The Barmaid Blog™: Life for a 20-something Manhattan Barmaid

Friday evening, for the first time since January, I see Bonnie. I don't see her at the Bar in her old Coors gear, or run into her on the subway; I see her on the side of a bus stop shelter in midtown. She's gazing at me seductively from a fashion advertisement, and it absolutely stops me in my tracks. I'm grateful that Jenny isn't with me, because although she knows about Bonnie, I don't know if she'd understand my need to stop and stare. Before I can convince my feet to move again, I start to remember what it was like for someone to have that much control over me just by looking at me or saying my name. Obsession isn't love, but being owned so completely can be just as overwhelming.

Eventually I peel myself from my spot on the sidewalk and finish my trip to the Bar, making a mental note to avoid that corner for a while.

As I walk in, I see Tony and Carl sitting at the far end of the bar, and they both get up to give me a hug. I'm running a little late, so I promise them we'll catch up shortly, and I run to the back room to drop off my bag. After I've checked in with Jocelyn and Maya, I check in on the boys with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon in my hand.

"How's your girlfriend, girlfriend?" Carl grins.

"She's good, thanks. Working hard, as always. And she asked me to move in with her."

"Holy cow," says Tony. "That's huge! Are you gonna do it?"

I smile. "I don't know, to be honest. It's fast, and her asking was sudden. I've got a couple of months to decide before I have to renew my lease with my roommates, so I'm not thinking about it much right now. But it sure would be convenient - I haven't taken the subway this much since I was a grunt at a publishing house."

"You don't move in with someone because it's convenient, Debra," Tony lectures.

Carl snorts at his boyfriend. "Who do you think you're kidding? This is New York, my friend. You moved in with me because I had a balcony and a wide-screen TV!"

"Don't you believe him, Debra," Tony wags his finger, "I moved in with him because he cooked the best risotto I've ever tasted." I laugh, and leave them in order to serve some other customers.

"Where's Mario tonight?" I ask Jocelyn a little while later. He isn't always there when she's working, but it's unusual for him to miss a Friday night.

"Oh, he's away for the weekend with Angelo. They went to Atlantic City, I think."

"You didn't want to go with them?"

"Nah, I'm not much for gambling. Besides, it's good for them to have a boys' weekend every now and then."

"So what are you doing Sunday?"

She shrugs. "I don't know, what am I doing Sunday?"

"Come over to my place, the girls and I are doing our traditional bagel brunch and watching the Yankees-Mariners game, and Jenny will be there. I'd love for you to get to know her."

She bounces a little (which makes her enormous breasts bounce a lot), and says, "Hey, that'd be great!"

At a little after ten o'clock, Susan and Grace, the current Coors promo girls assigned to work the Bar, enter and start making their way through our customers. As far as I know, Grace doesn't know anything about the woman she replaced or why she left; she just happened to be next. Susan on the other hand stops by the bar to say hi, and gives my hand a squeeze.

"Have you seen her ad?" I ask, and she nods. "I don't think I was prepared for it," I add.

Susan shakes her head. "Nobody has ever been prepared for anything about Bonnie," she says, and turns to dive back into the morass. For the first time, I wonder if Bonnie seduced her, too, or if she's talking about something else entirely, and then I decide it doesn't really matter. The very next thought in my head is to try to remember who actually paid for the enormous leather sectional couch in my apartment, and whether my roommates Cassie and Jill will want to keep it when I leave.

When I leave. I've already started to make up my mind, haven't I? I think to myself. And for a moment - just a moment - I bounce a little, too.

(Many thanks to Bridget E. Wilde of Bewildered Art for permission to use her Barmaid Fox drawing as a userpic.)

Jenny's getting out of a taxi in front of my building as I walk up, and she smiles when she sees me. "Hey, baby," she says, "I hope you don't mind, we got done with that EBT earlier than expected." She's carrying her briefcase, her purse, and a bottle of wine. The plan was for me to cook dinner for us both tonight, but I wasn't expecting her for about another hour and a half.

"Of course not!" We give each other a hug before we go in. It occurs to me that I have no idea what an EBT is, but I don't ask.

"Mmmm, you smell like the beach," she says as we break the hug and go inside. "Where were you?"

"Bryant Park, soaking up the sun and the wi-fi. That's just sunscreen you smell."

"I love it."

Howard the doorman hands me the mail, then tells me he has a package for me, so we wait for a moment.

"I was going to take a shower and change before I cooked dinner."

She grabs my ass, and leans into my neck for another whiff. "Don't." I don't have time to respond before Howard returns and hands me a box from Amazon. I thank him, and we head for the elevators.

"What did you order?" Jenny asks.

"Nothing," I reply, and point to the address label where, instead of my full name, it reads Debra the Barmaid. "One of my blog readers must have sent me something from my wish list." I open it up, and sure enough, a reader named Christopher has sent me the DVD box of the "Band of Brothers" miniseries. (Thanks so much!!)

We're halfway into our first glasses of riesling, I've started to get dinner together, and Jenny has told me a couple of funny stories about the confusion over Passover at her law firm, before she comes back to it. "You don't think that's weird, people you don't know sending you gifts?"

I shrug as I chop an onion and pray for my contact lenses to prevent me from tearing up. "I don't know, I guess I think it's really sweet. I was surprised the first couple of times anybody sent me anything at all, but nobody's forcing them. In fact I've never even asked, I just put the link to my wish list on the blog for shits and giggles."

"So why do you think they do it?"

"I don't know, to be nice? In appreciation for the blog, or something. Like I said, I think it's sweet."

"I wonder. You don't think they're trying to get in your pants, or get you to reveal something about yourself? Maybe someone thinks they can find you by tracking a package?" She pours us each some more wine.

"Well, if that's why they're doing it, they're wasting their money. You can't track a package you send to someone else using their wish list, that would totally defeat the purpose of letting you hide your address." And since when are you so cynical and suspicious? I want to ask her but don't.

"And the, uh... pants thing?" She edges closer, puts her wine glass down on the counter, and places a hand on my hip as I sautee.

"Well, you know," I grin at her, "the packing slip does include the address of the sender. So even if he can't find me, I could go find Christopher at his home address," - I walk back into the living room, where the box still sits open on the Comfy Couch - "which is," - and I read the address out loud to her as she watches me with eyebrows raised. "Yeah, so, to thank him for spending a little money on sending me a television show, which I'm pretty sure he sent me in the first place to thank me for writing something I don't get paid for but which he got some enjoyment out of, I could fly to his hometown, show up at his doorstep, and fuck his brains out." I casually stroll back into the kitchen and resume sauteeing.

"Am I being a jealous bitch?" Jenny asks me.

"They just read about me, honey. You get me."

"I know, at least I think I know, but there are thousands of them, and only one of me. And I can only give you so many gifts."

"Do you want me to take the wish list down?"

"No, no, you're right, it's sweet. I would never ask you to turn away a nice gesture from a fan."

"Will you watch 'Band of Brothers' with me?" I add a bunch of shelled shrimp and spices to the sauteed onions, and the sizzling gets louder.

"Of course. Will you come live with me?"

"I - what?"

"Your lease is up for renewal in July, you told me so yourself. Jill and Cassie can find someone else to take your room, can't they? I have so much space, and Puppy loves having you around, and we could be together every single night, no spare shit in a drawer, no cabs or subways home first thing in the morning only to go back to sleep."

"I don't know, Jenny, God, I only met you a few months ago. We've never talked about it, I've never thought about it, I love it here with my friends - I mean I love you, you know that, right?" She nods. "But it's awfully soon!"

