It’s 11:45pm on a Saturday, and I’m at the theatre, stuffing
the last of the trash in a dumpster when Megan’s phone dings. “Get to Pour House. 20th and P. Great drinks, live music, and people. Bring Anna
Rose. – Claire.” Megan reads the text aloud and looks at me, brows raised
over signature big eyes and says, “Anna Rose, you’re coming.”
I’m the intern who stays behind, who arrives late and slips
out early to go to coffee shops, who has refused the bar scene again and again
for a quieter, more solitary setting to end the day. But this time, I reply, “I’ll see you there,” swinging leg over bike and pedaling
off, away from the stream of fourteen hour days, away from the small circle of
co-workers and patrons who have become my only contact with humanity since
starting at the B Street.
A few turns and several red lights later, I arrive.
It’s beautiful.
In a whiskey lit room of dark wood against a back wall of
glass bottles kindle people. Standing, sitting, laughing, drinking, flirting,
talking, singing. People.
I join my group in a back corner, but instead of slipping
into the booth, I grab a bar chair and swing it against the wall to look over
the vista of young 20 year-olds out on a Saturday night.
A girl runs her
hand through her brown curls, laughing with two boys, sliding her eyes to the
one in the white shirt. The band—a bald guitarist and a mustached
drummer—switch from country to Irish, and a boy with black frames and red hair
serenades his friend, his straw a mike. A waitress with gold hair and silver
nose ring serves amber drinks garnished green. The bartender in starched shirt and suspenders fixes the
ladder rolling across the library of a different sort of knowledge.
I haven’t had a drink, but I want to run to every person,
throw my arms around them, kiss them fat and full on the lips, announcing, “I’m
so happy you’re here! You’re beautiful!” I want to push White Shirt into Curly
Brunette’s arms, duet with Black Frames, and toss money
to Ms. Gold Hair and Suspenders.
I want to celebrate their humanity and this Saturday night
out, away, elsewhere, not at the theatre, not at the rehearsal hall, not at the
apartment, but here, in this bar, surrounded by people who may have never heard
of B Street Theatre, who may have never attended a play or have read a script
and who aren’t asking me to scrub toilets or to send emails.
Now and then I dip into the booth’s conversation, but it rings
of work, so I return to my roost, roving near-watering eyes, wanting to jump on
the bar and proclaim like a reverse Walt Whitman, “I celebrate you, and sing
you…Stop this day and night with me and we shall posses the origin of all
poems!”
Instead, I perch. Observing. Singing an internal paean.
Half the work booth leaves, chatter puttering. Curly
Brunette gets White Shirt alone; she licks her straw. The band plays their last
song, riffing good-night, Black Frames trilling past the final note. Bartender
starts wiping the bar.
Then the clock strikes one, whiskey light turning harsh
white, and Ms. Gold Hair starts collecting glasses.
I say my good-byes, wrap my scarf, clip my helmet, and
glancing around one last time, I walk out, pedaling back to the apartment and to
the routine that follows that for one night broke wide open.
-Anna Rose
-Anna Rose
Intern Insight: With 12 to 14 hour work days, 6 days a week being
the norm, people and places outside B Street Theatre become an exoticism to B
Street interns, ready for another day at the B Street.
