Give Me a Kutch

"Awwww, give me a kutch!" the Welsh woman in the red shirt said as she enveloped me in a huge hug -- one that lasted so long that it was almost uncomfortable.

A "kutch," as I learned at the Bar that Shall Not Be Named tonight, is a hug -- a cuddle, of sorts -- that comes from the heart, especially when something has been lost. When I asked her to spell it, she looked taken aback. "Well," she said, frowning. "I've never written it before."

For me, something has been lost. My grandfather died on Saturday evening, in his sleep. It wasn't a huge shock -- his health had undergone a serious deterioration since the last time I saw him, in June. I had been told that he could no longer be alone -- he had to use a walker and an oxygen tank that helped his "forgetful" spells.

I have pushed it aside for the most part, because I got the news at N's apartment, early on during a Sunday afternoon. I felt selfish, standing there in a man's T-shirt, on my cell phone, in an unfamiliar place. My grandfather was not the kind of person that I am. He was the kind of person who served on boards and distributed scholarship money and worked in the church and for his family.

Today was hard. Real-estate drama with my move (an apartment that's half-finished and coated in a fine layer of construction dust, yet they assure me I'll be able to move in by Thursday). Heart drama with N (I so wish that he would have called me today, but I have to play the Game and wait for his move, since I've asked HIM out these past two times.... I hate that.). Drama with my willing shelving of the news of my grandfather's death. And drama with the fact that I hate my roommate, who gets less and less bearable as the days until my move tick by.

So, of course, I went to the Bar that Shall Not Be Named tonight for some form of distraction. No Brazilian bartender. No Clooney-esque bar manager, who is always trying to convince me his motives are pure. It was me and this friendly, enviable, so-in-love middle-aged Welsh couple and a highly unattractive, portly, gay Irish bartender. We drank in rounds, and it's way too late now, and I had sworn that I wasn't going to drink tonight, but...here it is. Denial coupled with too many Miller Lites that produces some form of drunken prose that I always expect to sing. This is it tonight. This is how I feel. I hope that you respect that and my state.

Changes

Whenever I type that word, "changes," my mind involuntarily starts humming the opening bars to that Bruce Hornsby song "That's Just the Way It Is," which was sampled in that posthumous Tupac video/song tribute. Eh, that's not too bad of a thing. Eighties music has its place.

Without seeming exceedingly self-indulgent (um, too late...?), it never ceases to amaze me how life can turn on a dime -- how everything that seemed one way can suddenly look different.

I'm moving. I'm stripping myself of my oft-bitchy roommate and her social rules, and I'm moving to a hella expensive place of my own uptown. I'm so sad to be leaving the convenience of my Midtown neighborhood, but moving is key to my self-preservation. The less stressed I get about the apartment transaction, the more excited I get about everything else: the solitude, the space to write, the space to be totally naked in my living room whenever I want. My life is moving onward.

I think that when life starts pushing to break its self-imposed, temporary mold (my current apartment situation, for example), it forces a lot of other things out, too: The N thing is going well -- too well, I'd even venture to say, which leads to me waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to get tired of me. For me to say something extremely stupid. For this all to go up in a puff of fairytale-cloud, sparkly smoke. But it hasn't yet, and that's something to be grateful for.

I have to divorce The Bar that Shall Not Be Named. I haven't been there in a while (see other life changes, above, which have prevented me from putting "getting soused" at the top of my to-do list), but I went tonight, because I felt I owed it to my present self and my future self to remind all of my selves of what went on there -- the regressing and the desperation and all of that fun stuff that no one likes to talk about. I had a few beers and waited for the locals to show up, but they didn't. The Bar that Shall Not Be Named has a new laminated, professionally printed menu, though, and near the top of the specialty cocktails list was the Brazilian bartender's caiphrinha. I laughed out loud when I saw that. It reminded me of what he made for me the first night I met him and fell for him despite my best (sober) intentions. I thought about telling the bar manager, "Um, if you WANT people to get hammered off of one beverage that's essentially rum and crushed ice, go ahead!" The Brazilian bartender never made good drinks. But he did have a way about him.

What was great about seeing that menu was that it was all full-circle: I'm leaving. The Brazilian bartender is staying. I'm pushing on with my New York life. Everyone else there is stagnant, for now, until they receive their gusts of wind from the cosmos. I'm already more positive. I'm already writing more. I'm already hoping for things I didn't believe existed six months ago. It is progress. Progress is something everyone can at least appreciate from afar, even if it isn't happening to them.

