If you find yourself on the east side of L.A. while having a complete emotional collapse, Club Tee Gee is the place to be! Located in trendy Atwater Village and co-owned by Mr. Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers, Gutter Twins, my future ex-husband), offers a calming dark interior, inspired crafted cocktails with classic favorites along with cutting-edge drinks, and a glitter-covered ceiling to remind you that everyone’s a star in L.A. County! The staff is top-notch, knowing when a 50-year-old needs the ego boost of a carding. Bartenders go the extra step, addressing patron tears as tiredness and cutting off the over-served with such subtlety as to not even be noticed. The real sad sacks love Two Step Tuesday, featuring a live classic (1980s and 1990s) country band for putting the tears in your beer. But no worries if you’re losing your goddamn mind before the band arrives—a thoughtfully curated jukebox that includes the Velvet Underground, The Stooges, and T.Rex will help you through the horror that your life has become. 5 stars.
I lost my goddamn mind in Los Angeles.
But first, I bundled up against frigid mountain wind and drove north, where the edges of L.A. county fold into mountains that, in the first week of April after a winter filled with rain and snow erupted in a super bloom that included my favorite flower, poppies. While driving up to Antelope Valley, “Nothing but Flowers” by the Talking Heads came on just as I noticed the swaths of orange covering the hillsides and crevices. The song’s hardly a light-hearted romp about a super bloom, but a post-apocalyptic whine. In other words, perfect for living In These Times®.
After seeing what was likely a once-in-my-lifetime floral event, spiraling in a joyous drive down the mountain, and a delightful afternoon coffee with a friend, something happened.
Actually, something happened while I was waiting for my friend at Sightglass in Hollywood. All the tables were full, and I was holding a ceramic mug of a vanilla latte that rattled on its saucer as I tried to balance it with my computer bag while I cruised the dining room, spotting a pair about to leave their two-top. I sat on a couch beside the table when a Hollywood Type dude about my age (just imagine the type if you haven’t had the experience. Dude was exactly what you’re imagining.) Even though he didn’t have his drink yet, he butted past the couch to stand inches from the table before the guests even stood up.
”Are we jockeying for the same table?” I asked. Sweetly. But not so sweet that my voice didn’t convey the, “Back off I was here first” edge.
He grunted at me and looked away.
And then, as soon as the first person stood up, he slithered into her chair.
“Well okay, then,” I said. Loudly. Because I am a Midwesterner, goddamnit. Passive-aggressive warfare is my birthright. Everyone nearby—all women—looked his way and glared until he snorted again and vacated the table.
It was funny, seeing him be so sleazy and entitled, crumbling while just barely being called out for his rudeness. My friend arrived and we had a good laugh and a lovely hour or so of coffee and conversation.
But shortly after I left, I got a text. The sender and content aren’t necessary to the story. All you need to know is I took this text as absolutely the wrong way as humanly possible. The text, like most texts, lacked context. My brain took that text and tacked it onto something my friend and I had discussed.
And right there, on the corner of Melrose and Western, I absolutely lost my shit in the form of sobbing. Those gulping-for-air suffocation sobs, coupled with tears I didn’t know I had the capability to produce, having been dehydrated for a few days due to LA’s dry air, drinking more coffee than water, and having two mezcal Pimm’s cups for dinner at Club Tee Gee the night before. I should have been sandy-stoic, but instead, I was tears and snot and wails, creeping through evening rush hour traffic, thinking I was losing one of my favorite people.
I’d planned to return to my Silver Lake AirBnB but fuck it, it’s happy hour and I’m going to Club Tee Gee. Because it was 6 pm and I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting alone on my bed, sobbing until I fell asleep. I wanted help but had no idea what that looked like for this situation.
I managed to turn 50 years old without ever being the lonely woman sobbing at the bar. I did not make it to 50.5. Missed it by three weeks.
First I sat in my car, trying to get my shit together. I have a lifetime of practice in willing myself to stop. fucking. crying. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable with my feelings, don’t want to cause a stir or get more attention than I’m due just because I’m being dramatic.
But after 45 minutes of sobbing in my car, I gave up and got out, making one last-ditch effort to pull myself together by focusing all my attention on photographing a sign in one of the trees.
The doorman watched as I took the photo. I wondered if he’d been watching me in my car the whole time he sat on his barstool that propped open the door, letting the wicked wind into the bar. I justified that he’d probably seen me bawling so what difference did it make?
I’m going to need to see your i.d., ma’am.
Perhaps my swollen eyes did away with my eye wrinkles, or he took me to be far younger because no 50-year-old tattooed big ol’ broad would blubber like a 22-year-old outside a bar for grown-ass adults. Whatever his reason, I thanked him.
