The Door.

The one you put your foot in.

The floor is sticky, the lighting is dim, and the furnishings had no doubt seen better days but the man who sits across from me is chipper by European standards. Born and raised in Portugal, now running the website of a nightclub in New York, he looks at my nearly blank resume and acts impressed which is more of a bone than anyone else at that point had thrown me.

Technically we weren’t supposed to get any internships until our junior year of college. Before that point, we couldn’t accrue credit for them which technically made them illegal, so most places like Sony, Warner, Live Nation, AEG, Carnegie Hall, or The Apollo were out of the question for first years. The catch was that if you only started working during your junior year, showed up with nothing but a class report card, and had zero connections, it was likely that none of those places would want anything to do with you. 

“We can’t pay you for the office work,” he said, “but Beyhan can add you to the staff schedule for $15 an hour, under the table, and you’ll get free dinner each night you work.”

Beyhan looked to be a woman in her forties with long highlighted hair and lots of makeup around the eyes. Her voice had the scratchiness of someone who had been smoking a pack a day since they were twelve and she did not like to repeat herself. She liked that I kept the coat check line moving and my space organized, and on a slow night scoffed in disbelief when I was doing my calculus homework by flashlight despite the bass shaking the walls around me. During the weekdays I’d start around 6pm and end around 2am, somehow making it to my 8am classes. On the weekends I’d start around 5pm and end around 4am. 

“We close coat check partway through the spring,” she said to me a few months into the job before opening one night. “But I like you so how do you feel about working the door?” 

The legal capacity of the club was 350. Technically 300 tickets sold equalled a sold out night. But for the big parties - the important parties - Beyhan would keep an eye on the crowd and we’d sometimes admit a full 350… or 360… or 370. Similar to when I was at coat check, I’d sit at a podium at the entrance of the venue with the long list of those who had purchased tickets, the infamous guest list, a few pictures of men I was to alert Beyhan about if they showed up, and one picture of a guy who was not to be let in under any circumstances. 

Daniel, the head bouncer, was my main counterpart. His voice didn’t match his face unless he got angry and he had a special locker in coat check to keep any confiscated guns. Knives, spray paint, and other oddities would be left with me. Keeping the line moving involved a lot of math and the ability to flip through the will call printout for the night very quickly while carrying on arguments with people on the side who insisted they were on someone’s list. I always knew there was trouble in paradise when the venue owner’s wild son (and aspiring artist) would be stuck with me, Beyhan usually saying something like, “Teach him how to be useful.”

Sometimes, usually on slower nights, I’d ask for an ID and look up to see a man flashing me a badge instead. The NYPD must have a large investigation team because I’d never see the same guy more than once. They’d ask me questions sometimes like, “Were you working here last Thursday?” Turns out that if you’re working during a show it’s difficult to hear gunshots going off a block away. 

One time a uniformed officer came in asking for a man of a certain description who had allegedly angrily busted the window of someone’s car open on his walk over. I took him a bit further inside, pointed at the drummer of the band sound checking on stage, and said, “That guy?” They took him away but he was back by the time his band’s set started. Daniel jokingly(?) called me a snitch. However, usually for these police encounters I’d call Beyhan over and she’d handle it.  

Some intoxicated people would get out of hand. A guy broke the front window with another guy’s head once. Daniel or others on his team would be quick to throw those types out usually before it got that far. After about a year, Beyhan stopped drifting by the front as much figuring I had things handled. And I did, usually, save for one time I got in the middle of a fight I probably shouldn’t have. Daniel almost killed that guy and I got a very long lecture about it.

The good thing was that if I came early, I’d get to shadow the audio engineer and learn how his gear worked as he sadly chronicled breaking up and getting back together with the same woman over and over and over and over again. I learned a little bit about lighting too. Eventually, I’d be brought to the table at the end of the night with Beyhan and the artists or their managers. She claimed that since she took a shot of whiskey whenever someone annoyed her during the evening, it was better for me to handle the spreadsheets and the numbers and the stacks of cash when it came to show settlements (the venue didn’t do credit cards at the door). I think that was an excuse she came up with to give me more exposure to the type of thing I eventually wanted to be doing. In that sense, she was an unlikely mentor. 

Working there gave me the type of experience and perspective that other students in my program were lacking. It opened doors to similar jobs at places that were marginally more upscale if you squinted and tilted your head sideways. It also put me in a few working environments where I wondered about the legality of a few things that were transpiring (counting money here, not counting money there, don’t ask who this person is, make sure no one opens that suitcase).

“I know what she looks like, but she makes problems go away and keeps her mouth shut,” my boss for a different job described to another man like I wasn’t standing right there. I’d hear that same phrasing multiple times over the years - “makes problems go away” or “fixes problems before you knew there was one” - but I was very hellbent on proving my worth to anyone who would give me a chance because what was the point of any of this if the foot I’d shoved in the door got sliced off? My teachers hardly even cared if I didn’t show up to classes. They knew classroom learning was secondary. The real thing was out there, just don’t tell them what that thing is unless it’s a junior or senior year internship for credit. 

Nonetheless, the big breaks I had wanted so much at the beginning - Live Nation, Carnegie Hall, Sony - never came. Walking into the giant office building of the one interview I managed to land with them prior to my last semester in college had me feeling horribly out of place. The woman on the other side of the desk looked confused as I laid out my entire life plan for her, presented my knowledge of the industry, and conveyed my enthusiasm for being considered for such a great internship in the first place. All the while I was thinking of what my college advisor had told me at the very start of my time as a student: “You could be one in a million but there’d still be eight more of you in New York.” At that point, everyone except Beyhan made it clear to me that I’d be easily replaceable if it came down to it. I briefly wondered if her slice of underground nightlife was as far as I’d ever truly make it.

“Last summer we just brought in the kid of a guy in the company. He was an idiot but did alright,” the woman told me, the view outside of her corner office was just that of other skyscrapers. “Though I am a bit confused why you’d want to work in a place like this.” To me, this was like asking someone why they’d want to go to Harvard. The elevators here were literally lined with gold. But in response, I just reiterated some of the same things I’d said trying to make it more clear. “What I mean is,” she continued, reading off the list of clubs I’d worked in, “the culture here is very different and I’m not sure you’d fit in.”

“Fuck that bitch,” Beyhan said to me as I sipped on my usual - a Shirley Temple. “You’re too smart for them.” 

I shrugged, got up from the bar, and prepared to open for another night. 

I didn’t know it then, but this was all just the beginning.