Tender
Excerpt from novel in progress, The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Tonight you wonder if this is where it all ends. Your eyes can’t help but grope the blade lying next to the citrus bowl underneath the beer taps. To pierce the skin at the base of your chest and drag the metal down to just above the pelvis – how the blood would spill out and the flipping, fluttering, bubbling would finally cease. Your body dancing down to the sticky ground behind the bar, your fluids mingling with the puddles of liquor tossed haphazardly into already-filled jiggers, alcohol at last reaching its hands past your GI tract, cleansing every inch of your grotesqueness.
This is a game you play with yourself, imagining death, even now, I sometimes can’t help but engage myself in a round or two. Knives and windows and pills drive your fabulation. Each method offers up its own sensations. The hesitant stillness of the pills, the release of the blade, the flight of the window. The stimulation of the physical softens the mind. It’s all a romanticization anyway. Most forms of death are inseparable from high amounts of pain, but at least there’s a guaranteed ending…or maybe there’s not, maybe we all burn in hell for eternity. Perhaps it’s the opposite. Maybe God grabs our souls from our bodies just before they hit the pavement. I know you don’t believe in God, but most of your logic depends on there being someone, something. You believe in the Universe, the power of a destined order. We all need a North Star. Especially with a disease of the mind such as yours. It’s a generational thing, you think. Young people throw around threats of suicide like they’re made of paper: If I don’t get this job I’m gonna fucking shoot myself. He hasn’t responded to my text; I’m gonna slit my throat. Death is freeing. The one thing we have control over when nothing else is going our way. Suicide is giving life the middle finger after it’s tried to fuck you over one too many times. Maybe the kids don’t really mean it, but sometimes you do.
This bar is narrow. It could only fit about one and a half of you from wall to wall, and you’re a tiny little thing. That’s what your mother always says, because you’re 5’3” with the breasts of someone who’s maybe ready to start using a training bra. In fact, you only started wearing bras again when they put you behind the bar – can’t afford to be giving free shows in this economy. So the bar is narrow. The walls seem to tighten their embrace the further inward you dare to venture. Glancing into your reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite the bar, it seems as though you are standing directly in front of it – with nothing and no one in between. Your skin looks darker, like a slightly less diluted cup of coffee – the lights are always dimmed in here. You wonder whether this affects the way people perceive you, knowing that it certainly does. Tilting your head from side to side, your cheeks seem to cave in to the pull of your jaw as streams of light chisel out your face. You hint at a pucker as red lips announce themselves, and appreciate the vibrancy the color lends to your visage. Now you can perfectly see the valley in the center that hides the depth of the cupid’s bow behind it. You scan your features. Just as you did a year ago in that midtown hotel room. Except then you used not your eyes, but your fingers, like a child. And it wasn’t your face, it was his. Do you remember? He was beautiful. You were young. But no more fantasies – that’s the illness’s doing.
Excuse me! A man has been trying to get your attention. He’s joined a group sitting off to your left, down at the corner of the bar. He’s short – you can tell without even looking at him. His friends are attractive in a conventional way (they’re White), and they all showed up with their trophy-wives-to-be. He’s shown up alone. They work in tech which you know because for the last hour they’ve been talking (loudly) about their respective companies in an attempt to prove their dicks are all bigger than yours. The new guy must be their token South Asian friend whose genuine intelligence they’re extremely intimidated by. So much so, that they’ve befriended him for the sole purpose of placing him in demeaning situations in order to assuage their own egos. New guy knows this, but he sticks around for the perks – (they’re trust fund babies after all) – in an ironic twist, believing he’s found a group of people who see him as more than just the smart kid. He’ll ask about bourbon even though he only knows one brand and find some way to make you look like the one with gaps in your spirits knowledge. You get him though, who wouldn’t clamour to live in the wake of White masculinity?
Hi, how are you? you rev up for the little show you get paid to put on.
Good. What do you have for bourbon?
Well Four Roses is our house bourbon, and then we’ve got Maker’s, Basil Hayden, Bulleit…if you want something local we’ve got a bourbon from Hudson Whiskey, and a few different options from Kings County Distillery. Oh, and there’s also Jefferson’s Ocean which travels by sea from Georgia around the world. Everything from the weather to the rocking of the boat affects the flavor profile.
I’m pretty sure Maker’s is rye. You’re pretty sure he’s a little prick.
Maker’s only produces bourbon as far as I know. Maybe you’re thinking of Michter’s? Known for their rye, but I think they also make a small batch bourbon, we just don’t have it here.
Yeah Michter’s is rye, you said Michter’s before.
I don’t think I did.
You must’ve because I obviously know Maker’s is bourbon…you’re new here, no? I’m here all the time, and I’ve never seen you.
I’ve worked here for two years. Maybe you’re just not here often enough. Maker’s? He nods. Neat or on the rocks?
Rocks.
You place the ice into the glass, displacing the Maker’s with a single cube just shy of being the size of the thing which contains it. When you were a kid your grandmother would place a single ice cube into anything that was too hot to consume. Mugs of Lipton and bowls of Campbell’s tomato soup diluted for the sake of your tender baby tongue. Those were the days when tea and toast were made to order in the mornings and birthdays were made to feel like national holidays – stories from a big house in Brooklyn that now seem to be only memories, all that was said and done a thing of mythology.
You pick up the glass and reach across the wide marble bartop to the circumstantially douchey South Asian techie who’s aptly seated on a stool placed slightly behind those of his fundamentally douchey techie colleagues. It’s weird how race can exonerate you from things in that way. Maybe the guy really is just a straight up piece of shit for the hell of it, but you could never separate his shittiness from the fact that he’s living in a White supremacist capital. Maybe he’s not shitty at all and you’re just irritable. Even so, there is something that bothers you about people who linger where they are so blatantly not wanted – people who are so afraid to be alone they’ll opt to be someone else’s doormat before choosing to find company in themselves. But you’re an only child who has lived alone since you moved out at eighteen and haven’t been in a relationship that’s lasted longer than a few months; the only thing keeping you from bashing yourself upside the head with a bottle of Don Julio are two dime-sized pills taken before bedtime. Perhaps you could learn a thing or two from these anti-loners. Maybe they’re privy to a more homeopathic treatment.
The illness. It’s had many names over the years. There are the clinical ones – OCD, ADHD, depression (mono- and bi-polar), anxiety – and then the euphemisms parents hide behind – perfectionism, teen angst, womanhood woes, dehydration. Sometimes labels are good – you can’t fill a prescription with a “you’re just a special kid” diagnosis – but sometimes they fall short. You tell yourself that you were fourteen the first time you felt the illness. Those months when you were sleeping all the time and never enough. And when you went to the doctor she asked your mother to leave the room so you could chat. She’d asked you if you’d been sad and you said yes even though sad was at best a wormhole to the abyss you’d been falling inside of so long it seemed as though you were floating. Have there been any major tragic events as of late? she’d asked. And you’d told her how the boy you’d had a crush on since the seventh grade, the first crush that ever sketched you in his notebook during history class, the first one that ever had corkscrew curls like yours, the first one that ever really-maybe-sort-of-if-you-squinted liked you back, had moved to South America last month, and it had broken you in a way nothing ever had before. You cried, embarrassed that this could be the thing to undo a person who had managed to keep themselves together through such tragic things for so long, the power of seventh grade boys – who knew. But anyone with childhood trauma or a psychology degree (obviously not mutually exclusive categories) could tell you that this was not the origin of the illness.