"Yeah, I know. I'm such a cliché, right? The lesbian and the moving van..." I laugh. "I just don't want to have to wait until next July."

I take a deep breath. "I didn't know you think about this stuff."

She puts a hand on my cheek. "Every single first thing in the morning."

I take her in my arms and kiss her until the shrimp starts burning.

It's a few minutes before I'm really sure I'm awake... my senses cross wires for a moment, and I'm sure I feel coffee on my neck. No, I smell nibbling. When I finally open my eyes, I see the top of Gary's head, and I understand that he's nibbling on my neck, and the coffee must be brewing in the kitchen. As marvelous as the nibbling feels, I'm already stifling a yawn. Even a relatively uneventful Saturday night shift at the Bar is an exhausting one, and we didn't get to my place until almost five in the morning. I turn my head just enough to squint at the clock, and as I notice it's not even 10:30 yet, Gary says, "Good morning, beautiful."

I roll over and bury my face in the pillow, groaning. My evil boyfriend lifts up the covers and starts nibbling the small of my back instead. I lift my face. "If I don't sleep past noon every Sunday, then the terrorists have won."

"Yankees and Devil Rays," he replies, and starts moving lower on my body. Nibble. "Third base line." Nibble. "Twenty-seven degrees and sunny." Nibble. "One o'clock." And at the next nibble, I shiver.

I roll onto my back again. "You're killing me, Kiwi. As long as I'm awake, stop teasing and put that mouth where it'll do some good." He grins, and just to aggravate me further, spends a minute nibbling on my inner thighs before he focuses properly.

A good half hour and half a dozen screams later, someone bangs on my door. "Get out of bed, you slut," my roommate Cassie yells, "I'm not missing warmups!"

Gary comes up for air. "C'mon, then, let's get a quick shower."

"What about you?" I point. "You're - I mean, seriously, you're --"

"Yeah," he laughs. "Well, it'll give us something to think about during the game, won't it?"

I nevertheless take him in my mouth just for a few seconds as a show of good faith, then we grab our towels and wrap ourselves in them. "Where the hell did I find you?" I ask. "And why did you make me promise I wouldn't talk about this stuff on my blog?"

He kisses me, and we head for the bathroom. "Y'know what? Give it a shot. Lay it all out there for once, do your worst, and we'll see how I feel about it. You've got my permission for this one time as an experiment, and then we'll talk about our deal later." I make a mental note not to go overboard anyway, to go a little easy on the details, and we get oursevles clean.

At a quarter to one, we exit the 4 train in the Bronx - Gary, Cassie, my other roommate Jill, and me - and head into the stadium. By one o'clock we're already sitting in our loge level seats on the third-base line and eating hot dogs, and thankfully there's nobody sitting nearby this time to comment on our technique. But remembering that incident plants a thought in my head. I reach over casually and place my hand on Gary's jeans exactly where I know I will find more than his leg, and I lean over to whisper in his ear.

"As a thank-you for this morning - and for letting me blog about this morning - when we get home, I'm going to get you off with my mouth once for every run the Yankees score today."

Gary squirms under my hand. "What? Debra, are you sure? Didn't they light these guys up for seventeen runs last night?"

"Yeah, but that's just it. Even against the Devil Rays, they're not going to do that twice in a row. Besides, Shields has a pretty good ERA. I'm not too worried."

"All right, but remember guys aren't like girls - you get off faster each time if you keep going, we get slower. You might be working pretty hard for the last couple if the Yanks score four or five."

"You should be so lucky, Gary," I grin, and I wash down the last of my frank with some beer.

By the bottom of the fourth inning, the Yankees have scored three runs already, and Gary is having a little fun with it. We've told Cassie and Jill about my little plan, and although Jill seems a little embarrassed by the whole thing, Cassie is enjoying the hell out of it. "What about unearned runs?" she asks. "Does he get a handjob for each of those instead of a blowjob?" Jill blushes a little and fills out her scorecard.

Then the gates burst wide open. The Yankees spend a half hour and fourteen batters scoring ten runs in the fourth inning, and suddenly I owe Gary thirteen orgasms. Cassie is beside herself laughing, and Gary just sits there with a smug look on his face, and says with a shrug, "Hey, it wasn't my idea."

After the bottom of the sixth inning, when the Yankees make it eighteen, Cassie has to excuse herself to the ladies room with tears streaming down her face, and Gary even stops gloating. We're on the subway heading home - after the Yankees end up defeating the Devil Rays by the absolutely humiliating score of twenty-one to four - before anybody mentions it again.

"So," Gary starts, "should I, um... call in sick tomorrow?" Cassie snorts, and even Jill laughs a little.

"I think this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me, mister," is all I can manage.

"It's a chance I'm willing to take. All I know is, you've kept your promises to me up until now, and I've no reason to suspect you're about to stop." I rest my head on his shoulder. "And I'll tell you something else, Debra," he says, a little more quietly. "There's no rule that says I can't do anything more for you until you've settled this account."

"I love you," I hear myself say to him for the first time over the roar of the 4 train, and then I realize what I've done. He reaches his arm around me and pulls me closer, and kisses the top of my head.

I awaken slowly, from half-remembered dreams of performing onstage in a Broadway musical about barmaids in the big city, the last few oddly dissonant notes ringing in my brain. Before it disappears forever, I get the sense that the song was about bad tippers, and I grin. Then I remember what happened last night, and I pull myself out of bed and into my alpaca-lined slippers.

There he still is, sleeping on our giant, L-shaped leather couch, under a spare comforter.

We talked quietly almost until dawn, taking care not to wake my roommates, and then I insisted he crash here instead of dragging himself home to Park Slope at that hour. He was the perfect gentleman. Even when I came back out of my room in my pajamas to say goodnight, he just sort of waved from the couch, and I began to wonder if he had really, literally just wanted to make sure I got home okay. But then he probably wouldn't have stuck around to talk for so long.

I pad my way into the kitchen, pour out the last of the coffee that either Cassie or Jill made for the two of them, and start another pot brewing. I stick my head in the fridge to see if there's anything there I can make for breakfast, but there aren't even any leftover bagels in the freezer from Sunday's brunch. Then I realize I'm presuming he'll stick around for breakfast in the first place, when it's entirely possible he has to get home and get ready for another day at work.

Soon the coffee is done. I grab a couple of mugs, and pour myself one. I'm inhaling the aroma deeply when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around, and Gary's standing there. "Smells good," he says. I reach the mug out to him, and he takes it, but then sets it right down on the counter, steps forward, and kisses me. It's a sweet little kiss.

"Good morning," I smile.

"Did I mention how great your accent is?"

I laugh. "My accent?"

"Good MORE-ning," he spoofs, drawing out the R that he would never pronounce himself, and I kiss him again.

"Can you stick around for breakfast, or lunch?"

"Wish I could. I've got the rundown on Thursdays, and it wouldn't do for me to be late for my own meeting or show up in the same gear as yesterday."

"No, it wouldn't."

He kisses me, a little longer this time. "Can I make it up to you this weekend, then? Maybe Saturday night?"

"I can't, I'm working at the Bar."

"Right, lunch on Saturday, then?"

"Absolutely."

"I'll pick you up at one." He puts his arms around me, draws me in, and kisses me like he means it.

When he lets go, I say, "Explain to me again why you're leaving?"

"Because I'm a stupid, stupid man."

