The Dolphin Hotel

Why do I keep coming to this place? What's really here for me at all? What makes this any different than the bar across town where I don't know anyone anymore? What's the difference between the people I don't feel comfortable approaching and the ones who tell me anything they think I want to hear?

The room is hazy, smoke-filled, and dry. I shake the doorman's hand, sit at the bar, drink my beer, and listen to the music. I've been here enough times that half the people know my name. I don't even have to order anything anymore, they just put it in front of me.

There are better places to go, but I kinda like it when Destiny smiles at me

(and Dasha, and Asia, and of course Bianca)

I wonder why I live alone here.
I wonder why we spend these nights together.
Is this the room I'll live my life forever?

There's only one DJ. There used to be two, but they caught the other one skimming the cash register. The one that's left hasn't had a day off in three weeks, so whenever I come in he calls me over and all but begs me to apply for the job. Just one or two nights a week, just so he can get a little rest. Sometimes I think it would be fun -- but I’ve heard that line before. The last guy who said it to me stayed two days and then quit himself.

Then I was the one who couldn’t catch a day off.

There's this fantastic novel I read a long time ago (I can't seem to remember the title) -- God comes back to the world quietly, but is disappointed with what he finds in mankind and ends up wandering the deserts outside of Las Vegas. There he meets a man who flies a crop duster for a living but wishes he were doing more with his life. After a long series of events they decide to trade jobs, and we're left with this scene of God flying off across the desert, happier than he remembers being in a long, long time.

...What was the name of that book?

You want to know the weirdest thing? In the back of this bar, behind the poles is this area that's sort of fenced off by a railing. There's a fountain that sprays water into the air, and behind that, I swear to crop duster is a statue of a zebra standing in front of a palm tree. The palm tree is decorated with white lights. Every night I'm in this place I end up staring at this thing, wondering why it's here.

This club used to be a honky-tonk. When the crowds dried up they closed it down and then someone else bought it and opened it up like this. They never even took the old pictures off the wall. But it's not like knowing this fact helps me at all, because I can't think of any reason why a statue of a zebra would be inside of a country and western bar either.

I might as well be sitting at the bottom of the well with Toru Okada, searching for Kumiko in the darkness while the water slowly rises all around me.

Of course, only I would be thinking of things like this in a room full of half-naked women.

I wonder why we waste our lives here,
When we could run away to paradise.
But I am held in some invisible vice

And I can't get away
To live and die in L.A.

If I could, I would walk right up to that zebra and ask him why he is there,

But I already know what his response will be, and
I don't really have an answer for that question yet.

[Listening to: Deftones,"Hole in the Earth"]