Hey! someone shouts from behind, tapping on the bar as he makes his way to the coat check. You already know that it’s him, arriving for his shift. You check your watch – 3pm. Seven more hours. He pops back out from behind the curtains and walks over to you, his flourishing collection of grays more visible with his dark curls slicked back this way. You like it – the way salt and pepper mingles with skin the color of alabaster. He performs his signature lean on the bar as though this is a high school production of Grease and he’s playing one of Danny Zuko’s fellow T-Birds. That’s how he got the nickname, that day you and Liz had far too much wine after the Sunday shift. I know it makes you feel better to call him that in your head. As though it gives you power over him. You like feeling as though you have power over other people don’t you? Oh, I know you’ll never admit it. Have you ever thought that perhaps you call him that because you’re afraid?
How’s it going? the T-Bird coos
Fine. I’m just tired. And fighting the urge to stick a knife through your stomach, but I mean, what else is new?
Still not getting good sleep? He presses. Does he remember how you shifted about beneath the sheets that night in a bed he’d purchased for the weekend? Perhaps he’d taken it personally, but you’ve never been able to sleep through the night. You’ve tried melatonin, meditation, marijauna, but
Old habits die hard. Me and tossing and turning are still thick as thieves unfortunately.
Maybe your doctor can prescribe you some of the good stuff.
He’s likely onto something. So far the only thing that truly knocks you out are those drug-store diphenhydramine concoctions.
But that’s not sleeping, that’s just drugging yourself.
You hate the feeling of being forced under, so broken sleep is your cross to bear. Even at twelve years old, still scurrying into your mother’s bed in the middle of the night. Sometimes you would tell her you were afraid of dying and she would tell you about heaven and promise to live a long life, so you could die together. Sometimes you just needed someone to find you in the dark – a mother, a father on the weekend, a sleepy cousin on family vacation – and then you’d sleep soundly through the night. It was different with your grandparents though, with them, there were the in-between hours. Mama would place you right in between her Poppy, in that small bed in the room with all the books because you know Mama never slept in the master bedroom. And they always slept with the tv on which was counterproductive to your somatic goals. But you liked the voices, awake, feeling the warmth of the two bodies on either side of you – shielding you from the monsters that lurk beneath the shadows and come to life when the sun goes down.
You’re so pedantic, he teases, walking away to greet his first table of the evening. He’ll never shake that bouncing gait, like he’s got an implacable set of springs in his heels. They lend him a youthfulness, as though he still believes he can touch the sky.
You turn toward the washer and release the steam from its cocoon. It tickles your face like some dream you don’t understand and can’t seem to stop having. You lift the glassware from their cells, clawing the bottoms of pints and sliding anything stemmed between fingers. You put some water glasses aside for T-Bird to give shelter to at his station over to your right.
When you used to be the hostess, the two of you would race to clear the glasses off of tables. Finn would watch and say as you scrambled past him, one of these days, those are gonna shatter all over the fucking table, but you two didn’t care. At the start of those long summer shifts you’d stand beside each other outside the bar’s doorway and listen to the way the sun activated your features – as though its rays were mallets and his eyes the bars of a glockenspiel. And you smiled because you liked the music and because you knew he liked your smile. You can hear it, he’d always say. You can hear your smile when you talk on the phone. When you say, “Barefruit, this is Genevieve speaking,” he’d say flight attendant-bright with childlike sincerity. Your smile is so big I can hear it. He liked your smile. You liked his eyes – like honeycombs in the sun, melody imbued chambers, you could hardly wade through the sweet sticky symphony. And Finn would come out and say what, are you photosynthesizing or something? And you’d laugh – if only he could hear the music. There was something about those days. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the simplicity of before. You wonder what he saw in you. Was it a beauty destined to be fleeting? If you like a smile for its sound, what happens when it goes out of tune? You know you have not been that girl, the one who composes in major keys. You have not been her for a long time.
Could it have been when you were nine? And Mama died of a type of cancer you did not know the name of until much later and a few months after Poppy had a fatal heart attack on the operating table which some would describe as a physical manifestation of grief. They’d known each other since they were children, seen each other through every tragedy. Now on lonely nights you imagine their arms around you – how you remember being nestled between them through the night. I know you wish you could have that again. But still, I’d argue, it’s not the entirety of the origin story.
A woman in a fitted baby-blue tracksuit pulls out a seat at the center of the bar. She’s got that perpetual Donald Duck thing going – the marker of filled lips – and her thinning hair looks like it would very much love to be spared another bleaching. Nevertheless you think she’s the type of person other people see as attractive (because she’s thin in the right places? because her skin is like diluted coffee without the coffee? because you think she’s attractive?) and know she will probably get hit on at least two or three times before her boyfriend (she must have a boyfriend) arrives. You approach with a beverage napkin and a glass of water.
Hey, how are you?
I’m so good doll, how are you? She’s Southern…maybe four or five times before her boyfriend arrives.
I’m fantastic. What can I get for you?
Do y’all do espresso martinis?
We sure do!
I’m gonna have to get me one of those then. And can you make it with Tito’s?
Sure thing.
You grab a coupe and unstack your shakers. The jigger fills with liquid ounces: .5 cafe amaro, .75 kahlua.
I just gotta say I love your necklace. What does it say? You reach for the chain around your neck.
.75 espresso
Thank you. It’s The Sun tarot card.
1.5 vodka
I love that. You know, I have been looking for a place to get my cards read since I moved up here. You know anybody?
Do you believe in psychics? you’d asked
Maybe, why? He brought his eyes to meet yours. You had his attention. Of course he’d think this stuff was hot.
Just curious. I’ve personally had some wild experiences.
I see, he smirked. Like what?
Well my mom once went to a medium after my grandparents died, and he told her that my grandmother’s spirit likes to come into our home and put her hand over a drawing of my hand that’s inside our piano bench. My mom had no clue what drawing he was talking about, but she goes home and checks the piano bench, and sure enough there’s a drawing of my hand that I had traced when I was learning to play.
The T-Bird assumes his classic lean next to southern belle Barbie and butts in: She knows psychics in every borough!
You know I don’t do that anymore. Not since that last time.
You scoop ice into the room temperature concoction and shake.
What happened? Barbie’s request to be brought into the loop.