Nevertheless, a minute later, he's gone, and I sit down with my coffee to catch my breath.

Friday night I'm on with Jocelyn and Maya, with Vince barbacking. When I arrive at eight, Samantha and Will are standing at the bar. Before I get a chance to ask about their travels or offer my condolences to Samantha on Ohio State's loss, or even for that matter get to the back room to drop off my bag, Samantha steps into my path.

"Tell me it's true! You really took a boy home with you Wednesday night?"

I glance at Maya, and wonder whether she waited until today, or called Samantha the minute Gary got into the cab with me two nights ago. "It wasn't like that."

"Which part - a boy, home with you, or Wednesday night?" She's got me, and I grin. "Oh, Maya," she cries, a hand over her heart, "our little girl is growing up!"

I manage to get through the early part of my shift without them pestering me too much for details, but the teasing doesn't stop. I'm beginning to remember some of the pretty good reasons I try not to go too far in responding to guys' advances here at the Bar. First off, there's no privacy - and second, nobody ever lets the truth get in the way of a good story.

"So Debra," Jocelyn says at one point, "when you're with a guy who produces a newscast, is there a little scroll that runs across his chest that says, 'BREAKING NEWS: I'm about to come'?" I smile and keep mixing martinis.

"What I want to know is," Vince joins in, "does a guy from the southern hemisphere go down on you in a counter-clockwise direction?" Not everybody gets it, but I laugh and blush at the image.

I don't even bother protesting that nothing happened, because I know - as much from having been on the other end of the teasing, as anything else - that it won't help a damn bit. "Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers," William Penn said, but I assume he wasn't talking picking up guys at his tavern. As with most other things in my life, I know the truth, and that's all that matters.

Later on, Former B-List Actor comes in with a couple of friends, and they manage to squeeze in at the bar. It's the first time I've seen him in here since Warren and I broke up a few months ago, and I guess I'd started to think he was staying away out of loyalty. After I serve their drinks, he and I make a little small-talk, nothing too serious that would reveal how either of us feels about the break-up. We're still chatting about his kids when Samantha comes over with a fresh Long Island Iced Tea.

"So Debra, how was this guy? Are you gonna do him again? I mean, see him again?" I glare at her, with FBA throwing looks back and forth between her and me. She finally looks at him, and points. "Hey, I recognize you from TV! You're that actor guy. Wait, hold on, didn't Maya say you were friends with --" Her voice and her hand gestures trail off at the same moment, but it's still another good ten seconds before I think she's actually gotten it. She looks back at me, and takes a long sip of her drink. Finally she says, "Wow, that could have been really awkward," turns, and walks to the other end of the bar where Maya is serving.

"I'm sorry," I say to FBA, almost as if he's Warren - who will, undoubtedly, hear about this later.

FBA shrugs. "Life goes on. And it's none of my business."

"You're always welcome here, you know that, right?" He nods. "And so is Warren."

"I'll let him know you said so." I blow him a kiss and move on to serve other customers.

I'm twenty-six.

It's Thursday, March 15, and I'm on my way to meet my friend Dara at her new place so she can take me out to dinner for my birthday at one of my favorite restaurants, Arte Cafe, which is conveniently only a few blocks from her. I'm in a much better mood than I'd thought I was going to be when she first asked me about my plans for tonight. When I arrive at her apartment building on Central Park West, I'm wearing the same simple yet elegant black dress I wore to Warren's for our first date, and I get a couple of flattering sideways glances from men I pass on the street.

I'm expecting to be announced and then wait for Dara in the lobby, but the doorman tells me to go on up, so I do. When the door opens, it's not Dara on the other side - it's Jessica. I stand there dumbstruck for a second, then she says, "Hi, stranger," and we grab each other for a hug. "Happy birthday," she whispers into my ear, and then we go inside.

"How long are you in town?"

"Just a couple of days. My mother has a huge list of wedding-related stuff she wanted me to fly out to take care of, and I was able to work it out so we could do it this week."

"That's so awesome," I smile.

In the living room, I find Dara having a glass of wine with Cassie and Jill, my roommates. "Surprise!" says Dara, handing me a full glass. "It's not much of a surprise party, I know, but I hope you don't mind five for dinner instead of two."

"No, it's perfect," I say, and it's the truth.

After a round of hugs, Dara says, "There's one more surprise - I know you said no gifts, but we all kicked in and got you a single gift, so please don't say no." Cassie pulls a bag out from behind a sofa, and pulls out a wrapped box. When I pull off the wrapping, I recognize the name on the box instantly.

"You did not!" I pull the box open, and there it is, the black and gold dress I've been lusting after. I hold it up in front of me. "Oh my God, I don't know what to say." Giving Dara the first hug, I say, "You bitch, you were planning this all along!" She laughs.

After all the hugs and thank-yous, Jill says, "Try it on!"

"Try and stop me," I grin as I head for Dara's and Dennis's bedroom.

It looks even better than I imagined it would - at least it does while I'm all alone, looking in the mirror. My only regret is that the most wonderful part of the dress is the back, and I can't easily see it. I remind myself to check it out again in the elevator, which has mirrors on every wall.

I return to the living room, and announce, "I'm wearing it to dinner. And then I think I'm going to wear it for my ten-to-close shift afterwards."

I get a lot of oohs and aahs over the dress, and I twirl playfully. Jessica wolf-whistles, and I freeze a little, waiting to see how the others will react. At first they seem unsure what to do, but finally Cassie rolls her eyes and says, "Would you two get a room, please?" We all laugh.

Jill adds, "At least buy her dinner first, this time," and we laugh some more, though I can't help blushing a little. Somehow we manage to get out the door without much more innuendo. After I get a good, long look in the elevator, I'm satisfied. I think I feel more like a woman in this dress than in anything else I've ever worn, and I can't stop smiling.

We're chatting as we leave the elevator for the front door, when the older, distinguished looking but still really, really handsome movie star who lives in the building with his much younger actress wife comes walking in from the street. "Evening, Dara, ladies," he nods, as if he's just the downstairs neighbor, which I suppose he is, though the expression on Jill's face would be pretty funny if it were any other random New Yorker.

"[Movie star], what do you think of Debra's new birthday dress?" She makes me twirl again as he passes, so that he can see the back.

He shakes his head and exhales. "That dress is as sure a sign as I've ever seen that God loves us and wants us to be happy." I melt a little. "Happy birthday, Debra, and have fun, ladies." He steps into the elevator, and I don't want to move from that spot.

But eventually we do, and we head for dinner. "How happily married do you suppose they are?" I ask Jessica along the way, and she laughs. It's a warm March evening, I'm with my girls, I'm ravenous for some Italian food, and I'm wearing my favorite dress for the first time ever. Happy birthday to me!

I've been sleeping an awful lot the last few weeks.

I think I'm entitled. I spent nearly a week in the hospital because I let a bad cold become pneumonia, which led to whiplash and a bloody eye. I never knew lying in bed could be so exhausting - not to mention that lack of sleep probably helped put me there in the first place, so who can blame me for getting as much as I can now? I work hard at my job, and it's been really fucking cold here in New York City lately, and I don't want to get sick again. I don't want to get sick ever again.

There are some days when I don't get out of bed until it's nearly time for me to go to work, and I go to sleep as soon as I get home. On days when I don't have to work, I'm not leaving the house much. I have these wonderful fuzzy slippers lined with alpaca wool that my cousin Rebecca gave me for Hannukah this year, and lately sometimes I'll put those on, wrap my comforter around me, and watch movies on the Comfy Couch in the living room all day, drinking herbal tea and occasionally making myself a sandwich.