Happy Hour

I went to the Bar that Shall Not Be Named last night after work in order to down a couple of Miller Lite drafts and promptly fall into my bed. It's tricky, though, going to the Bar that Shall Not Be Named by myself, namely because I tend to attract lonely, well-meaning old-timers.

I had a beer all on my own, in blissful silence, and then a well-dressed, silver-haired man carrying a glass of Chardonnay stepped into the bar from the patio, stumbling, drunk, into the doorjamb as he crossed the threshold.

I immediately said to myself, "This is going to be my drinking buddy for the night." And, sure enough, he sat down right next to me, and before I knew it, we were deep into a discussion about 20th-century novelists. I like to think that under my neuroses, there's something calm about me that makes older men gravitate to barstools near me. Or, you know, maybe they just aren't that picky and are attracted to my shiny blond hair. But I prefer the former explanation.

His name was Tom. He said he was 55, but I would have pegged him for 62. It felt very Mad Men, our smooth cameraderie and talk about work and careers and goals. (If this were the show, and not a dive bar in Midtown, I would have been Joan, easy.) Our conversation veered toward relationships, because all conversations had at a bar past 11 p.m. veer toward relationships. He filed for divorce from his wife after 29 years together, he said. They had a happy 11 years, and then they had kids. Eighteen years later, they looked at each other and said, "Who the hell are you?" (His words.)

Maybe I looked like a deer in headlights, frightened of this thing that could easily happen to any couple, or maybe I just nodded at him to go on, but this is the next thing he said to me: "Here's my advice for keeping a marriage together: Have sex all the time. Fuck the kids." It was a poor choice of words on his part, but I got the point. He continued. "Not just sex, but movies, walks. You forget those things when you're raising kids."

We talked more, but that was the salient part of the conversation: the urgency he felt in telling me -- telling anyone -- how to avoid what had happened to him.

He then told me about his German girlfriend, 15 years his junior. He told me he buys her things -- jewelry, clothes, dinners, whatever she wants. I was suspicious of that -- his watch didn't look expensive enough. But he said the one thing she won't do is have sex in their car, in the parking garage, after he buys her jewelry. Should I have been offended? Maybe. But I got the sense that this genuinely bothered him. And, after all, it was sort of a quid pro quo: I buy you a $12,000 necklace, and you give me...what? So I took him seriously. Maybe I shouldn't have. But here's what I told him:

If you want a woman to do something for you, make her think she's working for it. Over dinner, tell her, "There's something I've been wanting to do and -- no, I'm sorry. I can't tell you." She'll then try and pry it out of you. Resist as long as possible. Use the bread basket as distraction. Refuse to tell her, and act embarrassed if she presses. Then, finally, after a good half-hour, hour, or half-day, relent. After you tell her your fantasy, say, "And the strange part is, I've only thought about doing this with you. The thought didn't cross my mind until we were together." Sold. Close the deal. She's yours. Aaaaand you're welcome.

Tom paid for all of my drinks, even the ones I had had before he got there; he also made a drunken yet valiant attempt to pick up the cute 23-year-old British bartender for me (no thanks, Tom -- been there and done that at the Bar that Shall Not Be Named); and then, before I left, he slurred, "So, do you want to fuck?" Again, I know that most women would have been offended. Maybe I should have been. But part of me knew that for this guy, it was most likely something he felt he should do -- something old-school that's required of you when you buy dames drinks. I declined. Of course I did. He knew I would, and he seemed relieved when I laughed and said no. We hugged goodbye.

After I left, I thought, "This is what bars can be in New York. Two strangers from opposite ends of the social/financial spectrum, sharing drinks and good -- if not slightly racy -- conversation instead of sitting in their apartments alone."

Switch-Hitting

I went to Vermont this weekend on a last-minute getaway with a girlfriend of mine. I went mountain biking for the first time (I didn't even wipe out -- not once!), drank a lot of local beer, and became one with various types of cheese. We drove through back through the hills of Vermont, mountain wind blowing our hair in all directions, good indie music on the stereo, and the city still far, far away.

The blessing of the weekend was not being anywhere near my cell phone or my computer, so I couldn't obsessively check my voice mail, my text messages, my e-mail, my online dating profile, or CNN.com. Of course, as soon as I returned home (relaxed, refreshed, and feeling generally great), I turned my computer on.

Now, I know I'm not supposed to stalk people via MySpace, but morons who don't set their profiles to "private" make it so easy. I decided to take a spin over to the Brazilian bartender's profile just to see what was up -- what inane comments his theater buddies have made on his page or whether he's back with his tiny actress girlfriend. Maybe some hot goss about the Bar that Shall Not Be Named. I was expecting any of that.

