I’m at a bar listening to a heartfelt rendition of Wild Thing. At a local spot that’s just nice enough to not reek of beer. Even though that’s what I’m craving tonight. A place that smells like decisions only made in darkness. Instead of a night of forcing myself to write. Mostly as something to occupy my hands. To make it look like I have a purpose, sitting at this bar alone. On a Friday night. 

 

Tonight’s uniform is specific. Tits out, but only under a blazer. Wearing a hat that the bartender referred to as the look of a “Stevie Nicks backup singer”. 

 

Chill with the opinions, dude. I haven’t even sat down yet. 

 

Dressing with a hypocritical message. Talk to me, but don’t. I wish I could play that hard to get naturally. 

Truth is, I just want to be gotten.

 

…but they know that. And I guess I want them to. 

If anyone were to have the thought.

 

Although extending that kind of invitation isn’t smart. Especially as a woman. 

Even if it’s sealed.

 

The rock band is basked in green light. An eerie glow. An effect that looks like it was meant for an arthouse movie, not 9 PM on a Friday night on Allen Street. The ceilings are great in here. The old-school New York kind. Even though I’m pretty sure these are fakes. But at least the people feel real. Neighborhood people. Matt, sitting to my left, introduced himself earlier. He boasts that he knows all the bartenders here and had been a regular at this bar before he even moved to the city. 10 whole years sitting in this seat. And the place is still the same. 

 

I tell him that I’ve been looking for a good neighborhood bar. This seems to be the perfect spot.

 

Matt’s now moved on to a beautiful girl sitting to his left. A victim of his loneliness. She’s well-versed in these kinds of interactions. Page one of the pretty girl handbook. She’s convincing enough, but her body language is screaming for a getaway. Her date who had occupied himself with his phone has now moved on, interrupting the date of the couple to his left. 

 

Our new buddy Matt has just innocently created a domino effect of cock-blockery.

 

Loneliness is so inconvenient.

 

I’m on a mission to make friends with the bartender tonight. Johnny. In a seat at the corner of the bar. The best perch for seeing everything and for being left alone. Even though I don’t want to be left alone at all. Well, not by the striking 6’3” ruggedly handsome man who is fated to enter this establishment alone and sit right next to me. In an imaginary seat that isn’t open.

 

A meet-cute that will turn my life into the technicolor dreamworld Paramount promised.

 

I snap out of my fantasy just long enough for my eyes to take a lap around the room. Ah yes. The lead singer of the band. Is it bad that I want him? If I passed him on the side of the street, I wouldn’t look twice. But tonight? He might as well be Mick Fucking Jagger in his prime. 

 

Mr. Lead Singer is just the drug I’m looking for.

 

I’m craving the feeling of being a drunken damsel in distress tonight. The kind that needs help finding her keys as she stumbles up to her apt that’s conveniently located half a block away. The kind that “never does this but really needs you to help take care of her tonight”. Trouble is, I’m not that girl. If I was, life would be easier. 

 

Or so I imagine. 

 

Craving being a mess. At 32. Aren’t we past this? I know the answer is that, no, we haven’t had nearly enough.

 

And maybe never will.

 

The band has abandoned rock and roll for a breather and some whiskey. I just made eye contact with the lead singer who is now sitting at the bar. Enjoying his victory drink. He raises a glass to me. I smile. Eye contact was made. Damn! I didn’t pick up my drink to cheers him quickly enough. He was the performer. His voice deserves the drink raise, not my presence. I fixate on the inconvenient fact that I didn’t flirt, well, effectively enough. You blew it! With the lead singer of a band playing for a room of 12 people. If you don’t make eye contact again, your night of possible adventure is all lost. 

 

The beer dulls the momentary racing of my heart, as I think I lost sight of Mr. Lead Singer and then spot him sitting at the window. Phew! You haven’t even seen him up close. But does it matter? It’s about the story tonight. With each passing day, it feels like the sand in the hourglass of time for great stories is slipping away. Just like your youth. 

 

Everything feels so damn fragile lately. But then again, maybe it always has. After 30, the stakes just feel… different. Normally losing sight of a stranger isn’t enough to increase my heart rate. And I haven’t even had enough yet to blame the beer.

