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.)

Two Weeks Ago (Friday, August 31)

It's a warm, busy Friday evening. The Devil Rays are gradually having their way with the Yankees, bending them over just a little bit more each inning. Maya and Kira and I are holding our own; another couple of dozen customers and we'd be in the weeds, but it's the beginning of Labor Day weekend, so a lot of people have left town.

There's no mistaking it anymore; anybody who looks at Kira knows she's pregnant, and to her pleasant surprise she seems to have found the one thing that guarantees good tips even more than huge breasts. It's a little counterintuitive, maybe, since being pregnant means she's even less likely to go home with any customers than usual, but it's certainly nice to see people treating her well. That's especially true since she's determined to keep working until she decides she can no longer stay on her feet for an entire shift.

Bonnie and Susan, the Coors promo girls, are in the Bar tonight getting guys to play their music trivia game, giving out swag, and drinking bottles of Coors like they're going out of style. When they take a break, Bonnie seems uncharacteristically silent, but Susan comes behind the bar, coos at Kira's tummy, and even gets permission to lay her hands on it for a minute. Nothing's moving around in there much yet, but Susan still gets... well, a kick out of it.

There's time for a quick break right around when the baseball game ends, and I take myself to the ladies room for a bio break and to splash water on my face. When I come out, Bonnie is waiting in the short hallway, taking a pull from her bottle of Coors with one arm, and with the other holding out a full bottle for me. "Take five, Debra," she says, after swallowing. She's a little flushed from what must be six or seven beers by now. I smile and take the beer, and we lean up against the wall next to each other while people come and go.

She asks me what's going to happen when Kira takes her maternity leave, and the truth is that I don't know. I imagine Lanie and Victor, the owners, will hire someone temporary, or maybe they'll beg us all to work more shifts, but it'll all work out somehow.

"Debra, when did you do... that with your hair?"

"Oh, I did that while I was on vacation out in California a few weeks ago. What do you think, do you like it?"

Bonnie smiles, and doesn't say anything, but keeps looking right at me.

"What?" I say, getting self-conscious. She rolls off the wall, puts a hand in my hair, and kisses me.

It's such a soft, easy, unexpected kiss that it's the most natural thing in the world for me to kiss back. It's a friendly kiss, a "what if" kiss, a "your new blonde hair turns me on a little and I just want to innocently show you" kiss, a "we've become close enough friends that I can kiss you like this" kiss. And after a while, it's lasted long enough that it's no longer any of those things, it's an "oh, my God" kiss, a "why haven't we ever done this before?" kiss, a "this is really fucking hot" kiss, and an eternity later, as her free arm goes around my waist and pulls me in toward her, and I feel myself start to get wet, it becomes a "shit, what am I doing, what the fuck am I doing?!" kiss, and I push her away.

We're breathing heavily, and not saying anything, just looking at each other, when a random guy standing in the men's room doorway says, "Could you do that again?" Reality comes crashing back in, and without saying a word I turn down the hallway to get back to work. Everything he was worried about, I think to myself, everything I've managed to convince him he's just simply paranoid about, I just became that. And he's going to find out whether I tell him or not. And he's going to learn what kind of person I really am and he's going to leave, and I don't want him to leave, I love him. I love him and I just did the one thing he's been most afraid of since we started dating, and how could I do that when I love him?

The rest of the night I manage to stay behind the bar mixing drinks and earning tips without allowing my eyes to meet Bonnie's. She and Susan leave a little after one in the morning, and I go to the back room and cry.

"Well, I'm glad you guys are okay," Bonnie says. "You must have been terrified."

I nod. It's Saturday, what has to be the nicest day of the year so far, and we're drinking wine at a table outside a cafe in Park Slope, not far from Gary's apartment. Bonnie and Susan were working in the Bar on Friday night in their capacity as Coors promo girls, and when they found out about the mugging, they insisted on taking me out today - along with Gary, whom they were very excited about meeting.

Susan turns to Gary. "What did you do to those guys, anyway?"