But I was not expecting to see that he changed his sexual orientation from "straight" to "no answer."

The Brazilian bartender is gay.

The last time Dr. Blogstein and I were out boozing it up (as we're known to do), I was whining about my love life, and he said, "You show me the guy who doesn't like you, and I will show you his boyfriend."

As much as I hate to admit it, Blogstein was right.

Jane, welcome back to New York: a city where the cutest boys are gay and Blogstein is all-knowing. Maybe I should see about moving to Vermont....

Pet Peeve

If there's one thing that irks me more than someone calling Barnes & Noble bookstore "Barnes and Nobles," it's when people speak to each other in a foreign language right in front of me. Now, don't get me wrong: It's one thing if you're a family shopping for groceries in Costco and speaking to each other in a foreign language, but it's quite another when I'm trying to rent an apartment in New York in my early twenties in 2004 at a ridiculously overpriced firm, and my broker and his assistant are speaking to each other about the transaction (and, ostensibly, me) behind the desk as I sit there like an idiot, realizing they're probably calling me a sucker to my face.

Roomie is now eating dinner in the kitchen with a relatively attractive and polite-seeming Italian man, whom I did not know would be coming over until this evening. Like an understanding roommate, I've shut myself in my room most of the evening to give her her privacy. When my bladder would hold out no longer from the three to four glasses of chianti I've poured into it tonight, I walked outside of my room to use the restroom. Yeah, I probably wasn't as lucid as I could have been, but I managed to do introductions without falling down or slurring, so, for me, that qualifies as a well-behaved evening. As I was in the restroom, I heard them speaking to one another in Italian. This is what I imagined them saying:

Roomie: Don't mind her. She's a bit of a drunk. Well-meaning girl, though. Pays the rent on time and buys toilet paper when I ask her to. She goes to bars a lot...and I mean a LOT. But as long as she keeps her undesirable men out of this apartment, I'm fine with it. Lovely pasta, by the way.

Italian guy: I had a roommate in Italy who liked the drink. He peed in my expensive leather satchel in the middle of the night.

Roomie: Hahahahaha! You Italians are so witty and charming. May I have some more wine?

When I go to the Bar that Shall Not Be Named, my Brazilian bartender/actor speaks Portuguese behind the bar to his shady, womanizing Brazilian friend. This is what I imagine them saying:

Brazilian bartender/actor: Jane's back again.

Womanizing friend: You should ask her back with you. She clearly wants you. Or give her...TO ME.

Brazilian bartender/actor: But she's had 13 Miller Lites tonight, and, frankly, she's a bit of old news around this joint, yes? And I'm more interested in the girl who taught my self-reflection class today at the academy. Maybe she'd like to take a ride on my motor scooter.

Womanizing friend: Maybe you can use Jane to get to her roommate.

Reinventing the Girl

I'm drawn to bartenders and actors like a fly is drawn to honey, so it didn't surprise me when I found myself having a nice chat with a young British actor boy at the Bar that Shall Not Be Named on Saturday night. Despite the fact that I think I insulted him when I predicted that his career trajectory would be akin to a Baldwin brother's (if he got that lucky), he was nice to me.

"What's the matter?" he said after a while, as my gaze boozily drifted off into space.

I paused. Then I abruptly swiveled around in my stool to face him dead-on.

"Okay. You want to know what the matter is?" I said. "I've met all of the goals I had for myself as a little girl, and now I don't know what to do next."

This is usually the line that sends guys scrambling for the door -- or at least the next blonde over. But this British boy was different, for some reason. He asked my Brazilian bartender of yore for a scrap of paper from the cash register tape and set about to scribbling with a blue pen. Then he handed the note to me. Here is what it said:

"REINVENT YOURSELF" Program

STEP 1:

Homework:
-Google & read "Desiderata"
-Get & read "The Law of Attraction"

See you next week!!

His "plan" was so incredibly sweet and young and optimistic and well-meaning that I had to keep the piece of paper, and I had to at least do some Googling to find out what the hell he was talking about. There's no way I'm going to spend my money on Law of Attraction, because I refuse to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy into notions like "good energy" and "bad energy" and "vibrations," etc. I think books like that (see: The Secret) are bullshit money-making schemes -- peddling half-baked psychological ideas to the weak and stupid who are willing to slap a credit card on the counter in exchange for a glimmer of hope. But I did find "Desiderata" online, and I liked it. It was enough to make me think and make me smile for two seconds today, so I'm posting it here for you guys to read. I hope you enjoy it for at least as long as I did:


Desiderata
by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.