 

The band is striking their equipment. If I’m lucky, they’ll stay for a night of free drinks. 

Mr. Lead Singer, did you know that I live no more than half a block and 6 flights of stairs away?

 

Matt and his friend leave and I raise my beer to them. So, now I can flirt?! Matt’s departure leaves me with an open view of Mr. Lead Singer. Who is wearing a black hat, too. And swaying to the oh-so-cool beats blasting from the speakers. But not nearly as cool as his artistic, genre-bending take on Wild Thing. 

 

Mr. Lead Singer stops by my stool and turns to me to quote someone I’ve never heard of. “You might as well be naked if you don’t have a hat”… how profound. At least it wasn’t Kerouac. Not that I’d be able to place a Kerouac quote. But in this hat, I look like I might. 

 

The best thing about not saying much is that no one will ever discover the extent of what you don’t know.

 

And with that, he disappears into the night. Which is probably for the best. The Lead Singer Effect and The Bartender Effect are all-too-familiar kryptonite for a gal. The intoxicating power of completely situational momentary status. 

 

To his credit, he did rock that all-black non-committed goth look. Proof that peacocking works and that there is something to be learned from that douchebag Mystery. If you get this reference, I’m sorry for both of us.

 

As I sip on my sour beer, I’m reminded that my writing doesn’t have the visceral effect of Bourdain’s and never will. How could it? Is this thought a cliché too? Of course it is. Does originality matter? Does anyone actually care? No. 

 

They’re too busy taking selfies and falling off cliffs.

 

Johnny fills up my water glass as he tells me how the band was supposed to play for longer, but he had to pay them the same regardless of their early exit. This useless information means that I just graduated from stranger to confidant. Even though it seems like that doesn’t necessarily have to be earned with Johnny. Which might be the best-case scenario for this new local trying to cement her place at the end of this perfectly worn wood bar. 

 

I open my phone to search for some trouble and start tipsily messaging this dude Koosha on Bumble. Who tells me we’ll grab a drink soon because he “likes my attitude”. I’ve been knighted. If I was a little less desperate feeling, I would tell him to go fuck himself. But his fingers are gripping a camera in his profile pic and they’re perfectly thick. 

 

The bar is pretty empty now. A wiry gentleman in glasses who has been reading from his Kindle at the bar all night and looks like the victim of every football jock in a 90s movie moves towards me. I see him out of the corner of my eye and hope to hell he is going to pass right by. I keep my eyes glued to the computer screen as he inches closer… and takes the stool to my left.

 

A man sitting next to me. But not the 6’3” adonis I had hoped for. 

 

The law of attraction is cruel. 

 

He opens his mouth and all I remember is coaching myself to “be nice” as he tells me how I must listen to this lecture Toni Morrison gave in 1993. And something about Silvia Plath poems. 

 

Now if he would have done this in the vicinity of the NYU campus, he might have scored with a Women’s Study major in last season’s pink pussy hat. But not with me. 

 

Besides, I was still too focused on the diameter of Koosha’s fingers.

 

I try to politely engage in conversation while still displaying enough disinterest for an exit strategy. I could feel the dude looking at me all night and props to him for taking the chance to talk to a strange girl sitting alone at the bar. It’s more than I’ve accomplished tonight. And hell, I’ll do it for the story.

 

“Everything is copy.” 

 

I’ll take your Silvia Plath and raise you a Nora Ephron.

 

The cocktail of painstaking conversation and heavy eyes from a night of typing and sour beer makes the decision for me. There’s no place like home. Even if you’re there alone.

 

I politely tell Bill Haverchuck that I’m callin' it a night and smile as I wave goodbye to Johnny. Making sure to use his name in the thank you. So he knows I mean it. And that I’ll be back.

 

Another night. Another attempt at a story. Another lonely 6 flight walk up to my little LES apartment.

...

 

As I round the staircase on the 4th floor, a troubling thought sobers me up.

 

I don’t know why I called him “Mr. Lead Singer”. There was only one singer. And it was him. 

​

 

Why do we – correction – why do I give men so much power?