Some psychic told her she was gonna die.
Well, she told me that I’d committed suicide in a past life and that I would kill myself again if I didn’t cough up a few hundred dollars for her to pray over some dollar store candles, you say, stacking the shakers and banging them shut. You shake until the metal feels cold against your hand and the ice has lost its vitality.
Barbie: What did you do?
You place the mesh strainer over the coupe before running the now consolidated liquids through it and carefully plop three coffee beans on top for presentation’s sake.
T-Bird: She went back to this chick for like five days in a row! She made her do all this crazy stuff like bathe in potions and chant spells. She ended up dropping seven hundred dollars! She couldn’t pay her rent!
Barbie: No?!
Basically, yeah. I had to drop her. You place the cocktail in front of its pretty patron: Cheers.
Thanks, love. She sips. Just what I needed…So what, you think they’re all just a bunch of phonies now?
Not all of them. Just most of them…I was a few months into college, getting over a breakup and feeling hopeless about love. She saw an opportunity and ran with it. You shrug and make eye contact with the T-Bird, who turns to Barbie:
But don’t let Genevieve’s cynicism turn you off the city. That girl’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of a Tolstoy novel.
Oh, shut up Theo, you know I can’t help it. And at least I’ve actually read a Tolstoy novel.
Tell me more about the psychics. You’ll never forget the soft sweep of his thumb over the back of your hand while you told him about the last man who broke your heart and the psychic who broke your bank account. No one who could touch you so gently could ever break any part of you. Maybe this man could be the first one to ever make you feel loved.
Your plan was not necessarily to sleep with him, was it? At that point in your life you had only had sex with three other people. The first was a boy from high school. You were both sexual novices, only ever having had each other. What a dream – you were eighteen and freshly matriculated, subletting an old rent stabilized apartment in the Village on Barrow Street. You fucked for the first time the summer after high school on a bed from the 70s that creaked so devoutly it seemed to be applauding the whole act. He held you in such a way you believed it could be love. But he’d never stay the day after. There was no morning coffee, no freshly cleansed bodies, none of the strolls through the park begging to be had on those supple summer evenings, just nighttime rendezvous in your side street apartment. He liked distance. Even when your faces were pressed together, even when he was inside of you, he liked distance. Or maybe it was just you. You considered the possibility that perhaps, in the light, he just couldn’t stand to be near you. You wanted to talk about it, wanted to talk about the distance, why hadn’t you? It was this uncomfortable flaw of his, this huge elephant in the room that you wanted to save him the embarrassment of having to explain. So you agreed to turn a blind eye to his shame even as its venom seeped into your veins and declared a slow death.
Sometimes he would attempt to bridge the gap. Look at me, he’d say, trying his hand at dominance. And in those moments, and those moments alone, the whites of his eyes would upstage the silvan green they contained and you would remember: he’s just a boy. Meaning, intimacy was only acceptable when he could control it, and once his feelings began to take on a life of their own he was programmed to shut down. It was complicated though. His parents were Republicans, himself more of a self-described democratic socialist. There was a persistent chill that permeated through his house. Was it the icy shoulders of parental disapproval – disdain towards their son’s Black lover, who they introduced themselves to anew each time they saw her? Sam and Connie, nice to meet you. Isn’t she the one from the ski trip in kindergarten? You weren’t. No mom, that was Mona. Perhaps it wasn’t so personal, and what you felt was the draft of a complete lack of any interest at all. They lived on the top floor, which might as well have been a separate apartment. You only crossed paths a few times in the morning, on the way out.
Barbie’s boyfriend arrives with a strained lightness befitting the end of the workday. He dons a wool sweater with the collegiate collar popping out at the neck from a dress shirt underneath. Framing his pale visage is a head full of sandy curls betraying his countenance in their frazzled state.
For the lady in pink, he extends his arm around her left shoulder drawing circles with his wrist before presenting a copy of Invisible Man (Ellison not Wells). She turns her chin to meet her left shoulder, her eyes wide and then small and then artificially acquainted with high rising cheeks.
Aww another book, you’re such a gem. Her eyes wheel over to you, posted up on one of the bar’s back ledges, as though to say you know about these things, don’t you?
He’s over here bringing me books, she holds up the pages bound in a white and green cover, isn’t he a gem?
The Gem: It’s one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. Ellison is a genius.
Wasn’t he the one that wrote that essay you got hanging on your door? It’s all about self-sufficiency or something like that.
No, that’s Emerson and it’s Self-reliance, babe. You look straight at it every time you’re over, you’d think it’d be etched into your brain, the Gem says with frustration, a thing just shy of condescension.
Well, you know the kind of stuff they had us reading in school back home. “If it ain’t about Christ better think twice.” I’m a bit behind the times with this stuff.
Good thing you’re in the capital of reading for the sake of pretending you’re smarter than everyone else. A bit of self-awareness on the part of the Gem. But seriously, this one you should read. At least so we can talk about it.
Barbie flips through, calculating the amount of mental capacity to budget for each of the five hundred something pages. She glances back up at you with that you know about these things look. Have you read this? she asks.
Yeah, in high school. It’s a journey, but it sticks with you for sure. And my English teacher that year had a PhD in philosophy, so no literary stone was left unturned.
Barbie: What is it even about?
The Gem: A Black man in America in the what, 1950s? You shrug, thinking, it might as well have been written last week. And he lives underground and he’s invisible. But it’s really a metaphor for how there’s no place in the world where he actually feels seen and not pigeonholed into some stereotype or mold of what people think he should be. Okay the Gem knows his stuff.
He can only have a sense of self outside of the perception of the outside world, you add. But then it’s like, isn’t existence dependent upon being perceived by the other? Cue the lesson in Hegelianism.
Do you have a menu or something, the Gem seems to be insinuating you’re inserting yourself. Really he’s intimidated, believing you hold the power to oust him as a well-read cog. His pleasant companion, freshly birthed into a world beyond the cult-like clutches of organized religion and eager to feast upon the bosom of our raunchy city, certainly would not tolerate a poser, so he believed. Though truthfully a poser was the quintessential gateway drug, an obvious touchstone along the path to what she really craved, liberal oblivion. Don’t think yourself judgemental Genevieve, or if you do, know it’s warranted because you’re protecting yourself, right?
You reach for a menu on the shelf just beneath the bar and place it before him. He runs his eyes across the printed cardstock without giving the words meaning (phony) before barking:
I’ll just take a little amaro.