I took the closest seat to the door, at the end of the bar where I leaned and pushed hard in hopes of willing myself through the wall. Crashing through into nothingness, numbed my happy hour-priced Old Fashioneds that I ordered one after the other. I would have preferred the mezcal Pimm’s cups from the night before but for the quantity I intended to drink, the smoke from the mezcal would wake me with heartburn at 4 am and I’d regret not just drinking some lye instead.
“Tired?” the bartender asked. I was rubbing my eyes with both hands to hide my tears when he sat my second cocktail in front of me.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s call it that.”
And so it went, wallowing to a dark and beautiful soundtrack in a dark and beautiful room. Looking up not only gave me a reprieve from tears soaking the front of my dress but gave me a smile, what with being a black abyss sprinkled with silver glitter. These are the only stars in L.A. I give a shit about.
A third cocktail arrived even though I hadn’t ordered it, courtesy of a woman and man sitting down the bar. And that’s when my tears stopped. Somewhat. As I raised my glass to them.
She was about my age. She was about my degree of drunk. She came over to say she was sorry for whatever I was going through, and that someone so beautiful shouldn’t be so sad.
She and her husband invited me back to their place, but there is no level of inebriation that would reward them for seeing me across the bar and digging my vibe. Which was “horrifically sad and probably desperate.” I listened when Oprah said to not let strangers take you to a second location. I may be drunk but I’m no fool.
I didn’t start crying again when they left, having sufficiently numbed myself from the intense pain I felt over something that necessitated posting poems online about my broken heart, the never-ending chasm of loneliness that I always manage to fall into by my own emotional clumsiness. Watch where you’re going, dumbass.
You want to know how to tell when it’s time to switch to club soda and try to remember who the fuck you are? It’s when the bartender lights a prayer candle in front of you. And it’s from a mezcal distillery.
I am Robin Wheeler, goddamnit! I’m loud and I finally learned how to cry in public, and I’m not good at holding my liquor but I’m trying and who the FUCK gave me this tequila shot?
Okay, maybe I’m Robin Wheeler, a middle-aged mom and marketing copywriter who runs away from home to magical cities that make me feel like I’m alive and not just living, that I’m in motion instead of the stasis I’ve been in, one way or another, since busting my knees. I’m the 50-year-old girl who doesn’t feel I’ve earned the term “woman” most days because I’m just trying to figure shit out, and reverts to a coping mechanism from when I was 30 years younger when my feelings are absolutely too much.
The bartenders don’t ask me if I’d like another drink, but they’re kind and keep the pints of club soda coming. I gulp them into my desiccated body, washing away the debris that collects. The salt and dried snot, the sawdust from drilling into my own heart after misreading the instructions.
I stayed until I was able to safely leave the bar, enjoying the band, even singing a little bit of Shania with a bartender not much older than my kid, laughing at ourselves.
As I walked out the door, I stopped by the doorman. Not much taller than me and clad in leather and gray whiskers that made it impossible to read his expression, I thanked him for carding me those many hours before. I needed that boost. I knew he smiled because I saw his eyes crinkle. He offered a fist to me, and I bumped it, his two skull rings pressing into my fingers.
I left L.A. the next day as scheduled, not seeing any of my friends and fighting myself to not take it personally and failing. A run-in with an extremely rude porter at the Phoenix airport, and landing in St. Louis at almost two a.m. were fitting for the trip where I lost my motherfucking mind.
And for what?
I would find out a week later that I had completely misinterpreted the text. I hadn’t angered the person I thought I had, with my ability to be far too much even when sober, never mind during my first foray into drunkenness in … many years. A misunderstanding borne of my own imagination and the trial and error of overthinking.
Funny thing is, a few nights before I found out how wrong I’d been, a friend spent an evening cheering me up with witty banter loaded with innuendo and in-jokes—my favorite brand of humor. At the end of the night I said, “But seriously, thank you. I had a really shitty week and I needed that.” They thanked me, sent a bashful emoji.
The next day I got a terse response from a text I sent this friend. Then nothing.
Two and a half months later, and still nothing.
Hurt was coming. I just got the direction, time, and source wrong.
I’m fine. Still baffled at a grown-ass adult ghosting out, but that’s not mine to figure out. And no, I haven’t run off to any bars to drown any sorrows. Mostly because Club Tee Gee isn’t in St. Louis. And because one night of bar-crying is enough for me. For now.
October 22, 2023—I’m returning to Tee Gee to celebrate my birthday. Maybe with friends. Maybe solo. But without tears. Without having to be cut off. And hopefully without almost getting abducted. I’ll write another review then, and I’m sure it’ll be glowing.
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A fabulous read, Robin! We've all been there ...the goddamned dark night of the soul!
Looking forward to next October 22!