Going Out After Dark

The complete guide to living your best life as a mole

I don’t go outside after sunset, except to let the dogs out or if I need to walk on the lawn for pre-bedtime grounding therapy.

I sure as hell don’t climb behind the wheel of a car.

But there’s a Cher tribute down at The Vapors nightclub, and I feel a burning desire to sing along to “If I Could Turn Back Time.” Wouldn’t ya know, the show is happening after 8pm.

Given the linearity of time, it won’t end till nearly 11, when by all accounts it will be even darker outside.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t consider such audacious foolishness as to attend a Cher tribute where there will be drinking, carousing, young people, and possibly at least one person dealing psychedelics.

But two weeks ago I bought my husband an early birthday present and took him to see the community theatre production of Mama Mia! I had no idea what the heck Mama Mia was, except that Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan apparently sang their way through a film version, and it took place on a Greek Island.

I had no idea it would feature songs by Abba!

I was clueless that the cast would include an 80-year-old man (I live in a community full of geezers) playing a 21-year-old.

I couldn’t have known Mama would be played by a former 80s rock star.

It was a blast. And now I can hear the head-banging echoes of my youth, or is that music coming from The Vapors?

“Take a chance on me! Take a chance on me!”

Ever since moving out of the big city, I avoid any semblance of nightlife, but it’s not for the reasons you’d think. The roads here are dark as the inside of a dog and much twistier. Also, COVID. As if that weren’t enough, I don’t drink.

But none of that was going on when I was a city-dweller and I didn’t go out then, either. I cannot lie; I am a born stick-in-the-mud and as soon as I crested 40 I embraced the homebody lifestyle.

So why go out? HBO has plenty of great movies, and I can usually talk my husband into a rousing game of backgammon.

Once a month I go to church game night.

But who am I kidding? I’m not that old. I don’t have night blindness or need to take meds. Why am I so opposed to stepping into my vehicle after dark?

When I give this topic deeper thought, the answer is staring me in the face.

Every year of life that slips by teaches you what an idiot you are. You reflect — involuntarily and while cringing— on some of the stupider sh*t you did in your teens, and twenties, and thirties. And, in my particular pathetic case, my forties.

Like the time my friend Linda talked me into getting into the van of a guy she’d just met at a bar so we could smoke a doobie. Then, having survived a probable serial killer, I drove home half-drunk and stoned on my motorcycle.

Or that other time when Linda convinced me I should come see her boyfriend Pedro play drums at some club downtown, but we ended up running from tear gas because it was the same night the Broncos finally won the Super Bowl.

I was up all night and staggered into my secretary job the next day with red eyes and righteous anger at how the fuzz harassed us.

None of my co-workers had any sympathy. I was 31 at the time.

Come to think of it, Linda was a bit of a troublemaker.

Getting back to my point, which is that leaving home after dark rarely leads to anything good.

Then again, we’re talking about some lady belting out “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” while I watch Millenials sip cocktails I can no longer digest.

Nostalgia is a heavy drug. Mama Mia, here we go again!