The bouncer is bored. Oh my god, the bouncer is so fucking bored. And here you come along, and you’re anything but. You’re hyped. You’re jazzed. You’re buzzing with nervous, anticipatory energy. Well fuck you, because Jayson is working tonight, and he has no use for you or any of the other boots-’n-cats losers you’re in line with.
Did you think you were different? Oh god, you did, didn’t you? You thought that just because you’re not in a gaggle of screeching, miniskirt-tugging girls, that you’re any less contemptible? That because you’re quietly, attentively waiting with all your documentation ready, loathe to present even the slightest speed bump to the smooth, efficient entry line that Jayson is overseeing, that you’re an exception of some kind?
Look at him. Look at that ruddy beard, that Viking physique, those icy, appraising eyes. Does that look like a man who wants to discuss tonight’s coat check availability? Do you know how many work t-shirts Jayson has? (All of them are desperately unequal to the task of containing his arm meat.) He has seven. Seven. Jayson has worked here for two fucking years, despite the fact that this was only supposed to be a month-long gig while the other thing got sorted out. Two years of Saturday nights full of shivering, chattering idiots, and incessant, blaring beats pouring into the alley where he checks IDs.
You are all the same to him. And all the electricity you have been generating for the last hour is going to short-circuit the moment Jayson tells you that no, you can’t pay with a credit card. Your choices are
1) pay with cash (which you did not bring)
2) scan the QR code on the poster to pay online (only, you didn’t bring your phone, because you didn’t want to hold it while you dance)
3) use the ATM to take out cash with your credit card, because you did not bring your debit card (but you never set up a pin to take cash off your credit card, did you?)
And when it dawns on you that you are fucked, and that you’ll have to trek the 30 minutes back home to fetch the kind of legal tender this motherfucking bar will actually accept, and another 30 back in order to catch a performer you’ve seen half a dozen times already but would still really like to—Jayson will be impassive. He will be the very picture of apathy. Because nothing could be more boring than someone with whom he has nothing in common getting bounced by their own failure to plan, from a place that means so little to him, he won’t even keep their shirts when he quits.
Which will be soon. It fucking has to be.