Um…Averna? Montenegro? Nonino? Campari? Cynar? You want Caffè Amaro?...Why do they always let you list it out like a fool when they’re just going to say
Whatever’s the standard. You stream a standard pour of Averna into a small snifter and place it before the Gem of a man on a cocktail napkin. He pushes a Chase card towards you and says keep it open, all the while keeping his gaze devoted to a line running perpendicular to yours. You place the card in the register and slink away. From your perch you can hear the Gem ask Barbie about her day. It was good. The cafe in her workplace lobby had the cookies she likes today, the oatmeal ones with white chocolate chips. Mr. and Mrs. Gem fall into their roles in a way that’s endearing – her shifting her weight onto an elbow placed upon the bar with that feminine air of humility, him running his fingers along the wake of her cheekbones. They seem happy being who they’re supposed to be. You wonder if you’ll ever feel this way, content playing the role lying in the coffin society has prepared for you. Is it your refusal to do so that keeps you melancholic? Or like Eve is it the knowledge – of every version of self you’ve been denied – that condemns you? I know sometimes you toy with the idea that ignorance might just be bliss. You look towards the Gem, who shares none of your physical features and thus holds all the power the world could offer a man. You ask the question every Black girl who ever went to private school asks: Does he think I’m pretty? You think, would he ever want to fuck me? When you know that’s a stupid question and what you really mean is: would he ever be able to love me? But the reality is that he’s only asked you for the menu, and he’s sitting with a woman who looks like Barbie. Part of you hopes they last, part of you hopes they don’t – not that anyone asked. But if love is dead, then your loneliness is fundamental, not circumstantial.
Remember the one you’d met at university? He spotted you in a literature class at Columbia. Naturally, you’d invited him over to help paint the kitchen in your apartment. You put on those worn overalls and attempted to exude an air of whimsy – a thing appropriated from the movies. Remember how you played Kamasi Washington’s “Truth” and expressed your love for jazz, both my parents are pianists you’d said without even the slightest air of amour propre around being the child of artists. He took you out to that Thai restaurant you’d taken a liking to, and when you got home he played a beautiful song from an album with a black cat on it. I still wish you had asked for the name. Your hand in his, arms around waists, fingers curled around necks, he spun you out and reeled you back in. That night you danced like old lovers. And you curled up in his lap and listened to his heartbeat. You wanted so badly to kiss him, so you did, and then you spent a month’s worth of consecutive nights with him. The first week you steadily approached consummation, but he professed he wanted to wait. He was confident in his ability to perform with a proper education in your personal desires. He asked you what you liked. You told him you didn’t really know because you didn’t – I’ve only slept with one other person. He was surprised, why? It’s the way you kiss, he’d said. On the seventh day you made love. For the first time it felt accurate to describe it as such, and for the first time you experienced actual pleasure (something I know hasn’t come often in the years since, even when you’ve practically willed it to be so). He gushed about your beauty and held your hand on the weekend in the bookstore. There was morning coffee, and the smell of shampoo, and many many strolls. But why wasn’t it enough? He’d admitted he had not known people of your complexion before moving to New York. The confession transformed you into a beggar. Why me? You would ask, staring blankly into the emptiness of your proverbial cup. I don’t like you when you’re like this, he’d say. He would float away, and you would try to tie him to the bedpost. Eventually he broke things off over the phone. Amazed by how quickly things could develop and dissolve, you sobbed for weeks, then months, even when the only one who could hear you was me. At least the psychic made her rent that month.
Talk about off the grid, your T-Bird motions to the book on the bar, inserting himself between the happy couple.
Right? We could learn a thing or two from this guy, the Gem bites.
I read it in college and I just remember being in class sketching out what my underground pad was gonna look like – recliner seats, water bed, platinum screen with surround sound, and how I was gonna steal electricity to heat the jacuzzi and my noguchi lamps.
Could’ve been living the life, man! The Gem hurries down the end of his amaro, throwing one back for the T-Bird’s life that could’ve been.
It’s in the works, don’t you worry. All that to say I didn’t know what the hell was going on in that book. So I finally read it for real last year and well–
What’d you think? The Gem clinks the glass against the bar’s marble and turning at the most acute angle towards you, cuts his finger through the air in lieu of the words “another.” Barbie looks on, all smiles, at least where you can see.
It gave me a lot to think about, that's for sure.
That propensity for conformity, or even the resistance to it, I find that to be such a beautifully universal theme.
Sure, but isn’t the whole point of the book that it’s kind of not universal…because he’s…Black?
You place the Gem’s next round before him.
Genevieve, you’d say Invisible Man is pretty exclusively meant to be about the unique experiences of Black people.
It’s about a lot of things. The Gem nods as though to say see?
Sure, but come on you know what I’m saying.
I can tell you one thing it’s not about – Black women. But then again nothing ever is. Even though everything is.
Oh yeah, it’s got that whole madonna-whore thing going on, T-Bird responds using the Gem as a launchpad off of which to elevate his own moral image.
The Gem: Sure, but he’s just showing that society puts constraints on women’s identities as well.
T-Bird persists: Or he was a product of his environment: if she can’t be my mommy I guess I’ll fuck her.
Spoken with a dangerous amount of enthusiasm. Yes you said that out loud, but don’t worry he likes it.
What can I say, the Freudian excites me, T-Bird puts on that smile it seems only you can see.
Well Freud was a misogynistic prick, you say. But he excites you too.
Can I settle up? The South Asian tech bro has made his way down to the other end of the bar with his card. His colleagues at the end are adjusting dress shirts and slipping back into blazers. Better to pick up Tuesday’s tab then to get stuck with Friday’s.
For sure. You throw him a grin and take his card, turning to process the payment at the POS. He seems to have softened in the hours since you last spoke. You’d like to attribute it to the alcohol but he only had the one drink. As you turn back with the receipt, you notice his wallet is lined with three stripes – yellow, green, and red – resembling the flag of some country. Maybe it’s the country from which he gets his features. Features which condemn him to a life of picking up Tuesday’s tab so he doesn’t get stuck with Friday’s.
He signs the check and slides it away from him. Sorry if I was being difficult earlier. I must’ve just heard you wrong.
I understand, you say, because you do. We both do.
Have a good night.
Take care. You watch him reintegrate into his unit and depart before performing a quick search of the net for flags with yellow, green and red stripes. Lithuania…Ghana…Bolivia…Myanmar! Yes, Myanmar must be where he’s from – the Myanma man. The Burmese man? Then you wonder whether you’re part of the problem. Perhaps he’s just a man. But that’s never enough, is it?
Just for the record I don’t have mommy issues, T-Bird has dropped by on his way to a table to clear his name.
I never said you did, but if the shoe fits…
You implied it. And I mean if we’re gonna go there… He means to say you have some of your own neuroticism to tackle. Which…
Fair. You purse your lips in a way you know is attractive and take a breathy chuckle watching him continue his trajectory towards a three top near the window. It’s been almost two years since that night at the hotel, but sometimes you wonder whether you’re in love with him and what that love might look like.