"Nothing. Less than they bloody deserved, knocking down a woman." I wince, remembering how useless I was.

Bonnie grabs his bicep. "You're a pretty skinny guy, Gary, where did you learn to fight?"

"South African Infantry Corps, ma'am."

She laughs. "I don't think anybody's called me ma'am since I left Indiana."

I drink quietly while the girls pry the story of how Gary and I met out of him, which frankly doesn't take much prying, and I throw in an occasional smile, or nod, or appropriate noise. The waitress, not looking very pleased to be working on such a beautiful day, brings us some full glasses of wine, just in time to replace our empties. When she turns her back to go inside I notice her tight red dress isn't quite zipped up all the way, and I wonder what she was doing before she hurried out her door to get over here.

Gary starts asking questions of his own, about Bonnie and Susan. I've heard this story, too, so I watch the sidewalk traffic - stroller after stroller after stroller, pushed by tired-looking mothers who chat with each other about carbs, follow their unstrollered toddlers at a respectful distance, and occasionally yell to stop one of them from darting into traffic.

"I don't understand," Gary is saying. "You quit school for the guy and followed him out here, and then he dumped you and kicked you out of his flat when he knew you had nowhere else to go?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Bonnie says.

"Why'd he dump you?" I sit up a little when Gary asks the question.

"Why do men do anything?" Bonnie shrugs.

I lean forward. "Hey, no, that's not fair, Bonnie. Last time you made like it was a big deal that you didn't want to talk about unless you had a couple of drinks in you. Well, you have a few drinks in you, now out with it!"

Susan coughs, stifling a little laughter. "Hey, she's blushing!" Gary points at Bonnie, and she is.

"It's the wine, you guys," she says, waving us off, and then there's a quiet moment. She turns to Susan, who shrugs her little shrug.

"Okay. Since not long after we started dating in college, Cal had been after me to have a threesome with him - you know, bring another woman to bed with us. I didn't think it was that big a deal, I was in love with him and I wanted to help him live out his fantasy. But I wouldn't do it because we were in this tiny school in this tiny town, and I couldn't imagine how we'd find someone without everybody I knew finding out."

The waitress comes back out with another round, and Bonnie stops talking for a minute until she's gone.

"So we got out here, and it was all Cal could talk about. He had his new job with a bank, a nice new place, living out all his dreams, except this one fantasy I kept him from fulfilling, and now we were in a city with eight million people and we didn't know a soul, so what could go wrong?"

"Oh, Lord," I remark.

"What did go wrong?" Gary asks.

Bonnie sighs. "I enjoyed it." Something clicks into place in my mind, and my eyes widen.

"I don't understand," says Gary.

"Yes, you do," I say, and I put my hand on his thigh.

"What?"

"Yes, you do. She got off with the girl and he couldn't stand it," I say with my eyes fixed on Bonnie, and my hand squeezing harder on Gary's thigh. "He thought she liked sex with the girl more than she liked sex with him, and he got scared and jealous and threw her out." Bonnie nods slowly. "He probably even called her a dyke and a slut," I add, and she laughs.

Finally I turn to Gary, who looks at me with a pained expression. He says, "He thought he wasn't enough for her."

"He was right, soldier. You were wrong," I say, and I take his face in my hands and kiss him, a good, long, warm, deep, Shiraz-tasting kiss that makes me want to climb into his lap and do things to him with everybody watching. And I keep kissing him after Susan stifles another little cough.

Tuesday evening I walk into the Bar for my 8-to-close shift, and standing next to Bill, who's working the door, is Will. He's dressed in a Michigan football jersey and a skirt, and holding blue and yellow pompoms. I stop in my tracks, and he glances over at the bar, where Samantha is sipping a cocktail and watching him. She coolly nods, and Will heaves a sigh.

"Good evening. My name is Will. May I tell you about Michigan's devastating loss to the clearly superior football team from The Ohio State University?"

I laugh. Samantha smiles and takes another sip, then turns around to talk to Maya, who's behind the bar with Amy.

"Will, what have you done??"

