The Night People

“The Night Life” doesn’t refer to the in-crowd that hangs out at nightclubs, the theater and parties. The Night Life is lived by the waiters and performers who make the other one possible. When the play is over and the bars close, the night people emerge into an empty city. Counting their tips they decide between supper or seeking to be themselves amused and waited on in after-hours (and usually illegal) clubs hiding on the silent streets. Exhilarated from a successful performance and exhausted from a long evenings drudgery a strong kinship exists almost without any status conflict between performer and server. Others can go out after supper; night people can only go out before breakfast or go home. In either case, eventually home they go as the darkness fades, street lights go out and the first of the day workers yawn their way along the waking streets.

What is that pale half-life after midnight when we let it all hang out? I don’t think it can be described well enough for anyone who hasn’t experienced it. When a day is sunset to sunrise, you definitely see the world differently. A certain distain grows because they don’t know what you know, don’t experience what you’d seen; live farther from the edge of reality. Ordinary people, “customers,” “fans;” don’t count the way the other night people count. They seem conventional, stodgy; they can’t understand, they are out of touch with the reality you know. What the night people don’t understand, of course, is they are out of touch with the reality the rest of the world sees.

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