It makes you think of the bartender at the last workplace who had sometimes let his hands wander on the after-shift walk to the train. You managed to avoid his bed, though you cared for him deeply, as did he for you. You reveled in his sincerely unattached way of moving through the world, something he’d attribute to his Brazilian upbringing. A photographer, he liked your sense of style and made you his muse. You loved the attention, but also your talks, ambling through the heritaged East Village streets, carving out what it means to be an artist. It was that one night he asked you whether you had ever been in love. You scanned your heart’s scars but couldn’t provide a definitive yes. That’s a no then, he said. If you had been in love you’d know. I’m not sure he was the one to be making hard and fast statements about love, given that he was roaming the streets with a girl fourteen years his junior and not at home with his wife. Or perhaps he was the exact person to be making these statements. That's what you chose to believe at the time. The truth was that you wanted so badly to be in love, but at nineteen you were a cynic, believing the only people capable of loving you securely were men old enough to be fathers. And so you’d have to perform for their favor. Love is quite large, you’d said, it’s not always easy to get your mouth around it. He spun you in and kissed you.
I’ll take whatever scotch your daddy drinks sweetheart. Santa Claus sans beard and temperance has placed a twenty dollar bill on the bar in front of you.
My father doesn’t drink scotch. Maybe he does. You wouldn’t know. But this is an easier answer.
Well I’ll take whatever scotch is gonna get me in with you.
I’m happy if you’re happy – what usually does it for ya?
I’m a Macallan man tried and true.
Alright, should’ve started there then.
A guy’s gotta make an entrance.
We don’t have Macallan, but we’ve got Balvenie and Laphroaig which are both great options if you’re looking for something petey.
How many years?
The Balvenie is a 12 year, the Laphroaig is 10.
The Balvenie it is.
What’s the deal with scotch anyway? It’s like the marker of manliness. You’ve watched hordes of college-aged boys attempt to conceal their disgust sipping on glasses of Johnnie Walker (neat) like it’s the holy grail of sagacity. When straight men come upon a woman who drinks scotch their attention skills suddenly sharpen. They might actually listen to more than 30% of what she says. They’ll also probably want to sleep with her more than if she had ordered a dirty vodka martini (.5 olive, 3 vodka), but they’ll keep their eyes more level with her own during conversation than they would with martini girl. You used to identify as one of these scotch women. The penicillin (muddled ginger, .75 honey, .75 lemon, 2 blended scotch, top with Islay) was your go-to cocktail in your earlier days of drinking. You were never huge on vodka but developed an early affinity for whiskey. You drank old fashioneds (5 ango, 3 orange, .25 demmy, 2 whiskey) and classic whiskey sours (1 egg white, .75 lemon, .75 simple, 2 whiskey), and boulevardiers (1 sweet vermouth, 1 Campari, 1.5 bourbon); you never quite warmed up to rye and smiled through many a sazerac night cap (2 ango, 2 peychaud’s, .75 simple, 2 rye whiskey) purchased by men who thought they’d take you home. But the penicillin was your favorite, every glass like a dose of syrup assuaging a cold you didn’t know you had. When you realized it was an order with the power to impress, it became something you flaunted:
“My favorite cocktail is the penicillin.”
“I could really go for a penicillin right now.”
“Oh I’m a scotch drinker, I love me a penicillin.”
That’s how it was with you then. Playing to an audience of masculine affects. It was a symptom of the environment in which you were raised – the city’s precious private independent school kids gifted the keys to the world before even knowing how to drive. Weekends snorting coke in the penthouses of Hollywood’s dolls and the country homes of Wall Street’s king pins, as well as destination sweet sixteens, five hundred dollar dinners for two, and far more freedom than any teenager could dream of. You didn’t come from money. You were only there because you were smart. You had your first can of Bud Light at age fifteen which was considered much too late. You had to catch up, and then you had to keep up. But the beauty of the city is that it equalizes its inhabitants. You all used the same subway system and groaned together when the PA revealed “signal trouble” as the source of delay. You all snuck beer out of the same bodega that never carded on the corner of Smith and Union, and regularly ordered BLT’s from the same cart down the block from school that sold halal food in the afternoons. No one wanted to seem too above the city’s ragged ways, and so while the money was always there, you never really had to face it. Besides, most of you were depressed – the children of inattentive parents who were inundated with adult problems. You just needed something to cling to, and the fun was that thing. You’d been sad since the seventh grade, and sometimes you’d sit in silence with your friend who had changed her hair color for the fourth time that semester and wonder how you could be surrounded by so much abundance and still feel so empty.
Anyway, you city kids grew up. With their last names, peers from your acting class got movie deals and Oscar nominations fresh out of high school, you got a hospitality gig and joint pain. You couldn’t ignore the money anymore. They claim to have transcended the sadness. You believe you’ve succumbed to it. Even so, you miss the old days – running through the nighttime streets of Brooklyn in your underwear electrified at hour 24 of wakefulness by adrenaline and a melee of substances. Being an adult is not as exciting as playing one.
You check the time. It’s 6pm. The smell of the espresso T-Bird has just brewed has you craving a latte, but you’ve just about passed the cutoff for caffeine. Besides, with the mental state of things caffeine is somewhat of a nonstarter, or rather it takes you to that place where you can’t come down. You opt for an earl grey latte instead (caffeine lite). You fill a canteen with milk and drop in some demerara syrup before introducing it to the steamer nozzle. The hot milk mingles with the tea, and you tip a bit of Disaronno into your mug. You sip.
You think of your mother and the way she used to pour amaretto into her almond milk with cinnamon and vanilla and maple syrup as an after dinner treat. She would put you on her lap and try to consume you with love before retreating upstairs into the darkness of the night. You think of the way she’d mix rum into your rooibos tea when attacks of teenage angst and anxiety overcame the corridors of your nervous system. That’s how she dealt with things back then, insisting wine was a healthier solution than introspection, stopping you while you talked to say you were too negative. Really there was no time for emotions because there was no time for anything. She worked too hard and slept too little. Drowning out what could be done away with was a method of survival.
Even still, for many years after your father left, you were her punching bag, the littlest slip-ups becoming justification for punishment, and her emotions would become so loud even when you could only detect them with your eyes. Some days she would scream you into something beyond submission, some days she seemed to move through the world as though she forgot you existed. A few times you saw her cry and it broke your heart.
She often deflects to your father who was absent. It’s easy to imagine that things would be better had he been around. You know where this comes from, she’d say, it’s your father. A girl needs her father. That’s the first man in your life to ever make you feel loved. So you talk about your father in therapy and how he was your best friend until he left and your brain rewired and you were never the same. That’s the story – just another girl with daddy issues and the compulsory penchant for older men.
Hey honeybun! another one of the servers greets you as she arrives for her shift.
