Popination Regurgitation

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: a guest post about an anonymous hotel bar in Atlanta.

NOTE FROM ZUKO: It’s been a while since I put up a guest post written by my husband, from off our old shared blog. On it, we wrote about bars we were at and Bars of Yore alike, and we wrote under the pen names of Seamus and Peony, respectively. As last week and weekend was full of such things as a graduating kid, visiting folks, and said husband’s birthday celebrations, I haven’t managed to get to a fresh pub for a Popination. And so I picked out this charming piece from a Bar of Yore written by ‘Seamus’ back in 2017. It wasn’t from yore then, it was about a current business trip he’d taken to Atlanta. But it’s yore now. It’s funny, too, how much Hiraeth I found in this pre-pandemic Musing of his, almost 3 years-ish before Covid knocked us all upside the head, which is now getting to be a long time ago itself. But there was still Hiraeth in our hearts, it seems, back in the Before Times. I’ve shared this piece of his with you, with his permission, as today’s Popination. Please to enjoy, and stay tuned for a fresh new personal Popination next week.

In Search of Futures Past

by Seamus, 2017

~

The hotel was of a grand but obsolete design that rose twenty two-stories around a vast open area, to a sky blue rotunda far above. Brightly illuminated elevators moved up and down the outside of a tremendous column. From anywhere within it, it defied coherent scale. Walking out of any of its rooms, you found yourself staring down at improbably tiny people, or across a distance that felt ridiculous. Standing inside of it, it was easy to feel as though you were you were looking at an architect’s drawing, rather than the real thing.

I’d been in hotels like that before, in the Persian Gulf region, where space isn’t such a tight commodity and ostentation can still be seen as something of an intrinsic good. And no doubt this hotel was once a crown jewel of the southern city that houses it now. But they don’t really build them like that anymore – at least not here. That open, central space could have housed two good-sized hotels, each packed with revenue-bearing rooms. Though impactful to every one of the senses, it felt wasteful too. A bravura gesture toward an expansive future that never came.

I’m always fascinated by that feeling – the sense of being part of a long-dead vision of the future, now no more than a poignant window into the delusions of a long-gone past.

But I was there for business, not rumination. There being work to do, my colleagues and I headed down to the bar and took seats near a very tall, very fabulous drag queen. This individual was there alone and was, I could quickly tell, in no mood. We weren’t there to interfere with anyone, but the poor dear still had to deal with touristic photo requests and the attentions of several apparent fans on the staff. We left well enough alone.

Instead we got things done, and I surveyed the scene. Bars in busy business hotels are mating grounds, but to play you’ve got to be fast. Speed and initiative are the name of the game. As we worked, I watched the drill play out as I’ve seen it many times before. A woman appears at the bar; she needn’t be particularly young or particularly striking. She need only be alone, and willing to play the game. Suitors appear nearly instantly. I watched a middle-aged man try gamely for a forty-something woman of the managerial classes, only to be outmaneuvered by a younger, more energetic lothario. A second woman appeared and it all happened even faster. Judging by body language, hair-flips and drink selections, I suspected successful outcomes for all involved, assuming that’s the appropriate definition of success.

I could never do it. I was never quick enough, nor possessed of the right kind of generic good looks. I have my charms, but they take time and patience to implement. I was never a pick up guy, and as the years go by the idea lacks all appeal. Ascending that antiquated elevator only to fumble with an unfamiliar body in a room you can’t quite darken while a humid air conditioner chugs away, ignominiously entangled in the skyline of some far-away town. Making whatever effortful attempts are required to prove whatever needs proving, only to take a slate of meetings the next day, hung over and biblically ashamed… okay, maybe I do know a thing or two about it. Not that much, but more than I need to. Enough to know that it doesn’t sound all that great now.

No, I withdrew from the bar, texted a couple of photos to Peony and retired at the first opportunity. Ascending to my room alone, I spared a glance over the rail at the still-busy bar more than two hundred feet below. And it was like looking into a very specific past, but a past that couldn’t look back at me. It never could have – the eyes of its architects were fixed on a future far more grand than I and those like me could ever have delivered. Turning from the abyss, I slid my key card into the lock, closed my door and bolted it fast for sleep.

~

~Here’s a cool thing: I asked ‘Seamus’ if he remembered what hotel this would have been, and that I remembered vaguely that it was someplace in Atlanta. He, of course, had no idea. But then, he asked me when this post was first posted again, and he looked way back in his phone’s image bank. And check out what he found! Now, we still don’t know the name of this hotel, but isn’t this so cool that we have a real image from this particular trip, regardless?