Have you ever been to Nocturne?
 It’s this little jazz spot. It was this little jazz spot. You would never really see it if you weren’t looking for it. The patchwork door blends in to the wall surrounding it. The blue sign is unassuming, as if it’s only purpose were to remind old patrons it was still there. It disappears in daylight, and becomes faintly visible by nightfall.
But once you get inside, there is something otherworldly about the darkness of that nightclub. The way the cigarette smoke weaves it way through the quietly breathing wooden beams, and dances across the mortar of the bricks, and through the shafts of soft blue light. The music in the same lithe way tangles itself around you, and you let it tug the thin strands that are your feelings until they swirl into the blackness of the hazy club,. Nothing is definite, it’s like looking at the pastel reflection of the world that you see in the wavering water of a river. There are no lines, no definition, just impression, and you  just melt into the darkness, or it melts into you, but you don't care because you are nothing but your senses, your consciousness visceral, comprised purely of stimulus. You let yourself drown there. That’s the only way I can describe it, drowning. I remember stepping out that club one night, with the smells and sounds outstretching their languid tendrils from the door behind me, twirling themselves around my fingers, seeping through my clothes, coaxing me back in. After two or three strides the sound and warmth faded and in perfect time was the crescendo of the real world.
I would stay up late some nights wondering if I dreamt it all. If the place was just a hazy mirage. A manufactured memory from too half forgotten places I’d been. The next night, just to prove it, I would go back. By wonderful accident or shrewd design only one of the five streetlights were lit in the parking lot. I would close my eyes, and let my senses lead me back through that familiar doorway, into that mindless beauty I’d come to love.
	I endeavored to go there less and less. I would tell myself I didn’t have a life I needed to escape anymore. I had a consciousness I was proud to embody, I didn’t need to make a habit of going and watching all of that drift into obscurity and incomprehension. I remember this one night. I couldn’t really tell you if I subconsciously drove there, or if it was a complete coincidence. For whatever reason, my car turned onto the street, and I didn’t notice where I was until the sign’s blue neon veil washed over me and my car and revealed my desire to be back in that club. I looked over affectionately at the little unassuming sign. It wasn’t trying to coax anyone to come inside. Everyone who approached that door was there for a reason. And they would only faintly remember what that reason was when they came blinking out of the darkness and warmth however many hours later. I thought I was stronger than this. But as I tilted my head back, bathed in the glow of the sign, I tried to smell it. I tried to hear it. I imagined sitting in there. Becoming nothing. Escaping, for just those few hours, that blended together like a dream, always leaving you disoriented when you stepped out into the world again. I had kept away from this street, knowing that if I saw it, saw that beckoning door, that I wouldn’t be strong enough to resist. I would park my car without really meaning too. I would walk inside without wanting to. I would go and drown. Finally, I pressed the accelerator lightly, my feet hesitant. The car almost remorsefully pulled away, as if it was walking from a tombstone after saying its final words to the epitaph, hesitant to leave anything unsaid. The veil of welcoming blue light was pulled from my face, and the car, and sat on the slick road. Waiting.
	All these years later, I heard that it went out of business. The building torn down. I felt so guilty. I never went and said goodbye. Those years ago, on principle, I left abruptly, and never returned. It was a firm act of will. I never stepped through those doors again. I felt as if the club missed me, it called to me that night, wanting me to return, just once. I didn’t. I pulled away and never looked back, and it died without me. It withered into nonexistence. The bricks have been hauled away. Those wooden beams tuned into woodchips. There is nothing left but my memory. That is its only remaining existence. And even in my memory, the edges blur, and the parts without edges fade, until I’ll wake up sometimes and wonder if it was real. Was there a Nocturne? Had I been there? Was it just a recurring dream I remembered as reality? It was real, right? Have you ever heard of it? That’s what’s really eating me. I have no welcoming door and comfortable indefinition to go back to to prove it was there. All I have is my memories, and contradicting doubts, and at night, I’ll think about walking up to that door. I’ll think about the cigarette smoke. It all seems too hazy, too vague. So it couldn’t have been real. Right?









