ll never get home.”
“Get in and I’ll take you to Patti’s,” Brian offered, and I agreed. Just as I stepped back to walk around to the other side of the car, I saw a reflection in a puddle that had gathered in a small pothole.
I reached down into the water and felt it, hoping it wasn’t a shard of glass.
“It’s my key,” I said as I showed Brian.
“Bullshit,” Brian replied.
“It’s my key,” I insisted. “This is my key. I found my key. I can’t believe it. Can you believe it?”
“That’s really your key?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Absolutely,” I nodded.
“So do you want to go to Patti’s or not?” he asked. “Everyone’s there.”
“You know,” I said, thinking about it, “I think I’ll just see you guys later.”
“All right,” he said. “Last night at Wong’s . . . ?”
I laughed and I nodded, and then I waved him on, knowing that he was right.
It was the last night.
And so I went home.
My Big Mouth
As soon as I opened my mouth and those awful words came tumbling out, I knew I had made a horrible mistake.
Even I couldn’t believe what I just said.
So far, Nana, my husband, and
I were having a nice lunch at an outdoor, cozy little Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of Phoenix. On the little pond in the center of the restaurant, a new mama duck glided about peacefully, her ducklings behind her as they swam from side to side.
Everyone was having a wonderful time, mainly because everyone loves ducks, particularly baby ones. Baby ducks, recipients of love from the world at large, baby ducks. Who doesn’t love baby ducks?
I do. Loooooove baby ducks. I have never eaten one, so I had no residual guilt shrouding me. Not a hunter. Never hit one with my car. Don’t even own a mallard. I am openly disgusted when I see them hanging in a Chinese market, and am apt to even create a big deal over it, making small, but audible, gagging sounds.
Looooove ducks. Especially the baby ones.
And so did our waitress, who, after serving us our entrees minutes before, stopped at our table, gazed out the window onto the pond, and just stared, somewhat sorrowfully, I might add, as her eyes drooped, her eyebrows lifted slightly, and the smallest, teeniest, yet still visible tremble possessed her upper lip. Now, at first, no one said anything, probably for a good several minutes, mainly because we were hoping she’d just go away. The three of us—myself, Nana, and my husband—just went on eating our meals, saying nothing, each individually thinking that it was weird that the waitress had turned to stone at our table.
“Is something wrong?” I finally asked, because it was quite clear the waitress wasn’t going anywhere, and eating dinner with a stranger lurking above your food can make you a little uncomfortable, much like when a hungry homeless person is staring at your soon-to-be-devoured turkey sandwich from the sidewalk and rubbing his belly.