Big "Stan" is a bouncer at the club. Stan is a very large and very dark black man. At the beginning of the night, when greeting Stan, I feel as if I'm shaking hands with a catcher's mitt. Everything about the guy is just really, really big and really, really black.
Stan has taken a liking to me over the past few months, most likely because I provide him with a steady stream of Altoids throughout the night -- far be it for him to purchase his own fucking tin once in a while -- but additionally because we share a level of disdain for the customership which, quite possibly, surpasses that of any bouncer on the staff. Theoretically, it could be the intensity of my hatred for the patrons that has fueled my semi-consistent maintenance of this blog over the past year, with most of the posts contained within pertaining to their inexplicably asinine behavior on a nightly basis, but I digress. I wonder if Stan has a blog.
Simply put, Stan wants to be left alone. So do I, but as a big, blockheaded white-guy bouncer, it's easy for me, because I can blend into the woodwork with the twenty other big, blockheaded white guys on the staff. A six-foot-seven, three hundred twenty pound black man isn't going to fly under anyone's radar anywhere, and Stan, therefore, becomes a magnet for every misfit Guido customer who walks past. On Saturday night, I stood nearby as he engaged in an animated conversation with one of these, the customer continually shaking Stan's hand and embracing him as if he'd been reunited with a long-lost relative.
"Who's that?" I asked. "Your retarded stepbrother?"
...
The same thing happens every night. If I'm standing next to Stan, I'll watch as a steady stream of well-wishers forms a line to come up and pay their respects, tangling him in their elaborate 'soul brother' handshakes and hugs, ignoring my existence all the while. If their attention does eventually turn to me, and they offer a handshake, I give them the standard, straightforward white man's grip, pulling my hand away, on principle, before they attempt any sort of digital masturbation.
I'll have more to say about this whole thing some other time. Suffice to say, that the interior of a nightclub is a largely anarchic environment, so, I'm interested.