My roommate Jill is convinced I'm clinically depressed. She hasn't told me she thinks so, but I've overheard her talking to our roommate Cassie about it a couple of times when they think I'm asleep or they think they're talking quietly enough for me not to hear. It's almost comical, because I think she had trouble passing Psychology 101 in college, but she's ready to diagnose me. "She hasn't had a single alcoholic drink or even a cup of coffee since she's been home," I picked up once during one of those conversations. "I think she's terrified she'll get sick again. And she's sleeping way more than normal." Well, yeah. Is that really so strange?

I gathered that Cassie was dismissive the first time, but I think she's getting a little worried herself. She's been trying to get me interested in going out to dinner, or going over to Scott's place to play poker, or helping her make brownies, stuff like that. Cassie, Miss independent "Sex and the City" herself, who barely knows how to use a can opener, wants me to make brownies with her! It's a little comical, and I almost want to take her up on it just because the whole idea is so... well... pathetic and bathetic, if you know what I mean.

Sunday night, I go to bed shortly after the Superbowl, and I fall asleep pretty quickly, something that hasn't been difficult for me lately. I open my eyes, and I'm on the Comfy Couch. Everybody's in the living room with me, and I'm just trying to watch a movie and stay warm in my comforter, but they keep interrupting. I wish they'd wait for a damn commercial.

"You haven't picked up an extra shift since you've been back at the Bar," Vince says to me.

"I don't need the money," I reply.

"Your tips are down," he adds.

"It's wintertime. People are paying off their Christmas shopping credit card bills."

"You haven't watched or listened to any hockey games," Henry says, skating around the living room.

"I'll get excited about it again when it's playoff time, the Wildcats are doing fine without me."

"They're number one in the country, and you don't care?"

I shrug. "They've been there before."

"Why have you been lying to me?" my father demands.

"Daddy, I haven't! I'm feeling fine!"

I feel a hand on my leg, and it's Warren, sitting next to me. "You haven't thought about sex in weeks."

"There's nobody I'm interested in right now."

A hand on the other leg, and it's Nancy. "Not even yourself?" I look in her eyes, and way in the back there, past the spot of blood on the surface, I can just barely make out an image. It's Jessica. She's walking down the aisle in her wedding dress. I wave, but she doesn't see me.

My phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket and see that it's Dara calling, so I pick up. "Where do I live, Debra?" she asks. "Do you have any idea?"

"I have a bad connection, I'll call you back."

Waiter stands up from his seat across the room. I squint, but I can't make out his face. "I'm busy writing a book, but I still find time to blog. What's your excuse?" There's a knock on the door, and he goes to answer it. When he returns, he's accompanied by... me. I look good. I'm wearing tight jeans, a tight pink cutoff shirt, a ruby bellybutton ring, and my hair in a ponytail. I'm smiling. I look good when I smile, I notice.

The me across the room is holding a box, and soon she opens it and pulls out a stack of paper, close to a ream's worth. "Are you done with me?" the other me asks.

"What?"

The other me sets the stack of paper down on the dining table, keeping a thin sheaf of a few dozen pages in her hands. Looking in my eyes, she slowly tears the sheaf in half. I want to get up and stop her. At least I think I want to - but I don't get up. "Are you done with me?" the other me asks again. One by one, the other people in the room get up from where they're sitting, take some pages from the stack on the table, and tear them in half. Then they leave. It's just me and her.

"Are you done with me?" the other me asks one more time, and as she picks up the remaining sheets, I see that she was never me at all.

"Are you done with me?" my mother asks me, and holds up the last few pages of my book. "Because if you're done with me, I'm done with you." She tears them in half, drops the pieces on the floor, and walks out. The room is quiet, and the muted TV flashes unfamiliar images.

I'm alone.

I stand up from the couch, and unwrap myself from the comforter. The pieces of my book are all over the apartment floor. I inhale deeply, and smell something familiar. In the kitchen, I notice that somebody's brewed a fresh pot of coffee. So I pour myself a mug. I take it into the living room, where I set it down on the dining table and kneel down on the floor. There's an awful lot of pieces of paper, but after a while, I manage to gather them all together in the box she left behind.

I get up off the floor, take the coffee and the box of paper into my room, and sit down at my desk. My computer is there, sleeping, waiting for me to press a key and wake it up. So I do.

I open my eyes. I'm in bed, and the sun streams in through my window. It's freezing, and I can tell it's not going to get much warmer during the day. It's early - early enough that I can hear one of my roommates in the shower, and quite a bit earlier than I'm used to getting up. Much, much earlier than I've been getting up these days.

Under the comforter, I'm warm and safe. But I smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. I throw the comforter off, stick my feet into my slippers, and go pour myself a mug. I come back to my room, and sit down at my desk. My computer is there, sleeping, waiting for me to press a key and wake it up.

So I do.

The answer to your several comments and your many, many e-mails is, "I have absolutely no idea what Samantha is going to make Will do now that she's won their bet!" Samantha was theoretically in Columbus at the game with her family, and I can only imagine how excited she must have been. I haven't been at the Bar since my shift Saturday night, so I haven't spoken to Maya yet to find out if she's spoken to Samantha. Will also didn't put in an appearance on Saturday - I didn't start my shift until well after the game was over, but Jocelyn told me he wasn't there during the afternoon to watch the game. I promise, I'll report as soon as I know something.

Sunday my roommates Cassie and Jill and I have our usual bagels and pajamas brunch, and we've planned another poker game for the afternoon and evening. Our friend Scott is coming over with his colleague Arielle, but all the other regulars have declined, so I was asked to find someone else to join us. On a whim, on Saturday afternoon I called Adam, the guy I met outside the Apple Store a couple of months ago who shares my taste in ice cream and ice cream shop employees. We'd only spoken a few times since then. As luck would have it, he plays poker, so I invited him, and he was available.

He's not bad, either. We start out after brunch with a Texas Hold'em tournament for the six of us, and Adam takes second place after a protracted head-to-head battle with Scott. Then in dealer's choice, I proceed to lose three $20 buy-ins over the course of the next few hours - not all of it goes to Adam, but he doesn't do too badly for himself. By that time he has also managed to make everybody laugh a few times, too - he's a pretty funny guy. I also get the sense that he's flirting with me at times, but I've had a few drinks, so I could be imagining the whole thing. He's still really not my type, anyway. I decline to buy in a fourth time, and instead just sit and watch the rest of the game.

Afterwards, we clean up, and while Jill, Arielle, and I chat with Adam over one final beer, Cassie once again takes Scott into her room and closes the door. Jill and Arielle and I try not to pay too much attention to it, even when the noises start to get a little too loud to ignore. But Adam can't help being amused. "That wasn't part of the prize for winning the hold'em tourney, was it? 'cause if I'd known..."

We all laugh, then Arielle says, "Well, it's about time I get myself over to the hospital for my shift."

Adam says, "Oh, I'll walk you out. I should get home anyway, I have to work in the morning." He collects his things, then he pauses as he hugs me goodbye. "God, you smell good," he whispers in my ear. Then they're gone.

"I hope he's not interested in Arielle," Jill remarks as we sit on the couch flipping channels through the post-midnight television wasteland.

"Why?"

"She's gay."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I thought you knew."

"No, I didn't." In fact, evidence would suggest I'm usually the last to know. "But I don't think it's Arielle he's after. He smelled my hair when we hugged!"