Hey Julia. You can barely begin to meet her enthusiasm before she’s rushed past the bar and got her hand clenched around one of T-Bird’s statuesque arms. They’re very much together – in a “we’ve been watching the Sopranos” and a “we’ve been big into this new coffee shop” type of way. She’s always grabbing onto him like she owns him, even before they were going out. You imagine the T-Bird must like this, since the other woman he was dating when he first met you was nothing short of a tyrant – you know, the where are you, who are you with, get home now type. He says he has a good relationship with his mother, but something’s not adding up. In high school, your friend had a theory that all guys either hate their mothers and project this resentment onto the women they date, or they are so in love with their mothers that they can’t hold space for anyone else. Maybe that’s why some women end up coddling their sons so much – the only pure love they’ll ever get from men.
What’s new magoo? A voice quacks at you from the service station at the end of the bar. Looks like she’s done feeling up T-Bird. She’s loud, not necessarily in volume, but in presence, and not in an effortless manner, but rather in a way that feels so painfully full of effort it would be cruel to look away.
Same old you say. You wish you could give her more, but you don’t like her, and she’s not worth dipping into your energy reserves. It’s not the fact of who she’s with that makes you dislike her, it’s the way that she got him. She played sports in high school and now treats every room she’s in like an arena, herself a gladiator prepared to fight to the death. Correction, she treats every room she’s in with other women like an arena, and is prepared to fight you all to the death. She’ll pull a chair out from under you and ice you out of conversations. If you’re walking in a group she’ll walk directly in front of you until she knocks you out of line with the person she wants to stand next to. If you get off early on New Year’s Eve and you’re sitting at the bar having a conversation with T-Bird that’s a bit too intimate in a dress that hugs your body just a bit too perfectly, she will pick up a stool, plop it right in between the two of you, and sit down. Then she’ll turn around the next day and flash her stupid little cheshire cat grin, and tell you she loves your skirt, and ask about your weekend. She’s a bitch, but she gets away with it. If you had tried any of this shit she’d probably cry and people would call you what you were: a fucking cunt. But there is something admirable about her shamelessness. You’ve never felt confident enough in your own desirability to go after someone in that way. She was ruthless in her pursuit of T-Bird, and sometimes you regret not putting up more of a fight.
Well you look absolutely adorable she says, flashing her too-wide smile. You look down, remembering you have a body, greeted by the wide leg jeans and collared green halter top you recycled from Friday.
Thanks, you respond unconvincingly. Somehow she makes you look like the cold one.
How’s school? She adds a few extra o’s rolling down into and then back out of a valley of cadence. You’re convinced she doesn’t really care how school is going, but it’s also not pleasantries she’s after. It's the satisfaction of bursting the workplace bubble where our outside identities might as well be complete strangers. It doesn’t matter if you’re here on an expired visa, or that you’re actually a sell-out with a lame day job, or an ex-con, or having an affair (if you have kids though people do like to see a few pictures), or rich and just doing this for character development, or that you’re 21 and trying to finish college so you never have to see any of these people again. That’s the beauty of hospitality’s liminality: an infinity of fresh starts. T-Bird never asks you how’s school, though probably for reasons other than concern for the workplace bubble.
It’s good, busy.
Ugh I miss being a student. What has it been, a week? She’s like 23.
People always say that, but trust me, you don’t. Unless you peaked in college which might be a real possibility for her.
I finally saw Licorice Pizza last night. It was hilarious – such a fun little flick. I wrote a poem about it. She doesn’t write. You write. The T-Bird writes. So now, she writes!
That’s so neat. Maybe I can read it sometime, you can’t help but serve every response in a disinterested falsetto.
I’ll send it to you.
Please! Don’t.
She shuffles over to her first table of the evening.
These days she marvels over your crossword puzzle skills and your Pretty Woman era Julia Roberts level beauty (remember that’s a movie about a prostitute…before they were cool) to T-Bird. She does it when you’re around, as though in some twisted way she’s trying to show you she’s sorry for winning. Typical. Had you the privilege of creamy skin and a head of ringlets large enough for a man to stick his hand through, would you too behave in this way – walking over women who will never reach the standards you gatekeep, your delicate feet between their shoulder blades, like a bridge to what you crave, the validation of the male gaze? Really you wish she would just fess up to being a phony instead of going out of her way to try and make you be her friend. Just say “I’m sorry” and go fuck your man you think. Really it’s T-Bird’s fault for entertaining and encouraging all of it, but you’re not ready to admit that, so you’ll just keep bashing another woman for being a bad feminist.
Hi sweetheart, how are ya? One of Santa Claus’s friends has arrived and made his way over to the service end of the bar. It’s not that he’s been trying to get your attention, he’s just of a different generation. One where you weren’t expected to wait for things to come to you.
Good, yourself?
Jolly. Fitting.
You got uh, Jameson? You launch your arm towards the shelf behind you and see if muscle memory can spot the red capped bottle. It too late for a little Irish coffee?
For me, yes. For you, never!
You’re such a tiny little thing, I bet it’d run right through ya. Have ya up all night shaking. He smiles like a man who feels he’s got quite a bit of experience with shaking ladies after dark. You laugh because it’s your job and turn towards the espresso machine. You watch coffee grounds embrace their freedom before congrating in the womb of the portafilter. You press them into a unified mass and watch the coffee contaminated water fill the base of a ceramic cup. You dilute it with water, .25 oz of demerara, and 1.5 oz of Jameson. Then pour a lick of heavy cream into your shaker before raising it to violin level just beneath your chin and drawing a line of tug-o-war with your hands. It is a light load that does not return your force – you must take caution so as not to topple over. You bang your hand against the bottom of the metal crescent moon, unlocking spoils of whipped cream which find their way to the surface of the coffee.
Here you are.
Thank you sweetheart. That’s for you, he says, wrapping both his hands around one of yours and placing what feels like money within its palm. You dart down and see it is a 50 dollar bill.
Do you need change?
No dear, he says chuckling, already halfway to his seat further down the bar. You ring it in at the register and separate out your tip – $31.49. You would have pocketed it right then were Finn not standing beside you.
What were your measurements for the Irish coffee?
Coffee, two-five demmy, one-five Jameson, and cream on top. You’re three months into this Tuesday bartending shift, but everyday feels like an uphill battle to prove your competence. Sean’s the one who calls the shots and you know he never wanted you to have this gig. He says you don’t have the personality for it, but really you think it’s because he’s the numbers guy and doesn’t think we can sell a bartender who is Black AND a woman – a bit too ambitious. But Finn pled your case from his politically correct high horse. He’s attracted to the ease with which you wield your masculine energy – not the kind of woman you marry (his fiance’s pet name is Mouse) – but one you can teach how to nail an old fashioned. So here you are in this trial-run purgatory, waiting on the men who own this place to determine your fate.
It should be point five demmy.
Sorry, I guess I remembered wrong.
You should still be running through the specs in your head. Everytime you even hear the name of a cocktail, you should be running it. Finn’s big thing is that repetition is the best way to learn. You wonder how many times he’ll fall on his face before he realizes some things should not be repeated.
Got it.
So Irish coffee is…?