He shrugs. "A bet's a bet."

I look at his legs. "Not that I'm complaining much, mind you. Seriously, your calves are ridiculous, you know that?" He smiles. "Hey, she doesn't have you doing this for an entire twenty-four hours, does she?"

"Oh, no," he says, and leans a little closer. "In fact, she was pretty clear about insisting the rest of my debt would have to be paid in private."

"Aaahhh," I grin. "Well, good luck with that."

I make my way behind the bar, where Amy is starting to cash out. I smile and say, "Hey, Samantha, who won the big game?"

She sticks out her tongue. "I never lost faith, funny girl, I knew my Buckeyes would come through."

"Did you ask Will what he would have made you do if Michigan had won?"

"I don't deal in fantasies and pipe-dreams, Debra. But I'm sure it would have been all about sex, sex, sex."

"Wait, isn't that part of what you're demanding, too?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, but it's not all about sex, that's just dessert - the public humiliation is the main course."

Maya says, "I still don't get how sleeping with you is a punishment for him."

"Maya, my dear, it's not about him losing. It's about me winning. And believe me, what I have in mind for later is very much about me winning, and not about him at all." She and Maya high-five. I manage to refrain from asking what happened to betrayals and "sleeping with the enemy" and such things, and just go about the work of tending bar.

A little after ten o'clock, I'm pulling a pint of Guinness when someone walks up to the bar and asks, "Hey, are you Debra?" For a moment, I freeze, and my heart races. Has someone figured out where the Bar is and who I am? Did someone I know tell someone they shouldn't have? I look at the someone, and it's a tall woman wearing a Coors jacket, standing next to a short woman wearing a Coors jacket.

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

"I'm Bonnie, this is Susan. We're from Coors." Thank goodness she clarified that. "I spoke to the manager, Todd something - he said he'd let you know we were coming?"

"Oh, of course! You're the promotion people. Welcome to the Bar!"

"Thanks! We just wanted to check in, make sure you knew who we were before we start."

"Let me know if you need anything."

They wave and start scoping out the room, and my heart gradually stops pounding. As I serve drinks, I watch the two women approach customers, explain their music trivia game, and then put headphones on people who want to play. Winners get Coors t-shirts and keyrings, losers just get Coors t-shirts - in my opinion, losers should be served a pint of Coors. I really don't enjoy Coors, not after all the great beers I've tasted - it's awfully watery. When I finally saw "Smokey and the Bandit" for the first time, I was appalled and aghast that anybody would go to that much trouble for a truckload of Coors - or that it was considered a regional "specialty" beer at the time the movie was made.

But we sell a lot of it at the Bar, and I know there are benefits to keeping the distributor happy. Plus, Bonnie and Susan are very attractive women, which means the guys they're talking to will spend more time in the Bar tonight, and more money on beer, meaning more tips for me.

At one point, Bonnie comes back over to the bar. "Debra, what's with the guy in the skirt?" I tell her briefly about the bet, and she shakes her head, laughing. "You know, I knew a girl who got fired from Coors for sleeping with a guy from Sam Adams." I grin, and file that away for later. I guess these sorts of "betrayals" happen everywhere.

At eleven sharp, Samantha drains the last of her Long Island Iced Tea, and waves Will over. "Carry my bag, slave," she says, obviously relishing her power, and he obliges. "We're done here." They head for the door, and I find myself envying them even the bizarre tryst they're about to have. It's been a couple of weeks since I had sex. I know, a couple of months ago I was complaining about a drought of several months, but I'm supposedly seeing someone. I'm going to have to do something about that soon.

--

Speaking of which, remember I mentioned how much I enjoyed the solo piano music Warren had playing at his apartment during our first date? Warren e-mailed me a link this morning that I wanted to share. 93.9 FM WNYC, one of New York's public radio stations, is airing some of Seth Kaufman's new music tonight at 11pm, on their show "New Sounds," along with music from other solo piano artists. For those of you not in the area, I gather you can use the links on the left-hand side of that page to listen online.