The Lafayette

How many thousand times did I walk by that theater? How many times did I look at the crumbling facade, and say a silent prayer that someone would save it. Someone would blow the dust off. Someone would shine her up, and make her how she used to be. Elegant. Striking. Beloved. Regal. I always felt some kind of bond to that theater. Somehow, I felt we had something in common. She was, in essence, what I had wanted to be. A star. A bright shining being that had accidentally burned out when no one was looking.

How ironic that years later, after thousands of investors, and changing hands like cards, I would wind up in a place where I would become a part of her. A place where I could climb the narrow stairs to the balcony, and look upon the lit stage. A place where I could stand in front of the
glass blocks, and the curved concession counter, and man her helm.

What was I doing there that night? I'm not sure. I was supposed to be off of work at midnight, and got out at 9pm. I was supposed to be in the bar, but walked across the street to see the theater. I was supposed to be staying in the theater waiting for a friend, but I was walking out...and there he was.

I knew it was him the moment I saw him. I knew we had met in the past. Long ago. The better half of a decade. My memories of my encounters with him are fuzzy. They were all in the beginning phase of my grown-up adolescents. Some of you may have had one, and some of you may not have. It's the early 20's for those of us who were single in that time frame. When you still believe that life is a playground. Only now they have let you add alcohol to the merry go round, and life truly is a blur. There are nights, that ooze into days, that morph back into night in the instance of one breath. There are conversations you truly believe you will never forget that are forgotten with a cool breeze. There is love, there is pain, there is war, and there is no shortage of narcotics or social lubricants to make you act like a complete ass.

The only problem with this scenario is that not all the people involved with this atmosphere are still in their "grown-up adolescents". Some of them are bona fide "grown-ups" with no patience for the drunken children they have been hired to attend to. He was one of the grown ups, I was
the later. A child. A poor, begging, terrible tipping, mouthy, wanting attention and to be loved by everyone, child. He was a dad, a husband, and a provider. I was his sworn enemy, and I knew it.

I hated going in there when he worked. I would purposely hide in the corners where he would not have to serve me. He was so angry, yet, I desperately wanted him to be my friend. Why? I'm not entirely sure. I'm not one to feel comfortable in a social setting with enemies. I want
everyone to like me, and think that I am great. Not sneer at me like some rabid chihuahua.

Eventually with some banter, and better tipping, he began to tolerate me. It wasn't as though he would rush to the door with a bouquet every time I walked through the door, but he was nicer. I was there his last night, and I remember feeling sad at seeing him go. The door shuts. You think about it maybe once again...wonder why it was so important that person like you. Especially someone who was so adamant about not liking you...

The clock ticks. You find one gray hair after another. You fall in love with someone. You lose someone. You find everyday you become more of who you wanted to be, and less of who you believed you were. You make friends. You lose friends. You change. You grow. You grow up. You change in ways incomprehensible to yourself and others. You become someone different than the person you were in a smoky bar years before.

Then, one day, you walk out a door at a place you walked by a thousand times...for that you dreamed a thousand dreams, and there in that doorway is a face you know you know from a million years ago. From a personality ago. Someone...but who...

You talk to this person...they look like someone...but...everyone looks like someone. They sound like someone...but...everyone sounds like someone. In the same breath, they are not that someone. They are smiling. They are flirting. They are complementing. They are paying
attention. They are different. You are different. They universe has aged microscopically, but your worlds have collided...and they fall...and the intertwine...and they lie there on the floor, and they congeal into something new. Something different. Something shiny...something like that theater itself.

You sit there across the street in the neon lights of that theater and you meet each other again, for the very first time. You laugh. You become friends...and maybe it is the magic that someone breathed into that theater that it pours out on you. It is scary, and fun, and makes you want to kiss someone, and puke, and cry, and laugh...and stare at that old piece of history and realize how beautiful it always was. It just took someone to see it. ...and wonder if you are looking into the eyes of the person who finally has.