Have you ever been to Nocturne?
 It’s this little jazz spot. It was this little jazz spot. You would never really see it if you weren’t looking for it. The patchwork door blends in to the wall surrounding it. The blue sign is unassuming, as if it’s only purpose were to remind old patrons it was still there. It disappears in daylight, and becomes faintly visible by nightfall.
But once you get inside, there is something otherworldly about the darkness of that nightclub. The way the cigarette smoke weaves it way through the quietly breathing wooden beams, and dances across the mortar of the bricks, and through the shafts of soft blue light. The music in the same lithe way tangles itself around you, and you let it tug the thin strands that are your feelings until they swirl into the blackness of the hazy club,. Nothing is definite, it’s like looking at the pastel reflection of the world that you see in the wavering water of a river. There are no lines, no definition, just impression, and you  just melt into the darkness, or it melts into you, but you don't care because you are nothing but your senses, your consciousness visceral, comprised purely of stimulus. You let yourself drown there. That’s the only way I can describe it, drowning. I remember stepping out that club one night, with the smells and sounds outstretching their languid tendrils from the door behind me, twirling themselves around my fingers, seeping through my clothes, coaxing me back in. After two or three strides the sound and warmth faded and in perfect time was the crescendo of the real world.
I would stay up late some nights wondering if I dreamt it all. If the place was just a hazy mirage. A manufactured memory from too half forgotten places I’d been. The next night, just to prove it, I would go back. By wonderful accident or shrewd design only one of the five streetlights were lit in the parking lot. I would close my eyes, and let my senses lead me back through that familiar doorway, into that mindless beauty I’d come to love.
	I endeavored to go there less and less. I would tell myself I didn’t have a life I needed to escape anymore. I had a consciousness I was proud to embody, I didn’t need to make a habit of going and watching all of that drift into obscurity and incomprehension. I remember this one night. I couldn’t really tell you if I subconsciously drove there, or if it was a complete coincidence. For whatever reason, my car turned onto the street, and I didn’t notice where I was until the sign’s blue neon veil washed over me and my car and revealed my desire to be back in that club. I looked over affectionately at the little unassuming sign. It wasn’t trying to coax anyone to come inside. Everyone who approached that door was there for a reason. And they would only faintly remember what that reason was when they came blinking out of the darkness and warmth however many hours later. I thought I was stronger than this. But as I tilted my head back, bathed in the glow of the sign, I tried to smell it. I tried to hear it. I imagined sitting in there. Becoming nothing. Escaping, for just those few hours, that blended together like a dream, always leaving you disoriented when you stepped out into the world again. I had kept away from this street, knowing that if I saw it, saw that beckoning door, that I wouldn’t be strong enough to resist. I would park my car without really meaning too. I would walk inside without wanting to. I would go and drown. Finally, I pressed the accelerator lightly, my feet hesitant. The car almost remorsefully pulled away, as if it was walking from a tombstone after saying its final words to the epitaph, hesitant to leave anything unsaid. The veil of welcoming blue light was pulled from my face, and the car, and sat on the slick road. Waiting.
	All these years later, I heard that it went out of business. The building torn down. I felt so guilty. I never went and said goodbye. Those years ago, on principle, I left abruptly, and never returned. It was a firm act of will. I never stepped through those doors again. I felt as if the club missed me, it called to me that night, wanting me to return, just once. I didn’t. I pulled away and never looked back, and it died without me. It withered into nonexistence. The bricks have been hauled away. Those wooden beams tuned into woodchips. There is nothing left but my memory. That is its only remaining existence. And even in my memory, the edges blur, and the parts without edges fade, until I’ll wake up sometimes and wonder if it was real. Was there a Nocturne? Had I been there? Was it just a recurring dream I remembered as reality? It was real, right? Have you ever heard of it? That’s what’s really eating me. I have no welcoming door and comfortable indefinition to go back to to prove it was there. All I have is my memories, and contradicting doubts, and at night, I’ll think about walking up to that door. I’ll think about the cigarette smoke. It all seems too hazy, too vague. So it couldn’t have been real. Right?