Jill rolls her eyes at me. "Debra, not every guy falls for you, you know. Even if you want them all to."

"I didn't mean it that way, I just thought he... nevermind."

We settle on a "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" marathon, and Jill turns up the volume to drown out whatever it is Cassie and Scott are doing. And I sit there wondering if, after all this time fending off constant advances while I tend bar, I've come to see it as a given that men who aren't gay or already involved will be attracted to me. Am I really that vain?

Sunday I slowly arrive at consciousness amidst some vivid, erotic dream imagery, that unfortunately is lost to the recesses of my brain as soon as the pain hits. Someone has clearly stepped on my head and stuffed an angry poodle down my throat, and I'd like to have a word with them - as soon as my bed stops rotating. I'm naked and cold, and I pull the comforter back over me from where I've kicked it off. I sit up a little at a time, wondering where the hell my pajamas are and whether drinking a cup of coffee right now would be the best feeling ever or the stupidest idea in history.

The clock says 3:35. Wow. Not the first time I've slept this late after a shift, getting drunk, or both, but the first time in a long while. I try to reconstruct the previous night's events in my head, and after a while I remember why I drank so much at the Bar. But there's a glass next to my laptop with some Scotch in it, and I realize I must have kept going when I got home. I awaken the laptop, hoping to find that in my besotten and furious state last night I wrote 10,000 new words of my novel before crashing, but of course that's not the case. Then I see that I logged an AIM conversation that lasted well past 6am, and it all starts coming back to me.

It was ridiculously hot, which explains the dreams. And it wasn't with Warren.

He and I haven't had any kind of conversation about exclusivity. It's probably too soon for that. But the conversation early this morning was spontaneous and unexpected, and I realize with dismay that in the moment, it never even occurred to me to wonder if it was... well, "okay." With respect to Warren or to the friend I was messaging. And I don't think being drunk is a very good excuse for a complete lack of forethought. But I'll deal with all that later.

I manage to pull on my pajamas, hoping against hope that brunch might still be in progress. What I find is people watching football - my roommates Cassie and Jill, our friend Scott, and a few other regulars from our poker group, which hasn't met in a while. I've completely forgotten there's supposed to be a game this afternoon, and I decide I'm not up for it. There are plenty of other players anyway. I wave, then I sit down on the Comfy Couch next to Jill with a groan.

"Hey, sleepyhead," says Jill, grinning. "Warren still in bed?"

"What?"

Her smile gets wider. "You must be exhausted - you guys woke me up at 6:30 this morning!" I look back at the open door to my room, where no Warren is forthcoming, then back at Jill, shaking my head quietly. "Oh," she says, "sorry." Then after a beat, "Oh."

Cassie gets up from her end of the long, L-shaped leather couch. "Debra, is your stomach feeling better? Do you want a bagel or something? They're in the fridge already."

I squint at her. "My stomach...?"

She comes over and takes my hand, then whispers, "You, ah... didn't quite clean up all the vomit in the bathroom."

Shit. I feel myself blushing and cover my face with my other hand. "I'm sorry, Cassie."

"It's okay - maybe just a cinnamon-raisin with nothing on it?" I nod, horrified to be in the company of other people right now. With the bagel she brings a tall glass of cool water, and it's the best-tasting drink I think I've had in months.

After the Jets have stunned the world by beating the Patriots, the poker game begins, and I lie down on the couch to half-listen to the game and half-watch bad movies I've seen dozens of times before. At some point I get up to take some Tylenol and pour myself more water, then I grab a book and it's right back onto the couch, where I don't end up doing very much actual reading. I manage to eat about half the bagel before I start to feel that more might not be wise, and it stays down just fine. The game lasts a good five hours or so, with some Chinese food showing up sometime during the evening. The smell doesn't make me sick, but it doesn't make me hungry, either, and I figure there are certainly worse consequences to a foolish bender than not eating much for a day.

The game breaks up when Tim and Arielle, two of Scott's friends from the hospital, announce that they have to go start their shifts soon. Everybody cashes out, and then helps clean up the poker table and the General Tso's detritus. Four people depart, after which Scott and Cassie tell Jill they'll take care of the dishes, and she comes back to the couch and snuggles with me. After only a few minutes, Scott and Cassie are done - and then with little ceremony or prelude, Cassie leads Scott into her bedroom and closes the door behind her.

Jill and I sit up on the couch and look at each other.

"Did you know?" she says.

"I had no idea."

We sit there for a couple of minutes just looking at Cassie's closed door.

"Debra, I hate myself for this, but I can't help wondering if that started up again before she and Olimpio split up."

"It would sure explain them splitting up in the first place," I nod.

What I can't help wondering is whether it started up again before Dara stopped sleeping with Scott. Then I remember last night, and wonder what right I have to wonder, much less judge.

Later Sunday night, I check in with my friend over IM, and we clear the air, seemingly with barely any effort at all. We're both okay with what happened, and I'm so thankful for that, I don't think she has any idea. But I'm also still hurting. So I say my goodnights and crawl into bed much earlier than usual - before it's even 2am.

When I was just starting college, and I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, I asked my father to tell me about the process of becoming a lawyer. He said all the usual things about how law school is a very challenging and competitive environment and practicing law is nothing like it is on television - at least it's not in what he called the "rough-and-tumble world of Trusts & Estates." He said the people who did best in law school were the ones who knew why they were there, as opposed to the ones who went just because they weren't sure what else to do. He also mentioned that the New York State Bar Exam was the second most difficult experience of his life (behind Mom leaving), and nobody ever tells you about that part in advance. I asked what made it so difficult.

"It's a marathon," he said. "Tests in law school are hard enough, especially because a final exam often counts for a hundred percent of your grade in the course. But if you've been going to class all semester, you can spend a few days studying intensively and do fine. The Bar exam tests you on a couple of dozen different subjects, many of which you didn't cover at all in law school, so you can't cram."

"But why do you say it's a marathon?" I asked.

"Because it's a test of your endurance and your focus as much as it is a test of your knowledge. You have to spend a little over two months of your life doing nothing but absorbing, retaining, practicing, and agonizing. If you start preparing too late, relax for a week in the middle, or even burn yourself out by working too hard the first few weeks, you're sunk - you can't catch up. Finals in law school were sprints, the Bar is a marathon. And just like some truly accomplished runners can't finish a marathon, some very smart, hard-working people fail the New York State Bar Exam."

After two days of pushing myself to write several pages of fiction per day, over the last two days I've written a total of five sentences of fiction. I'm beginning to understand the importance of pacing myself, but I'm a little bit disappointed with myself as well. I think over the remainder of November it will be more productive and sensible for me to aim for the usual pace of 1,667 words/day than it would be to try to "catch up." When I'm especially inspired, as I was on November 1, I'll write more - and if I hit 50,000 by November 30, I'll be especially proud, but I think it's more important for me just to keep at it and not worry about being "behind."

I got some inspiration late this morning. After a very tiring Saturday night shift, I finally managed to get back to something like my usual sleep schedule, but I kind of had to "cheat" to do it - I made plans in advance to go over to Warren's apartment when I was done, and I woke him up when I got there at 4:30. He was then kind enough to finish tiring me out. So I slept well for a while, and then he woke me up so we could go hang out on a corner of First Avenue not far from his apartment, to watch the leaders of the New York City Marathon come by.

