Song

Watering Hole Vampire - A2, Old Words

September 6, 2026

Hardcore, Eurodance

[Song adapted from this tidbit in a book I am writing. These places, these dive bars, these hole in the wall bars, so contrasted from my youth growing up in a conservative Keynesian suburb of ____, Michigan. Spending time in these bars was like visiting a cheap candy store of opulence where I was able to sample misery, skullduggery, thievery, prostitution, pimpism, druggies and drug dealers all the while, while maintaining clean hands and a clean but cloudy soul. It definitely, definitely was not a boring world. And I liked the visual buffet line offered up by them in the decline. Refill please. Is there ever enough roadkill in the buffet line of life? For me I knew the answer was no. But I was no predator or lazy slacker vulture. No for me, life was just my TV screen and some channels amused me more than others. Decay and decline, now that’s where the stories are. Redemption, that’s the candy, but we all know what that tastes like, but decay and decline, yeah, that’s where the whodunit stories lay buried, and I loved that smell more than the lily white smell of redemption.]

Verse 1
I spent my days beneath fluorescent lights,
Punching someone else’s clock,
Driving home through rows of houses
That all looked like the one next door.
Everybody chasing something,
Everybody running late,
But somewhere underneath the living
I could feel my own decay.

So I found a little watering hole
Where the neon barely glowed,
Where the jukebox played the soundtrack
To the lives nobody chose.
And I pulled up to the barstool
Like a man who’s found his church,
And I watched the human wreckage
Doing what the wreckage does.

Chorus
I’m a watering hole vampire,
I don’t come here for the beer.
I come to watch the broken people
Make their broken lives disappear.
I don’t drink their blood,
I drink their stories,
Every failure, every scar.
Their misery makes mine look smaller
From the other side of the bar.
Yeah, I’m a watering hole vampire,
And I know just what I am.
I feed upon the fallen
While pretending that I don’t.

Verse 2
There was a woman nursing whiskey
Like it owed her something back,
A man who talked about his glory
Like his glory left last week.
There were lovers getting even,
There were strangers getting high,
There were people selling pieces
Of themselves to get by.

There were thieves and there were dreamers,
There were liars dressed as saints,
There were people drowning slowly
Who had learned to love the taste.
And I never passed a judgment,
At least that’s what I told myself.
I was only there observing,
Putting misery on a shelf.

Verse 3
Maybe I’m no better than them,
Maybe that’s the strangest part.
I just found a different doorway
Into the same old dark.
They were hiding from their demons,
I was hiding from mine too.
They were drowning in their whiskey,
I was drowning in the view.

I didn’t come to save them,
I didn’t come to set them straight.
I came to see how people
Turn their suffering into fate.
How a man can lose his compass
Then convince himself he’s free,
How somebody can live forever
Inside what used to be.

Bridge
Some people come for redemption,
Some come looking for a fight,
Some come just to kill an evening,
Some come hoping to survive the night.
Me, I came for the stories,
For the places people fall,
’Cause somewhere in their wreckage
I could recognize us all.

Verse 4
So refill that visual buffet,
Let the roadkill have its day.
There’s a thousand little mysteries
In the things we throw away.
Redemption’s always pretty,
Everybody knows that song,
But decay has hidden chapters
Where the real stories belong.

And maybe it’s disturbing
That I find some comfort there,
Watching strangers lose themselves
While I pretend that I don’t care.
But I never called them losers,
And I never called them fools.
I just wanted to understand
The strange things people do.

Final Chorus
I’m a watering hole vampire,
And I’ve been coming here for years.
I drink the smoke and desperation,
I drink the laughter through the tears.
I don’t drink their blood,
I drink their stories,
Every secret at the bar.
Their misery makes mine look smaller
And reminds me where we are.

Yeah, I’m a watering hole vampire,
With a clean shirt and a cloudy soul.
I sit among the dying
Just to prove I’m still whole.
But every night I walk out
Wondering which one of us is dead…

And which one of us
Just hasn’t noticed yet.

Outro
Neon buzzing…
Last call ringing…
Everybody’s got somewhere to go.

Me?

I’ll be back tomorrow.

Same watering hole.
Same ghosts.
Different stories
Fresh roadkill for the soul.