Midnight at the Majestic.

Whenever I whip out my Jerry Garcia Band CD Cats Under the Stars, I am immediately transported back to a magic moment in my history - one shared with my friends Dumpers, Peggy, Blakley, and Hello Kitty.

To go into the tale in great detail would take days, but I can sum it up like this: one afternoon, Dumpers and Blakley were sick of listening to me bitch about how much I hated the Grateful Dead (though, naturally, I'd never listened to them), so they pinned me down and forced me to hear at least an hour's worth of the twangy nonsense.  

In that afternoon, I was brainwashed into liking - no, loving - the Dead. Most of my friends were appalled... some were overjoyed. How could a hateful, bile-spewing goth/industrial bastard enjoy the hippie intonations of Jerry Garcia and his tie-dyed brethren? We'll never know, but it happened.

Anyway, I'm listening to "Rain," as sung by Ms. Donna Jean Godchaux - the only female member ever in the history of the Grateful Dead (unless you count Ms. Sheryl Crow's recent tour with The Dead, minus Garcia... her version of "Night of a Thousand Stars" was riveting). 

It's transported me back to 1991 in Swannanoa, North Carolina - to the time Hello Kitty and I were so riled up about getting tickets to see the Grateful Dead at the Omni Theater in Atlanta that we piled into her barely-running VW Bus and, misguidedly, drove to some weird Ticketmaster location on I-40, only to be told no tickets to the show would be sold there. So, what did we do? We turned around and decided, "Fuck it. We're driving to Atlanta right now to get those fucking tickets." 

Off into the twilight we sputtered in her noxious gas-emitting, lawn-mower-sounding contraption, through Asheville, down through the Center of the Vortex of Misery known as Greenville, South Carolina and on to Atlanta.  

We stopped at a Turtles Records & Tapes on Ponce de Leon, one of the few sanctioned purveyors of tickets to the Dead shows at the Omni. We had 12 hours to kill - we had gotten there after Turtles had closed, and tickets went on sale the next morning.  Luckily, this Turtles was right next to the Majestic.  

Every town has one - a place where the freaks and weirdoes congregate because although the food is gross, the waitresses douches and the atmosphere less than wonderful, something about it just feels comfortable. The Majestic is that place in Atlanta.

Now, the Majestic is a horrible dump. It's got a reputation throughout Atlanta (and through most of the South) as being a place you go when you want to die. I haven't been there in almost 20 years, but I can't imagine it's changed that much (and it would be sad if has). The menu was standard diner crap, nothing fancy. Hoagies, eggs, hamburgers, all cooked with the precision of a blind person trying to play basketball.

It was the waitresses that made this place a beacon of light in a dark tunnel for me. They were adversarial, rude, aggressive, hateful, mean, downright ugly, and nasty. They threw food at you. They DARED you to order, scowling at you as they held their pencils up and ready to strike. One - I am not exaggerating - had a paralyzed tongue. She would shuffle through the restaurant, the tip of her tongue oozing its way out of her chapped lips like a snail peeking its head out of its shell, never batting an eye as restaurant patrons stared lovingly at the useless appendage.

She was my favorite.

Hello Kitty and I had hours to kill, so we spent a good deal of time in a booth at the back of the Majestic. As time passed, different subcultures made their ways into the restaurant. When The Eagle's festivities had passed their peak, a wave of leather gays came in, much to the consternation of the harried staff. And after Masquerade's dark proceedings had come to a close, gothic drag queens and fag hags whisked themselves into the red vinyl booths, deigning to order hamburgers at three o'clock in the morning.

After a while, HK and I sadly trudged back out to the parking lot. There was only so much coffee one could consume in an evening without dying. We sat in that VW Microbus til morning, when the Deadheads started to queue up for tickets. She and I were first in line - and proud of it. We hadn't driven all the way down from Asheville for nothing, y'all. We were gonna get the best seats in the hizzouse. 

Then it happened - the harried-looking Turtles worker came out and made the announcement that tickets would be given by lottery, meaning that our drive - our vigil - it was all for nothing. We were handed numbers on a slip of paper - and of course, mine was at the end of the fucking line, as was Hello Kitty's. We didn't get tickets.

Despondent, we sat in her van in the parking lot, when two hippie girls who had spent part of the evening with us came up and knocked on the door. "Did y'all get tickets?" they said. "No," we replied, near tears. "Well we got lots extra, so we'll give you some," they stated. Hippies. We happily purchased the number we required, then went back into the Majestic for some coffee-to-go. Back to North Carolina we went.

Months later, HK, Dumpers, Peggy, Blakley and I careened back down through the Vortex of Death to the Omni, where I witnessed my first Dead show. Before the band came out, my friends gave me a rose. "Everyone should get a rose at their first Dead show," they said. 

Then the band came out.

"Look - that's Jerry Garcia!" I heard. Peeking to my right, I saw a stoned, bloated hippie holding a baby and pointing lovingly to the junked-out guitarist. "That's Jerry!" the hippie repeated, bobbing his child up and down lovingly.

The show itself was unremarkable - they played every song I had hoped and prayed I wouldn't have to hear, starting with "Hell In a Bucket" and going through a repertoire of mediocrity that is probably unparalleled in the history of their tours. But the experience was worth it - the knowing smiles on my friends' faces as they made fun of the various "spinners" and other  sub-classes of Deadhead, our perambulating the parking lot experience, haggling with toads over bean burritos  - every second was awesome. And of course we went back to the Majestic after. 

You simply COULDN'T go to Atlanta without a stop at the Majestic. Unheard of. I have made a point of going there every time I'm in Atlanta, but the times associated with the Dead were the best.

"Rain" drags me back to that time, the squeaky, broken booths, the shuffling anger of the waitresses, my good friends and I recuperating from a night with the hippies before driving off into the dark on our way back through the mountains.