Before the men's leaders came by, before even the women's leaders came by (the women start an hour earlier so that the really competetive ones don't get jammed up in a crowd of the second-tier men), the wheelchair and recumbent leaders pased. Then the women's leaders came by, to much cheering - and because we were at about Mile 18, not long afterwards came the men's leaders. We stuck around just long enough to see seven-time Tour de France bicycling champion Lance Armstrong run by, in the midst of a crowd of friendly, supportive, "everyday" marathoners, attempting his first marathon ever - and without having any idea why, I started crying, and Warren held me for a few minutes.

Here's a gallery of the few decent photos I managed to get.

Afterwards, we made our way back west a little, then grabbed a cab to my apartment, where he joined Cassie, Jill, Vince, and me for bagels & pajamas brunch for the first time. And I'll say this for the man - he wears a pair of flannel pajamas pretty damn well. He went home just a little while ago, and I'm going to try to spend as much of the rest of the day as I can working on my novel.

For the last three years, my schedule has been off from my roommates' in two distinct ways. First and most obvious, because of my job as a barmaid, I don't get home until four or five in the morning several days a week. But second, because I knew I would be exhausted when I got home from working this job, from the very beginning I planned to go to sleep right after I got home, and have my relaxed, social time (and time to take care of other responsibilities) between getting up and going to work rather than when most people have it, between getting out of work and going to bed. It's not always easy staying asleep after the sun has come up, but I certainly never have a problem falling asleep in the wee hours while it's still dark outside.

This week, though... this week, because of the novel I decided to write in November, I threw my schedule off, and forced myself to stay up late Wednesday morning to start writing. When I got home Thursday morning, I did the same thing. Now this morning, when I wanted to go to sleep upon getting home at 4:30, I wasn't able to - I lay there in bed physically exhausted but not drowsy. So naturally at around six, I got back up, and I've spent the last few hours taking care of some personal stuff, doing a little bit of writing, and blogging. My roommates Cassie and Jill were a little surprised to see me when they got up to get ready for work for the third morning in a row, but I'm sure it won't be the last morning this month, either.

The thing is, though, I worry that if I'm actually successful in shifting my schedule to this extent, I'm going to have trouble falling asleep after the sun has come up. And it would definitely be weird for me to get up at six in the evening, have breakfast, and head off to work at the Bar. Bartending has always felt to me like the culmination of the day, and it's one of the things that has always helped it not to seem like an actual job, as much as it surely is one. The serious lack of energy when I arrive home after a full shift at the Bar is not the state I want to be in when there's still a third of my day remaining, when I still have to do cleaning, bill-paying, e-mailing, blogging, and (this month, anyway) writing a novel. And bartending is hard work, so I'm not sure my energy levels will be much better afterward just because I woke up from sleeping more recently than usual.

Anyway, it may be only temporary, but it's not very pleasant right now. They say that jetlag takes one day to recover from for every two timezones through which you've traveled - if this were jetlag, I'd have traveled through about six time zones, so maybe I'll feel better by the end of this weekend.

In the meantime, a few readers have asked me if I could keep a running tally of my NaNoWriMo wordcount somewhere on the blog. I'm not sure LiveJournal has an appropriate place for me to put that where it'll stay in one place - I can say right here that as of yesterday I'd written 3,425 words so far, but next time I post an entry this entry will be further down the page. I guess I can just put my word count at the top of each entry no matter what it's about, if you really want! But in the meantime, you can find a running tally of my word count yourself by visiting my NaNoWriMo profile page, which should be far more easily accessible now that their server has reverted from its molasses pudding state of a couple of days ago. (An excerpt of what I wrote on the first day is also available on that profile.)

3,425 words is still slightly ahead of pace for two days' worth of writing, but it reflects an addition of only 1,430 words on Nov. 2, which is slightly behind pace for a single day. I'm trying to be forgiving to myself where the novel is concerned, but I also haven't gotten much accomplished on it this morning. Maybe I'll have energy for more of it this weekend, and I'll get ahead again.

A bunch of readers have also strongly hinted that I need to get around to talking about what happened with Cassie on Saturday night. It's not that simple - I honestly don't know. She's being very tight-lipped around the apartment this week when I see her, and doesn't seem interested in talking about it. But one thing is for sure, and that's that Olimpio hasn't been around and Cassie is spending every night sleeping here. I'm a little worried about her, but she's a big girl and she can take care of herself. If and when she wants to talk, she will.

On the other hand, Thursday night Jocelyn has no trouble talking about what happened with Mario. She was off Wednesday, so this is the first time I've seen her since Mario's unusual return on Halloween. It's a relatively slow Thursday, maybe because everybody has partied so hard for several days of Halloween, so we have a decent amount of downtime for just chatting while we work.

It seems that on September 11, 2001, one of Mario's best friends was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. It's complicated, but it took Mario a long time to get over what they call "surivor's guilt." What's more, this is a friend with whom Mario used to go to Yankees games all the time when they were growing up, and then a little less often, but still regularly, when they were older. So when Cory Lidle's plane hit that high-rise a few weeks ago, it was already bad enough to trigger some serious depression in Mario - then when those thoughtless idiots in the Bar started putting down the Yankees right in front of him, he took it very personally as a slam on the memory of his friend. He just lost control.

As for why he left and wouldn't come back, and wouldn't talk to Jocelyn or return people's calls, well, Mario told her he's not sure he understands that part himself. He isn't used to losing control, he isn't used to feeling humiliated in front of a woman he cares about so deeply, and he really isn't used to caring about a woman so deeply in the first place. So maybe he just couldn't face her and figured it would be best not to try. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he loves her (which he had never told her before writing it on her toga), and he couldn't keep staying away from her. So, Jocelyn says, Mario apologized to her several times on Tuesday night, and keeps offering to make it up to her in any way she wants him to. She winks at me and says she's pretty sure she'll be able to come up with a few ways.

One last note: Thank you very much to Barmaid Blog reader Echo (seriously, that's her name) for sending me Best American Short Stories 2006 off my Amazon wishlist! I don't know if I'll have much time for pleasure reading this month while I'm trying to write a novel, but I'm really looking forward to digging into it once I do have time. That was very thoughtful.

I'm going to go get some sleep, now. I'm not on until 8pm, but I have plans to meet Warren for a brief date at his place after he's done with work for the day, probably about 6pm. I haven't seen him since lunch on Tuesday, and we haven't managed to be alone together since that Sunday date nearly two weeks ago. Given that we'll have about ninety minutes together, I don't anticipate there will be much in the way of home cooking, movie viewing, or talking about his kids.

Halloween is one of the craziest days of the year, every year. It's not just that people like to dress up, it's that when the annual Village Halloween Parade wraps up at 21st Street, every bar south of 72nd Street fills up with crazy people looking to keep their drunk on, dressed up (or down) in wonderfully insane costumes. It's an exhausting, incredibly entertaining night, but what makes it difficult is that it's usually the second day within a week that things have been that crazy. If Halloween falls early in the week, the Saturday before Halloween is a close second in craziness. But the tips are always fantastic both nights, so I've made sure I'm on those schedules. For Saturday night, Amy, Jocelyn, Maya, and I have planned to wear togas while we tend bar, which should be fun and sexy without being too outlandish.

So I'm sitting at home eating dinner before getting ready for my shift on Saturday, and my roommate Cassie is in her bedroom changing into her costume for a party her boyfriend Olimpio's taking her to. My other roommate Jill and her boyfriend, Vince the barback, are dressing up as Sonny and Cher, but they're getting dressed over at his place. Cassie comes out of her bedroom, and I nearly spit out my drink. She's dressed - no, undressed - in a lingerie ensemble designed to look a little bit like a tuxedo. There's a collar with a bowtie, french cuffs, a g-string with a dickie attachment, and bowtie pasties - and that's it.

