I’m at a multiplex watching the new Looney Tunes movie (go see it, it’s amazing!) when Mick texts that his 90s band is playing at the Bottle, says he’ll put me on the list. An invitation is catnip to me. It’s so rare now, that I almost never say no.

Another friend once called this thing of old bands reuniting “zombie bands”. The internet won’t let any band die. That guy’s 90s band recently put out a retrospective box set and played the requisite reunion shows. The world will always make us eat our words.

I’m at the dumb pizza place next to the Bottle. It’s where Bite Cafe used to be so it always feels like haunted burial ground when I go in there. At least I don’t tell the counter person I used to work here twenty-five years ago anymore. Mick is in a booth finishing his meal with his bandmates. We say hello and he says he’ll be right back.

We haven’t seen each other since he played here two years ago. He looks weary. He had to get up at 5am to catch a flight from NYC. His drummer is still en route from Detroit. The whole thing feels like a slog. He tells me he hasn’t played live with any of his non-zombie bands in over a year.

I give him a copy of my Moby Dick after he says he never finished the book. I’m happy it’s out in the world now. We say goodbye so Mick can restring his guitar before playing. Says it’s been a few months and that pushing it is just asking for trouble.

The next night I’m scheduled to fill in at the bar. I haven’t pulled a shift in three months and stupidly don’t realize when I agree to it that it’s St. Patrick’s Day. I get there early, anticipating it’ll be a zoo. It’s busy but nothing crazy. Only thing is Paolo isn’t showing up. We keep looking at the clock and he keeps not walking through the door. I’m supposed to be the second bartender. Skyler, the afternoon tender, finally agrees I need to hop on in Paolo’s stead.

Word comes that Paolo has food poisoning and won’t make it in. Luckily, Tim lives just down the street. He walks in before it strikes 9pm. It was a little ragged but we get through the night in one piece. At some point, I somehow drop a martini shaker top so deep behind the beer taps, I have to lie prone on the floor and stretch as far as I can to fish it out.

I ask Tim what it’s like to play in his old band and he says it’s the best job in the world. But it is a job. It’s not the thing that makes him want to get up in the morning. He says he feels lucky that he gets to do his thing. Feels bad for people who only get asked to recreate things they did decades ago.

It’s a thing that’s very hard for me to imagine. The closest thing is the times when somebody asks for the kind of painting I made thirty years ago and all I can offer them is to make a copy. It’s a hollow thing done almost entirely for money. It’s like being a cover band of yourself.

There’s an older couple at the bar. They’ve been here for hours. The guy keeps trying to engage Tim or I in conversation with comments that ride the line between knowing and obnoxious. He looks vaguely familiar. On his way out he gives me a handful of tiny stickers that say STEPHEN DEDALUS IS A TURD. The next afternoon I do a little internet searching and determine the guy is probably an artist who used to be famous for making fake stamps.

I text Tim about it and he writes back He wanted to be recognized.

We all do. One way or another.

I wrote a review of Nathan Knapp’s Daybook.

If you’d like a non-Bezo’s Bazaar option to buy a copy of The Marvel Universe, your time has come and my shop is now a store once again.