Monday, August 24, 2009

Disco Inferno


This is a story of London underground, a night of music and mayhem and leather and second-hand smoke. It is the story of Bob’s worst diaper change ever.

During Bob’s first year, Jeff’s band was on tour. The baby and I were often with him. Tagging along to shows was almost always a pleasant experience. We played with toys in the dressing room, watched the band from the wings, or found a comfortable spot in the audience.

That night in London, the band was scheduled to play in a quaint nightclub that was located in what used to be a wine cellar, back in the Middle Ages. The venue had a small stage in one room connected by a labyrinth of brick hallways leading to a separate supper club at the other end. The band played their first set of lovely folk songs to a thinky, I-love-grad-school crowd. Little Bob in his sound blocking headphones slept sweetly in the Bjorn on my chest.

After the set, we were ushered to a back room to have dinner and wait until it was time for the band to play again. When the band eventually went back for a second sound check, Bob and I stayed behind. After about 20 minutes, I was hastily escorted from the green room by the management and told that I would have to wait elsewhere since they needed the holding area for another group. During this down time, I was alarmed to find that the room between where we had been and where we needed to be had blossomed into an instant disco. Not a whisper-y, laid back, jazzy nightclub, but a strobe lights, SexyBack-extended-dance-mix, and bare chests disco. This was not the "adjoining supper club" that was described in the itinerary. Bob and I were suddenly on the dance floor.

Then Bob took a giant dump and started screaming.

I was forced to part the moist and pulsing crowd with a wailing infant (not that he could be heard above the roar of the Beyonce) as I searched for a ladies room. I followed a “WC” sign past the bar.

The bathroom was actually a men’s room, the size of a car trunk. The inside of this little closet was painted black, including the floors and Bob’s pooped up diaper smelled sweet by comparison. Shockingly, there was no diaper changing station in this tiny corner of creepy-stinky. With no other option, I spread a changing pad and 2 cloth diapers on the ground and laid my darling baby down on the filth and sewage carpeted floor. I crouched over him, trying to maintain my three-inch-wedge-heeled balance. At that moment the song on the dance floor changed to 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready For This, the bass line causing the “fixtures” in the commode to shake. There was graffiti on the wall directly at my eye level that read, “Jess is an ass hat.” As I took off Bob’s diaper, his little legs were churning and his tiny heels where flinging poo on to the walls. (To clarify, flinging more poo, on to the walls.) This situation had not been covered in What to Expect the First Year. 2 Unlimited asked again, “Ya’ll ready for this?”

As the baby and I shoved our way back through the crowd, a gentleman in a vest with no shirt was kind enough to yell above the din and inquire about the type of derelict parent who would bring an infant to a club.

I might not usually take parenting advice from a guy on ecstasy with a tribal tattoo on his face but I was feeling weepy and jet lagged and he had a point.

The next night, Bob and I skipped the show and stayed back at the hotel. We watched an Eastenders marathon and ate little cakes.

4 comments:

  1. I believe it was seminal experiences like this that has made Bob the astute music aficionado he has become.

    That and his love for pithy British comedy.

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  2. seeking the peace and comfort of the Queen Vic in Albert Square hey luv?

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  3. Okay. That made Tuscany look doable.

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