I had already had too much to drink at the work party when Jason approached and threw down the gauntlet. “Let’s go barhopping in Hollywood!” he roared. “You up for it? It’ll be like old times!”
I had long since surrendered my car keys to a co-worker and sealed my fate as an Uber rider for the night. Why not get completely fuckin’ shit-faced? I thought to myself. I don’t have to work tomorrow. What do I have to lose?
“Fuck yeah, let’s go!” I growled, the liquor stirring the reckless fire in my soul. “As long as we wind up at Jumbo’s Clown Room, I’m in!”
“Yeah! That’s the spirit!” Jason’s eyes lit up like a lotto winner. “Jumbo’s it is!”
As we slipped into our Uber, bound for the dimly lit chaos of Cahuenga Boulevard, Jason couldn't stop raving about the legendary bikini bar—his excitement as infectious as an oozing herpes sore.
None of those girls could dance worth a shit; they were acrobats of despair, yawning through their sloppy pole routines and spreading eagle on stage as drunken riff-raff tossed coins instead of bills.
Jumbo’s Clown Room—the name evoked memories of my first wild night in LA after moving there in '97. Back then, it was a dive bar on ‘roids, a place where the dancers looked like they'd just stepped out of a women’s prison, channeling the spirits of Nancy Spungen and Manson’s Squeaky Fromme.
None of those girls could dance worth a shit; they were acrobats of despair, yawning through their sloppy pole routines and spreading eagle on stage as drunken riff-raff tossed coins instead of bills. Private dances were conducted behind cheap plastic shower curtains that barely hid the hardcore action, next to restrooms that could tell horror stories of their own.
Fast forward to present day. Jumbo’s is now the epicenter of hipsterdom, showcasing some of Hollywood's finest specimens—a cavalcade of alt-models and starry-eyed dreamgirls on the cusp of their big break. Where once you could fire a cannon across the bar and not hit a solitary soul, it is now standing room only, the line to get in stretching down the block.
In my revelry, I had forgotten all about Jason’s alter ego, the angry fuckin’ drunk. While I inevitably become a goofy, happy-go-lucky drunkard, Jason would morph into a loud-mouth barroom brawler.
Our last venture together had ended with Jason acting like a psycho, squaring off with a skinhead at Old Towne Pub in Pasadena, then hurling racial slurs and spitting on strangers, and finally standing in the middle of the main intersection of town surrounded by police cars and shoving a cop around. “I’m a homeowner in this town! I demand some fucking respect! Fuck you, you fucking pigs! Come and get some!!!”
Yet, somehow, these memories eluded me.
We first hit the Burgundy Room and Tiny’s KO, where the drinks flowed and the good times rolled—continued on, until at last, the Frolic Room showed us the door in a haze of stupor. Eventually, we reached Jumbo’s, where my memories blur like a watercolor on a rainy day. I recall only fragments: stepping up to the bar, sitting at the edge of the stage, a brunette dancing to the thunderous beats of AC/DC's “You Shook Me All Night Long”—and then darkness.
I found myself in Jumbo’s deserted parking lot, face-to-face with a seething Jason under the pale streetlights. The club was shuttered, its patrons gone, time itself having marched on after 2 am. Jason, rage personified, was demanding I help him find his lost possessions—his glasses, his jacket, his cell phone.
I had lost two hours of time. I didn’t remember anything; I didn’t know what went down inside the bikini bar. I didn’t know how he lost all of his shit, but it was all locked inside Jumbo’s now. He walked over and started banging on the doors. Which was pointless. It was obvious everyone was long gone.
I was convinced that Jason had put us in harm’s way and that, somehow, we had lucked out. Neither of us had suffered any injuries of any kind. No bruises, no cuts, no stab wounds, nothing. It was one of the first times I had ever blacked out from drinking too much, and it was very unsettling, to put it mildly.
I pulled out my cell phone, and I saw that I had 1% of my battery left. If I wanted to make it home alive, I needed to hail an Uber right then and there. Jason walked over to me, “What the fuck are you doing, Jon?”
“I ordered an Uber before my phone dies. I’m not getting stuck here in Hollywood in the middle of the night. And I’m not walking home to Burbank.”
“No way, man! We’ve got to find my shit. You’re not going anywhere!”
“It’s now or never. I have to head home.”
“Fuck you, man! You can’t just leave me here! I’ve got to find my phone!”
“We don’t have time,” I told him. “My phone is almost dead, and we’re going to be stuck here if we don’t get into a ride right now.”
“I’m not leaving until I find my shit, you fucking asshole!” he spat at me.
My Uber pulled up just as my phone died. Jason refused to get into the car, so I left him standing at the curb, cursing me out and flipping me off as we drove away.
Jason wrote me off and hasn’t talked to me since that night.
Years have passed. Whether Jumbo’s Clown Room tacked our portraits on its wall of infamy behind the bar, I dare not venture back to discover. That night has remained a locked chest in the attic of my mind, and sometimes, those keys are better off lost forever.
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