Coffee, point five demmy, one-five Jameson, and cream on top.
Good, and make sure you serve it in the glass mugs and not the tea cups.
Hey, which of our rums are dark? The Bad Feminist has approached the service station.
Sailor Jerry, Ten to One, and Zacapa, you say without even turning to reference. For once you’re grateful for her presence, providing you the opportunity to flaunt your knowledge in front of Finn.
Thanks, that’s what I thought. I just rang in a Sailor Jerry with coke.
You count 2 ounces of the spiced rum into a highball before filling it with ice. You top with some coke from the lowboy before reaching it across the launchpad to Julia for garnishing.
Lime? She reaches into the jar for one.
Lemon. Diet gets a lime. At least that’s the system I’ve been told to go by. She endows the drink with its proper ornamentation and runs it to her table.
I’m heading out, Finn says, slipping on a parka and securing his snapback. Chef is gonna take care of the gates, so just lock the front door when you leave.
Cool.
Night guys!
The three of us join in a send off from our various spots near the back of the room: Night!
Last week you made the most elegant New York sour – used the back of a bar spoon to make the perfect float of tawny cabernet sit atop foamy booze, creating a distinct line that defied gravity, estranging two liquids destined to engage. It is not an easy feat. Even some of the most experienced hands aren’t steady enough to pull it off every time. You took a picture for Finn but haven’t shown him.
T-Bird walks over and slaps a pack of cigarettes on the rubber mat next to the garnishes. American Spirits (yellow – yuck. Though I can’t remember why you prefer the light blue ones, if there ever was a real reason). Take a few if you want, he says, I’ve got like four packs at home.
I quit, remember? He shrugs and saunters away to one of his tables.
What are you talking about, I just smoked a cig with you yesterday, Bad Feminist Julia exposes having overheard.
It’s a work in progress. You stand in silence for a while. Part of you begins to feel guilty for so blatantly resisting her attempts at amicability.
Finally she offers: I went to the Met last weekend. I think I saw that exhibit you were talking about.
The Gilded Age stuff? What’d you think? You ask, instinctively, but also with a surprising air of curiosity.
Absolutely amazing. It's weird because I’ve obviously been through there so many times growing up, but this time I was in there for like two hours just staring at the same three paintings.
Do you remember which ones?
There were a couple really decadent portraits of women just lounging in these swooping dresses, but my favorite one was the one of the little girl in yellow all dressed up to go to the show.
Oh the Antonia Nell! And she’s got that hat and the umbrella that are a bit too big for her, right? There’s something about the paintings from that era; they’re simple, but they’re not simplistic. The longer you sit with them the more–
Don’t look now, T-Bird has run up to us in a stealthy whisper, but tell me this woman at the table behind me doesn’t look like Jerry’s girlfriend from that episode of Seinfeld.
Because that narrows it down! Julia gives him a playful slap across his tricep.
You’ll know who I’m talking about. She looks. You sneak a peek as well and immediately know exactly which girlfriend he is referencing. Seinfeld knowledge is a basic requirement if you’re seeing Theo…sorry…T-Bird.
The toilet paper girl! she offers.
T-Bird: She’s like: I don’t have a square to spare! I can’t spare a square!
Oh god, here they go.
Julia: And then she ends up being the girl on the hotline that Kramer’s been talking to!
T-Bird: You’re right! I completely forgot about that!
Oh oh and George drops Elaine’s male bimbo boyfriend off that mountain!
The mimbo!
You head to the other end of the bar. No need to witness another competition over who has the greater amount of spare brain capacity for storing sitcom plots. They work well together even though you hate to admit it. She’s a Catholic girl from Bensonhurst who wants to be in the picture shows, and his life’s dilemma has been deciding whether he figures himself a Frank Zappa or a Scorcese character. There’s something nauseatingly cinematic about their coupling you think, not in an artistic way, quite the opposite. It's the difference between calling something a film and a movie. Not to mention they both love the sound of their own voice. Watching him with her makes it hard to understand how he could have ever been into you. I mean, you hate the sound of my voice, don’t you?
When you spent the night with T-Bird in a hotel you told him about your dreams of bartending while he traced your body with his fingers. Can I put my arm around you? He’d asked. You’d smiled and said yes. You felt so safe, like a child, playing in an abundance of queen-sized linen before being toted back to her twin bed. How stupid, how stupid you were to think that feeling would last.
It’s 9:27 and things are starting to clear out. Barbie picks up the tab while the Gem is in the bathroom. Santa Claus leaves a $20 bill behind that rounds out to 76¢ in tips. The Tuesday crowd is stocked full of early risers, and last call is in about 30 minutes. T-Bird and his Bad Feminist have slipped into the coat check in a manner they both know was not inconspicuous. This is what they do. They fuck in the coat check on nights when it’s slow and too warm to necessitate anyone’s entry. They’re stealthy, but the idea of them fucking is so loud you can hear her breathing — her head tilted up to heaven in gratitude for his moans in her ear, his hands visiting lonely places on her body. You shudder. It’s not the image of them having sex…it’s the image of them having sex. This was supposed to be you. All you’d ever wanted was for him to kiss you like no one was watching where everyone could see, like that time in front of the 14th Street station — you in the air, your legs around his waist — or that morning in front of the New Yorker hotel when he said to be continued. But this is the city, no one cares what you do on the street. You wanted it to be here with everyone you know because then you’d be sure you weren’t something to be ashamed of, something to hide, someone’s mistress. It was never supposed to be you. It had to be her. Now she gets him and you get your bartending shift once a week. They emerge from behind the curtains, her face flushed, his breathing hastened. She wipes the rendezvous from her lips; he pours himself a glass of water.
I’m going for a cig, you announce, grabbing your jacket and one of T-Bird’s American Spirit yellows.
Outside you bring fire to the tip of your pre-rolled chemicals and take the deepest breath you’ve taken all day. Originally you were only a social smoker, you know, to look sexy and elusive. But then it became a compulsion – a way to take control. Ironically now it’s the one thing another one of many things you can’t control, try as you might. That's the thing with a vice. It’s a slow suicide. Suicide for the indecisive, for the not depressed enough. Fuck. Sometimes your thoughts are so loud you end up speaking them. That would explain why the man walking past just shot you that look.