"Cassie, are you going out in that?!"

"Yeah, isn't it fantastic?"

"You're going to freeze to death!"

"No, don't be silly, I'm wearing my big, black wool overcoat for the ride, and I'll be fine at the party."

"Cassie, you can't be serious. This is something you put on and get in bed to wait for your boyfriend to come home, not something you go out with him in. You're going to get arrested!"

She shakes her head and goes to get her overcoat, and comes back wearing it loosely and holding a glass of wine. I keep trying to talk her out of it - and I get plenty of time to do it, since Olimpio calls to tell her he's stuck in traffic - but she won't listen, she's determined to go out in this thing. It's distracting as hell to have her sitting there with her breasts just kind of hanging out, even if they're not technically "naked," and finally I just give up and go get into my toga for work. When I'm just about to leave, Olimpio arrives, and as much as I want to stick around to see how's he going to react, I have to get going.

Things are hopping at the Bar when I get there at 8, and my girls look great in their togas. Todd still hasn't hired a new barback to replace Tommy, so he's pitching in, and it's badly needed. Maya even stays on for a little while after I "take over" for her, because Todd can't quite keep up with our need for clean glasses and well bottles on his own.

We've got quite the assortment of costumes, as usual - we've got a Wayne and Garth, a Jay and Silent Bob, a Batman and Robin, a Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl, an almost believable Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and an entire starting nine of undead New York Yankees. This last one is really creative, and they're my favorites, so I buy them all a round and they grunt and shuffle in appreciation. I grab the one wearing #25 as he shuffles by, and look him over for a moment. He can't quite compare with the real thing, so I let him go. As he turns, I laugh, because I suddenly realize that instead of "Giambi" over the number 25, it says "Zambi Giambi."

The togas are a big hit, as I knew they would be - much better than Jocelyn's original idea to wear bikinis, which I'm sure we would have had trouble keeping on the whole night. But as it turns out, Jocelyn has some trouble keeping her toga on. Her left breast absolutely refuses to stay inside the sheet for more than a half hour at a time, and I think to myself she could really use Cassie's pasties right about now. Needless to say, the guys at the Bar love the inadvertant show, Jocelyn gets very flustered, and Todd starts panicking that he's going to get slapped with a fine for operating an unlicensed burlesque. But by about one in the morning, Amy has managed to find some double-sided tape and a ball of twine in the back room, and Jocelyn's left breast heads back in for another six weeks of winter. "Next time," Amy yells over the chorus of boos, "try using a fitted sheet!" Jocelyn and I laugh.

Not long after, the atmosphere in the Bar begins to get downright electric. People are excited because it's getting close to two in the morning, and they're drinking even more heavily and making toasts - to the end of Daylight Saving Time. This is the other reason that things are always so crazy the Saturday night right before Halloween; at 2am, it becomes 1am again. In most parts of the country, where they can't serve alcohol past 2am, last call only happens once, that's the law. In New York City, where last call is 4am, they don't make us stop serving at 3am just because it's been 2am twice - we keep serving until the functional equivalent of 5am. And when they're dressed in outrageous costumes, people make really good use of that extra hour, drinking to write home about.

At two o'clock, we make a big show of turning back the clocks in the Bar, and a great cheer goes up. I feel the weight in the pocket of my barmaid's apron, and as my feet start to hurt, I think about the three remaining hours of tips, and I smile.

Sunday a little past one in the afternoon, I drag myself out of bed and into the living room in my pajamas to see what the state of brunch is. I'm badly in need of a cup of coffee, so I pad my way past the Comfy Couch where Jill and Vince are cuddling, and visit the kitchen. Cassie is standing over the coffee-maker with her hands on the counter, staring down at the floor, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing.

"Olimpio still in bed?" She doesn't answer. When the coffee is done, she pours us each a mug, and adds a little milk to each, never quite looking me in the eye.

We go back out to the living room to hang out with Jill and Vince, and when the bagels arrive by delivery, we dig in as usual, but we don't have any Netflix movies on hand, so we just chat. I talk about my night at the Bar, and Vince acts very glad not to have been there, though he had to promise to work the next six nights in a row (including Halloween itself) to get out of it. The party he and Jill attended sounds like it was fun, and Jill has fun describing some of the costumes. One guy apparently came dressed as Woody Allen, and carried around a little Asian girl doll with a violin and a "Soon-Yi" sign on her, and I cringe. Vince asks Cassie if there were any good costumes at the party she went to with Olimpio, and she just shrugs and says, "It was the usual."

Not long after she finishes eating, Cassie pours herself another cup of coffee in the kitchen, then goes to her bedroom and closes the door behind her.

(Hey, has anybody who's bought something from the Barmaid Blog Store received their orders yet? How did they come out? Have you been wearing them around? Looking sexy? Getting compliments?)

So, more on this past weekend. Saturday night is pretty uneventful at the Bar - game one of the World Series is on, but very few of the regulars care, because neither the Yankees nor the Mets are involved. We do get a decent turnout of Detroit Tigers fans, though, which makes some of the Yankee fan regulars a little uncomfortable because the Tigers eliminated the Yanks. The way I see it, though, if Detroit wins the Series it means there's less shame in the Yanks having lost to them on the way there. Besides, people tip better when their team is doing well, and we need all the help we can get - for the most part, for some reason, baseball fans rooting for any team other than a New York team don't tip very well at the Bar. And Cardinals fans might be watching the game somewhere, but it ain't here.

But it doesn't go our way Saturday night - despite being heavily favored, Detroit loses game one to the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-2. St. Louis leads from the third inning on, and tips from the Detroit crowd get worse and worse. Maya starts adopting a very interesting strategy - shaking her head slightly and "tsk"ing quietly when someone tips poorly, as if she just can't believe it. I don't think it's very effective, and it might even make things worse. But that's her problem; we're not one of those bars where the whole staff pools tips and splits them evenly at the end of the night. Todd feels very strongly that working for our own tips encourages us to put forth our best efforts, and I tend to think he's right, at least in general.

There are some kinks in that theory - for instance, Jocelyn's tips are almost always better than mine, but that's because men lose all control of their faculties (and their wallets) around enormous breasts. But for the most part, I like that if I take home $300 in tips at the end of the night, it's because I worked for $300 in tips, not because I worked for $400 and the two other girls tending bar that night each cleared $250. I don't even think I'd like working at a pooled tips bar if I were the one clearing $250 but taking home $300.

Anyway, Saturday night just isn't a great evening for me financially, but when I get home I sleep really well for the first time in over a week. I think that's partly because I finally cleared the air somewhat with Dara and Jessica earlier in the day, but I'm also just dead tired and I want to be well-rested for Sunday.

Sunday evening, Warren is coming over for movies and take-out. I insisted on something low-key and casual because I just want to try to get comfortable with him, and that's been difficult. I've seen him in four different business suits, now - two at the Bar, one at his place, and one when we met for lunch near where he works. Don't get me wrong, he looks great in a suit, and I love dressing up - but I think I get to know people more easily when it's informal. He's bringing the movies, and I'm picking the take-out; he said I could order anything, there's absolutely nothing he won't eat. That's a serious temptation for mischief, but I decide to resist and stick with something at least relatively mainstream.

