A summer Saturday night in Sea Isle City is the napkin toss at the Dead Dog Saloon.

It’s an effort in excess. Applauded indecency. It’s guaranteed every weekend, if you want it.

* * *

Packed with foggy brains and fervor, the line reaches its peak around 1:30-2:00 in the morning; unruly and anxious, but communal. A place of wait that could escalate as quickly into violence as it could into song. Only those with graphic logo t-shirts are exiled, a comical exclusion from a palace of simple debauchery. Inside the Dead Dog it’s an amplified version of the outside. Just separated from the immediate threat of the law. It’s also carpeted. The old, dark brown, two-story wooden building, its ancient wooden bar, and its trampled rug floors make for a magnificent fire hazard.

It's cash only. The devout have been seated for hours. A small pile of their cash rises and falls in front of them as the barkeep plucks from with each new beer. It’s a savvy move to influence service when it’s packed to the brim. When hazy college students twirl in and out of the personal space of the devout, calling for their next round.

But it’s 2:30 in the morning now.

At this point, everyone’s here for the same reason. The collective vigor of the barn house grows. An eager pulsing buzz.

Finally, the moment has arrived, or at least it's been declared. Beyonce plays to the delight of the crowd. At least half of them know that this is a ceremonious bat signal that we’re two songs away from the flight of the doves. After Queen B, the crowd is stirred by Florence and the Machine and the band's proclamation that these dog days that we all know so well, they’re finally over. Over I tell ya!

Everyone sings along: the leaders and the followers, the stoned and the lonely, the loyal and the wandering, the true and the faux, even the walls and their flowers.

Some aren’t so much flowers in the sense that they’re shy, but because they’re swaying against the wall, like a tall sunflower in a stiff breeze, locked in a drowsy battle with gravity.

Some are only conscious (and barely so) so they don’t miss these next seven minutes.

Some just want it to be over so they can go home.

And for a few harrowed degenerates, it’s closer to the beginning of the night than to the end of it.

No matter, the dog days are over, and it's time to be fixed…

The opening synths ring like a Mother’s calling down the block a spaghetti dinner is ready. They vibrate throughout, collecting the energy they've cultivated summer after summer. The opening lines build bridges and activate the place’s connective tissue. Arms drape over shoulders. Diaphragms expand. Ballooned lungs lift the room’s posture. Like a chorus of piss-drunk angels, the Dead Dog bellows:

WHEN YOU TRY YOUR BEST BUT YOU DON’T SUCCEED

WHEN YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT BUT NOT WHAT YOU NEED

WHEN YOU FEEL SO TIRED BUT YOU JUST CAN’T SLEEP

STUCK IN REVERSEEEE

Hands clutch and hips sway. It’s a rainstorm in rhythm, rocking with a booze-filled buoyancy. Chaotic and comfortable like the waves of a cool waterbed on a hot night. There’s still plenty of sweat. Blood has likely been shed already. Emotions have bubbled, good and bad.

WHEN THE TEARS COME STREAMING DOWN YOUR FACE

CAUSE YOU LOSE SOMETHING YOU CAN’T REPLACE

WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEONE BUT IT GOES TO WASTE

WHAT COULD BE WORSEEEEE

…

LIGHTS COULD GUIDE YOU HOME

AND IGNITE YOUR BONES

AND I WILL TRY

TO FIX YOUUUUU

Square white napkins are distributed to every living soul on both floors. If you can't get to the bar, someone will pass napkins back to you, so do not fret, my friend. For you will not be left out.

Soon, in unison, we will murder us some trees, and do so in the holy name of excess.

BUT HIGH UP ABOVE OR DOWN BELOW

WHEN YOU ARE TOO IN LOVE TO LET IT SHOW

OH BUT IF YOU NEVER TRY YOU’LL NEVER KNOW

JUST WHAT YOU’RE WORTHHHH

If your eyes aren't closed and your ears aren't fixed on every single lyric and rift; if you're not rolling with the grooves of the music like you would on a silk shag rug amidst a soothing acid trip; if you're not dumping whatever blood is left in your heart's arteries straight into your vocal chords; if you're not completely submerged in the bliss of ignorance with your closest friends of ten to twenty years; if you're not hopelessly trying to seduce someone; if you're not too shitfaced to see straight; than you might be looking around—up and down, left and right, at friends and strangers, or even looking through them—and taking the entirety of the scene in, knowing full well that this is about to be a moment. Then, for a second time...

LIGHTS WILL GUIDE YOU HOME

AND IGNITE YOUR BONES

AND I WILL TRY

TO FIX YOUUUU

The guitar enters. It's bouncing cadence engages the quads and calves. It rips you clean from what was once a peaceful sway, like a bandage off a healed cut. It stakes an electro-magnetic pole at the center of the first floor that crescendos to the ceiling, grasping the energy of the second floor along the way up and pulling the bar together as one.

It’s joined by the second guitar and the pitter-patter of the cymbals. Their drizzle intensifying like rain does in the moments before a thunderstorm. A spiderweb sprouts from the flagpole and wraps around the Dead Dog like a tetherball, collecting the crowd into a single melodic force. For two measures the web continues to spin until the drums leap from the cymbals and welcome the all too familiar piano. The pole's accumulated potential energy evolves into its destined kinetic offspring and the crowd erupts in symphonic and delightful pandemonium.

Unleash the Doves.

They take flight towards the ceiling and, after a frozen moment, begin their downward dance in a whirlwind of grace and bedlam. Within the eye of the hurricane, they flap angrily about each other, jostling for position in claustrophobia. The last dove falls to the carpet around the same time Mr. Martin rejoins the party to a bridge drenched in domestic beer and lost voices, amidst the shuffling of uncoordinated feet.

TEARS COME STREAMING DOWN YOUR FACE

I PROMISE YOU I WILL LEARN FROM ALL MY MISTAKES

Lips lock and beer spills. Friends take each other by the shoulders and sides. A few minor, untenable injuries can occur, but that’s par for the course. A few tears might even be shed. The idiot who was drumming on the bar to the guitar’s entrance is now playing the air guitar to the piano melody. You can laugh, but mocking is for the morons and the jealous.

The band fades out. They're followed by Martin and the piano in a single spotlight. Into which the Dead Dog's entire population barges with hands and heads held high in triumph or maybe low in a visceral groove.

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you.

All too quickly, the lights come on with a vengeance.

Homebound cheers, both in exultation and in clinking bottles. Hugs and kisses. Couples grasp for each other, noticing the shift in the room. A fresh, white snow blankets the pathetic carpet. The lower banisters, and the first-floor bar too.

The moment is over. The bar is now closed. You don't have to go home, but you know the rest.

Friends ask one another, ‘Wanna go back? Do we have beer at the house? Wawa? Or pizza?’

A few poor souls will dispose of the now flightless doves before sunrise. Bar-goers exit in exhaustion, in drunken stupor, in restlessness and happiness.

They leave to sleep, eat, drink, smoke, snort, fuck, sleep. Often to continue their descent into excess and indulgence.

The overthinkers marinate in the aftermath of a successful weekend or wallow in its failure to live up to their expectation. Boohoo you didn’t get laid.

A few go to walk the beach and look out on the endless ocean—as close to pure black as a shut eye under the covers; it's illuminated only by the moon. Tonight it’s a thin crescent moon. A bouncing silver that flutters with the waves.

Whatever the reason, we all leave.

And in the early hours of what is now a Sunday in Sea Isle—for many of us—we think for the very first time this weekend, “Fuck, it’s almost Monday.”