Perhaps if you stopped with all the woe is me shit, things would be better. You’d be happy, and good things seem to happen to happy people. In that way, happiness is a choice, you think. But truthfully, you’re miserable. For as long as you can remember it’s seemed like everyone gets to have fun and you are destined to suffer. It’s like that story you read in high school English (because everything can find its doppelganger in a book – this I can confirm). You’re the child and the world is Omelas, its residents’ happiness dependent upon your state of perpetual squalor and destitution. It’s like the powers that be aren’t satisfied in withholding what you so desperately crave, they actually must go to painstaking lengths to make sure you watch every other person in the world get what you desire, not just what you desire what you need, because a person needs to feel connected in that way, and then you just end up feeling so ashamed of your wanting it so badly that you convince yourself that no one could ever want you no one could ever want someone who is so eager and then you end up being so afraid of showing interest that you lose out on exactly what you wanted in the first place. Or maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with any of that and only to do with what you believe to be the fact of your own undesirability. Your repulsiveness begins to claw its hands around your head. You bring the cig to your lips in an attempt to prove you can still breathe. You feel your mind circling downwards, into the mouth of the abyss. How many evenings (long after your legs could touch the carpet) did you sit atop your mother’s lap and cry? I’m ugly Mommy! I’m ugly. Why wouldn’t she let you press your curls? Why did your thighs have to be thick enough to play baseball with? Why had she even subjected you to this world filled with people who looked nothing like you? A world where boys in your class tended toward paleness on the whole and the most you could ever be was smart? You’re beautiful, sweet pea, she’d say rubbing her hand along your back like a ritual, as you sobbed into her sweater, clutching at her ID from the office still around her neck. You’re beautiful. But you never felt it and eventually the sadness set in. A deep sadness that had for years been waiting beneath a sea of guilt for the chance to breach. You slept and starved and thought about offing yourself at least once every hour, sometimes more if you found yourself apologizing for something. The years of crying beside her in the passenger seat on weekend car rides, her eyes fixed so intently on the road, she’d never even know.
Something wet hits your finger as you draw your hand upward for another drag. You’re crying now, on the street in Chelsea, the neighborhood’s wealth of apathy amplifying your aloneness. It takes a decent amount of willpower to keep this drizzling of tears from developing into a hurricane. At the peak of this struggle T-Bird emerges from the bar which glows gold in the night’s obscurity. You swiftly wipe the tears from your face, trying to make it look as though you’re rubbing your eyes from exhaustion.
“You got a light?” you hand over your Bic. “Thanks.” You stand in silence for a while, looking out into the melee of New York City towers and lights. You scan the windows of the apartment building across the street, your gaze getting caught on the figure of a topless woman illuminated in orange who appears to be preparing for bed.
We were just inside trying to figure out whether we’re Georges or Kramers.
Ah, you offer. They were always playing stupid games like this.
You’ve seen Seinfeld right?
Of course.
So I think everyone falls into one category or the other. Either you’re living on the edge and unaffected by conventional wisdom like Kramer or you’re more of a stick-to-the-plan-to-a-fault overthinker like George.
Sort of like the whole type A type B thing.
Sort of, but don’t let that influence your decision. I’m definitely more of a Kramer, for context.
Hmmm. You pretend to think about it even though you know neither is a fit. Living on the edge means sacrificing your femininity, it’s too precious of a balancing act – though that depends upon society allowing you your femininity in the first place, which it doesn’t seem too keen on. Regardless, you could never make as much noise as Kramer. Besides, George has the whole, letting-his-insecurities-get-in-the-way-of-every-potential-opportunity thing going for him. You can get with that. I guess I’m more of a George, you say having now actually invested your mental energy into this Buzzfeed quiz of a question.
You really think so?
Yeah…I think I wanna be a Kramer, and sometimes I play Kramer, but deep down I’m a George. I’m too anxious to ever be that uninhibited.
What are you so anxious about?
Everything, all the time. Lately I’ve been struggling with change, but that’s how life is, that’s how the city is. He didn’t ask. But he did. But he wasn’t meaning to.
Mmm not good with change…what’s that about?
What are you, my therapist? Your way of warning him about what he’s just signed on for, though at this point he must know. I guess it just has to do with a lot of instability in my childhood. You gear up to say more and then you decide to interrupt your tendency toward talking about yourself. You don’t ever experience any lingering anxiety?
Eh, I think my childhood was relatively smooth. It wasn’t until I got older and my brother got sick and my dad died that I started experiencing any noticeable anxiety, but it passes – it doesn’t dictate my life in any major way.
You never knew about his dad. You want to know more but you don’t dare reveal your pursuit for emotional intimacy with this man.
You sure about that?
Haha there she is! Well if we’re playing that game I must say that a George wouldn’t have ended up in the hotel that night. This is the first time he’s mentioned it since it happened over a year ago. You were beginning to believe you’d dreamt it. Your eyes quickly find the sidewalk, hoping he didn’t notice their instinctual widening. Why was he bringing it up now? Like this? Perhaps it was the only way he knew how. Out of habit and maybe pity, you try and bring the conversation back to shore:
What are you talking about? George’s entire character arc is finding increasingly grander ways of scheming to get laid.
Yeah but he would’ve fucked it up for himself before he even got to check in.
Fair. Well a Kramer would’ve bought me dinner first. Or at least snuck home some extra poached hake. I was hungry.
Yeah I’m sorry about that. We’re leaving light-hearted island again. You oblige:
Everything happened so fast.
Caught up in the moment.
Yeah, caught up in the moment…How did your dad die? You’re regretting it as soon as it leaves your lips. Forget how the question makes him feel – melancholic, nostalgic, suffocated, or perhaps even validated, given a much needed space to be seen – your vulnerability is showing and it’s embarrassing. Intimacy, it feeds on shame. Before he can answer his missus pops her head out and he is summoned:
Theo I need help bringing up the dessert for your nine-top.
You wish he’d hold your hand and rub his thumb along your skin. Instead he puts out his half-smoked cigarette on a fire-hydrant and tosses it into a puddle near the curb. He heads back into the bar, leaving you where you were, almost as though the conversation never happened, save for the dwindling cigarette in your hand, a sign of the passage of time. You finish it off, throw it on the ground, and stamp out the remaining sparks before heading back inside.
The next time you check the clock it’s 9:50, and the only customer remaining just asked to close his tab. It looks like it’ll be an early night. You dive into closing duties, burning your ice and putting nips on bottle spouts. The last man standing signs his bill and bids you goodnight. T-Bird and the Bad Feminist who have been without tables for the last forty-five minutes amble over to the bar.
T-Bird states his case: Uhh wines are in the walk-in, tables are wiped down…we’re good to go right?
Check-out reports are also done! the Bad Feminist interjects.
You could ask them to stay at least until last call at 10, but with the bar empty there’s no buffer between you and them. It’s probably best to set them loose. Your authority over them is pretty thin anyway – tender of the bar, a matter of titles.
See you tomorrow, you say. They scurry to grab their belongings.
They’re gone in a matter of seconds. You make sure you give it a few before you even think of stepping outside to bring in the forgotten happy hour board; they probably couldn’t even make it two feet from the door before pouncing.
You put the stoppers in the tap spouts and sigh a deep sigh before taking in the vacant scene before you. The moat of marble drawing lines that cannot be crossed. You’re over here and the rest of the world is over there. Maybe you like that. Maybe that’s why you wanted to be a bartender in the first place — to safeguard the distance. But who is being protected from who?