Back Alley Blackout
Nothing about this scene made sense to me when I came to. I always guard my saxophone with my life, but here I was with the pricey chunk of brass strapped to my neck with my back posted up against a greasy back-alley dumpster behind some nightclub downtown. And in a sane frame of mind, I doubt that I would have ever compromised the brown suede jacket I was wearing with the old fried grease smell of this black, slimy, graffiti-covered metal waste bin. But there I was.
I caught a lot of strange looks rounding the block on 16th street by the RTD station. I tried to not think about what I must’ve looked like so I could focus on how to get back to the club. It slowly came back to me where I had been, but there was still no memory of how I’d gotten to the alley. Back at 1515 Market, my band had just finished the set and everyone was wrapping cords and packing up instruments. I stumbled past the long, skinny bar, and walked up to the stage.
In a “Cheers”-like Norm! kind of way, I was welcomed back to the conscious world by my bandmates. They explained that I had slinked backwards and off the stage during the first of the last two songs of the night, nearly tripping and falling face first into the kitchen. They all chalked it up to me having one too many bourbon and club sodas.
Humorous, maybe. Strange, for sure. But in reality, it’s serious. Blacking out and gaining consciousness is alarming. If you’ve ever fallen asleep behind the wheel, you’ve had a glimpse into how this feels. You snap awake when you start to drift or when someone honks at you. It’s scary, because you don’t remember drifting off. So if you can drift off behind the wheel, you can drift off anywhere. It’s a very vulnerable feeling.
I caught a lot of strange looks rounding the block on 16th street by the RTD station. I tried to not think about what I must’ve looked like so I could focus on how to get back to the club. It slowly came back to me where I had been, but there was still no memory of how I’d gotten to the alley. Back at 1515 Market, my band had just finished the set and everyone was wrapping cords and packing up instruments. I stumbled past the long, skinny bar, and walked up to the stage.
In a “Cheers”-like Norm! kind of way, I was welcomed back to the conscious world by my bandmates. They explained that I had slinked backwards and off the stage during the first of the last two songs of the night, nearly tripping and falling face first into the kitchen. They all chalked it up to me having one too many bourbon and club sodas.
Humorous, maybe. Strange, for sure. But in reality, it’s serious. Blacking out and gaining consciousness is alarming. If you’ve ever fallen asleep behind the wheel, you’ve had a glimpse into how this feels. You snap awake when you start to drift or when someone honks at you. It’s scary, because you don’t remember drifting off. So if you can drift off behind the wheel, you can drift off anywhere. It’s a very vulnerable feeling.