So I'm by myself for the whole afternoon, because Cassie and Jill are elsewhere for the evening by design, and both independently decided to be elsewhere for most of the weekend. We didn't even do our bagels and pajamas brunch today. Not the first time, and not a big deal - we miss a Sunday here and there, and the sky hasn't fallen yet. We'll probably just make a point of doing it next week. I still spend most of the afternoon in my PJs, though, and instant messaging with the TV on. It's a good, quiet afternoon of gossip and anticipation, but finally it's time to shower and get dressed.

Warren arrives at 7 on the dot, and he's wearing jeans and a navy blue NYPD sweatshirt - which is kind of funny, because I'm wearing jeans and a navy blue UNH Wildcats Hockey sweatshirt, so we match, which is absolutely dorky. He has a six-pack of Sam Adams with him, and DVDs of "Breaker Morant" and "10 Things I Hate About You," neither of which I've ever seen. The Thai food I ordered a few minutes before he got here arrives at 7:15, and we huddle together under a blanket on the Comfy Couch watching "Breaker Morant" and trying not to get pad thai and curry puffs all over ourselves.

It's an amazing, powerful film - it came out the year before I was born, but other than that I have to wonder why I've never heard of it before. It's the true story of two Australian soldiers serving in the Boer War (which I'd also never heard of) in South Africa just after the turn of the 20th century, who are court martialed for basically doing their jobs. Lieutenant Harry "Breaker" Morant (played by Edward Woodward) was also a poet, and the story is made all the more poignant by Woodward's voice-over of some of the godawful poetry Morant wrote while in prison and on trial. Maybe it's just because I also read "To Kill a Mockingbird" earlier in the weekend, but it's an awful lot of injustice for one girl to absorb in the space of a couple of days, and I'm in tears by the end. Warren lifts up my chin, looks in my eyes, and wipes away a tear with his thumb - and then I kiss him.

This isn't how I envisioned it happening... I was going to bring out some ice cream for dessert during the second movie, and then figure out some really smooth way to move in on Warren if he hadn't already moved in on me. It was going to be very cool and seductive, and it would have made a great story. Instead, I'm climbing on him, dripping tears on him, and struggling to get one of my arms unstuck from underneath the blanket. It is, I think, one of the unsexiest moments of my life. Nevertheless, we never do watch the second movie.

I won't go into too much detail - but my first time with a man in more months than I'd care to count turns out to be great. As does the second...! And then he spends the night.

One of the occupational hazards of being a barmaid, unfortunately, is that I'm up until 4 or 5am several nights a week, and it's useless to try to switch to a more "normal" schedule on the other days. That's got its benefits, of course - I never have to fight Cassie or Jill for the shower when I get up on weekdays, since they're already at work. But the downside is spending the night with someone who's on a very, very different schedule. Warren gets up at 6am most mornings, and in fact I've set my alarm for 6 before we actually got in bed - but now that we're here, and it's barely midnight, I'm wide awake (if physically worn out), and he's rapidly drifting off.

Eventually, he's snoring to wake the dead, and I just have to get out of bed and leave the room so I can laugh about it without waking him up. When I come back, I log back on and start IMing again - as long as I'm awake anyway, the gossip is just too good to let it wait until morning, so I chat with a friend on the west coast and have another beer. I even tell her I'm considering staying up even later so I can wake Warren at 5am for a third go-'round, just so I don't have to suffer the pain of a 6am alarm when I've only slept for a couple of hours.

Finally, it's getting close to 3am, and I think I might be able to sleep, so I say my goodnight and log off. But instead of climbing back into bed with Warren right away, I turn around in my chair, put my feet up on the bed, and for a little while, I just watch him sleep.

Sorry for posting events out of order so much lately, but I felt strongly about writing up what happened last night right away. Just to be clear, today's entry happened four days ago.

Sunday I sleep in even later than usual. After an extremely busy and somewhat distressing night at the Bar serving drinks and watching the Yankees shit the playoff bed for the sixth year in a row, I've left a note for my roommates Cassie and Jill asking them not to wake me up for bagel brunch, but letting them know I'll join them when I wake up on my own.

By the time I do, and I shuffle out into the living room in my pajamas, it's almost two in the afternoon, and our Netflix DVD of "Paycheck" is playing on the TV, with Cassie, Jill, and Vince strewn about the Comfy Couch, and remnants of brunch strewn about the room. Vince and Jill, I notice, are strategically sharing just one complete pair of pajamas; how economical, I think to myself.

I pour myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, then I come back and sit on the floor, resting my head against Cassie's knees. "Where's Olimpio, honey?"

Cassie scritches my hair. "He went to the Giants game with his brother. Thank God, because he hates Ben Affleck."

"I'm not such a big fan of him myself," says Vince.

"Why not?" Jill asks.

"That Red-Sox-loving, can't-hold-onto-J.Lo, knock-up-his-girlfriend, not-worthy-to-wipe-Matt-Damon's-ass pretty boy?"

"Yeah, him," I say. "Why not?" That gets a small laugh.

Cassie says, "He's worthy of Uma Thurman in this movie, and that's saying a lot."

I squint at the screen a little, studying the woman who's about to sit down across from Ben in some cafe. "That's not Uma Thurman."

"I think that's kind of the point," Vince says. "That's what you get for sleeping in, bedhead."

I try to follow the story, but he's right, I missed what must have been some vitally essential explanation of the absurd stuff that's going on. So I sit there for a little while eating a bagel with lox tofu (seriously, you can barely tell the difference from lox cream cheese, and there's much less fat) and sipping my coffee, but when I'm done, I wander into the kitchen and start pulling stuff out of the fridge and the cabinets.

I told Warren I would bring dessert to our date tonight, and on the advice of a friend, and because I keep picturing myself feeding them to him one by one, I'm making chocolate-covered strawberries. It doesn't even take that long to prepare them, though they have to sit in the refrigerator for a while. Because I know they've been able to smell the chocolate from the living room, after I'm done dipping the strawberries I bring the rest of the melted chocolate out to my friends and let them have at the pot.

Vince rips a chunk off a cinnamon-raisin bagel, and scoops up some chocolate with it. "Seriously, Debra, between the food and your roommate, this is the best barbacking job I've ever had." Jill smacks him on his bare chest.

I go into my room to read for a while, but I have a hard time concentrating. I keep thinking about what I learned nine days ago when Warren and I finally had a chance to see each other again. He's got children. And they've got a mother. Were they married? Was it an accident? Was it an ugly split-up? What kind of father is he? How old is he? How old are they? If we keep dating, will he expect me to meet them and participate when he has them for the weekend? I'm still in my mid-twenties; even if Warren and I end up staying together, am I ready to take on something like helping to raise some kids because I'm in a relationship with their father?

For that matter, do I feel prepared to be anybody's mother, ever, given that my role-model for motherhood disappeared while her only child was going through puberty?

I keep reminding myself it's just a first date, and try to force myself to wonder about more basic first date stuff. What's he making for dinner? What's his apartment like? Will I be able to think of anything to say? Is he going to try to kiss me? Am I ready for children, children, children?!

Eventually I give up on reading, and I wander through the living room on my way to the shower. "Don't seal it up and send it back yet, okay? I want to watch this one," I ask of my roommates.

At seven o'clock that evening, I find myself in an elevator on my way up to Warren's apartment after checking in at the front desk. The concept of a doorman building where somebody greets you and then announces your presence to the person you're visiting doesn't intimidate me nearly as much as it used to when I first moved to New York City, partly because I live in one myself, and I don't think Cassie, Jill, and I are exactly