Wildflower in the Wind

Oh how I love Tuesday nights.

Every week I look forward to Tuesday night. Monday nights are the worst because I know that there are only a few hours until I have to get through Tuesday. Sunday nights are pretty bad too because I've got Monday and Tuesday ahead of me. But Tuesday nights are amazing.

Tuesday nights are the start of my weekend. My only class on Wednesday is at 4:00 so I can stay up as late as I please. Tuesday nights are rocking around here. There's the whole excitement of getting ready and the stream of neon lights as we parade between bars. But sometimes I stay in. I stay in my pajamas and eat way too much sweet stuff and watch TV on my computer and fall asleep with a smug smirk on my face because I know I'm not going to wake up with a massive hangover.

***

I have three weeks left here. I spent the first month hitting the big bars and clubs with my roommates. I spent the second month traveling and/or sick. And then I found it - with my weeks dwindling away I discovered the campus bars and the people who haunt them on the right nights. Thursday nights is open mic nite at the New Bar. It's all chrome and mahogany and geometric with a finely polished bar, tall bar stools and cute bartenders. The lights are dim and yellow and the crowd is just too cool for wherever they happen to be. The musicians all know each other and gather toward the front, packed into a few booths and the small tables. Everyone else just relaxes with a pint and carries on their conversations between songs.

The Old Bar is the perfect foil to the New Bar. The stools are mismatched and upholstered with what looks like the couch of a 97 year old spinster. The bar looks more like a diner counter than a bar and the wooden parquet floor is perfectly worn away everywhere except underneath the raised stage where it gleams. It's louder and rowdier even though the same people are there. The lights are full and harsh and the speakers look like they could have been attached to the ceiling with duct tape.

The Live Music Society (who knew there was one of those? Not me obviously...) had their annual songwriter's contest semi-finals there tonight and a friend of mine was playing. And it was fantastic. It was fantastic to have so many different styles thrown at me in one night. It was fantastic to be surrounded by this group of people who all loved the music and all knew each other and all yelled out their support. It was fantastic to sit and listen to some really talented musicians pour their hearts out through a microphone. It was fantastic to finally get blown away by my friend's music (it was the first gig of his that I've been too... oops.) and it was fantastic to listen to him play one of the sweetest songs while sitting next to the girl I'm pretty sure he wrote it for/about.

And it was nice that I could do that for free and then come back and enjoy my quiet, indulgent Tuesday night. After all, gotta rest up for Wednesday and Thursday (which will, of course, start at the New Bar).