by
A couple of weeks into my band's first European tour, we played a concert in Cheb, a small Czech town near the German border. It was late Fall 2002.
The sky was gray, like cement, and the street we were driving down was empty except for a small, dilapidated wood house that we assumed was the venue. In the distance, in what appeared to be "downtown", we could see lazy, blinking neon lights.
A young man standing in front of the house sidled up to the passenger window and knocked. He had greasy hair almost to his shoulders. He was skinny and slouched and seemed to have a permanent smirk on his face.
"I am Mykal. Welcome to Cheb, the Wild West. Let's go inside."
It was a small bar filled with workers… burly men in construction uniforms, relaxing.
We brought in our equiment and I took a seat in the corner and started talking to Mykal. He had recently been released from jail for dealing cocaine and marijuana. Soon we were interrupted by a polka that began playing on the jukebox. The men in the bar began doing Nazi salutes in rhythm with the music. I asked Mykal if he saw what was going on. He nodded, unphased, He told me fascists were common in Europe these days, especially in former communist countries.
We elected my bandmate Justin to talk to Mykal about whether it was a wise idea for us to stay. A few minutes later, he returned to our huddle. "He says there's nothing to worry about," Justin said. "They're just doing a dance."
"A dance?" I answered. "The twist is a dance. The electric slide is a dance. That's not a dance." I suddenly wondered if everyone there could tell I was Jewish, if they could read it in my features.
I was acutely aware of our isolation. I wondered how long it would take for our loved ones to discover that something had happened to us if we were harmed. It felt like like we were in a place with an entirely different social contract to the one I knew.
Soon another band arrived. They greeted Mykal warmly and one of them walked over to us. He was an American expatriate living in Prague who had played in the venue before which reassured us. He explained that this town had switched hands from the Germans to the Czech's many times in the past fifty years. Now it was a border town to which Germans would travel to go to brothels and gamble. "It's like the wild west," he said.
We started playing around 11:30. The crowd danced violently. People, men and women both, were slamming into each other wildly and yelling. Some threw their beer mugs, smashing them. There was no stage to speak of so a dirty stream of beer soaked my shoes.
People were throwing each other to the ground, rolling around in the beer and shards of glass. Mykal and the American expatriate were now at my feet after rolling around on the floor. Mykal's arms were covered with small cuts from the glass on the floor. He looked up at me during a break between songs. "Welcome to the Wild West!" he screamed.
About fifteen minutes after we stopped playing, the other member of my band, Pete, walked up to me holding a wad of Czech bills. It was our payment for the evening. He looked ashen.
Mykal had ordered Pete into a back room to pay him. He then proceeded to offer Pete double the money if he took off his pants. Pete politely declined and made a beeline out of the room.
We slept at Mykal's house that night. I positioned my sleeping bag in front of the door in case he came into the room where we were sleeping. We left early the next morining. The next night we played in Slovenia and it felt like we had re-entered the world. Our time in the Wild West was over.