Friday Night Dispatch

I changed my mind about the overalls at the last minute and so was a few minutes late for my opening shift. The overalls I’d had on were too loose and gaping open, though it was never clear to me how much anyone was paying attention—always far more or far less than I imagined. I ended up in the blue shirt I’d worn last weekend and the shorts that bunch up on the right side. The black bra that doesn’t fit me at all. I felt bloated and uncomfortable. It was the middle of the afternoon, the first white heavy heat of summer. The sparseness and anticipation of the bar before open, bare and unstaged, a strange ascetic intimacy which I conflated two idioms trying to describe: airing out the skeletons. 

*

I poured lemon juice from a quart container into the narrow opening of a glass bottle and arranged it on a cushion of pebble ice in the well alongside the other juices. I thought of taking some notes, describing what was happening as it happened, but I still needed to trim the mint and bring backup bottles of gin and tequila up from the basement and spray Murphy’s oil on the bartop. Instead I imagined remembering what was happening now in the future, when I was home later tonight, slowly unraveling the frantic chaos of service in my own dark quiet room. I wondered if I’d remember the exact texture of my thoughts and knew I wouldn’t, I didn’t feel sure I really knew them now, my coworker singing along to Michelle Branch, the glass rack asleep in its little parking spot near the bathroom, I wanted to observe everything and also I wanted to disappear from the scene entirely. My stomach hurt and I wished I was home. 

*

People trickled in slowly. I poked toothpicks into pickled tomatoes and dropped them in Nick and Nora glasses, and I did this over and over again. I crouched in front of the lowboy to put the dishwasher-warm glasses in the back and when I stood up my knees made clicking sounds. A man sat alone in the middle of the bar and I let him taste the two orange wines we had. He started talking about a certain region in France, but I couldn’t really hear him. It was getting busy. I thought of the time an old coworker described a Cabernet Sauvignon as a dusty library and a leather chair, which was the last time I was really excited about wine. Most of bartending is acting impressed by the vast knowledge many men assert about wine or spirits or esoteric classic cocktails or acting like I know what they’re talking about or acting so wide-eyed and embarrassed that I don’t, but oh please teach me everything you know! Sometimes I feel defiant in my ignorance, like my apathy can make me impenetrable. My precious little men thinking any of this matters! This is stirring and shaking! This is syrup in bottles! This is poison that could ruin all of our lives and maybe already has! But remaining inexperienced and ill-informed only reaffirms their assumptions, not to mention stifles my own personal growth and professional development. The man said to my coworker (/beverage director and award-winning bartender) while she stirred two drinks at once: “Nice technique.” 

*

A family came in and I started to get tired. The mom took a photo of the menu in the dark so she could zoom in on the tiny text. She ended up sipping water while the rest of her family drank beer. One of the glass cheaters broke at my feet and I kept making drinks while my coworker cleaned up around me. The hangnail on my finger stung periodically. A woman I know from my last bar job came in wearing a long skirt. She stood by the door for a minute and I didn’t recognize her immediately without her husband by her side, which made me feel bad and embarrassed and ashamed, and I thought of all the times she sat quietly while her husband talked about action movies at the bar of the old restaurant I loved and also hated, all the seasonal garlands up well past their seasons, which is closed now. I took the glass rack from the server station and carried it, trying to use my arm muscles instead of my back, over and over again to the bar where someone always opened the dishwasher’s metal door.

*

I asked the chefs for bar nuts to snack on while I filled bottles in the basement. I was suddenly so hungry I felt dizzy. C shared her chips with me and J and I talked about the skincare industrial complex. I carbonated bottles for the two highballs we have on the menu, waiting several minutes between each charge. I was trying to decide if I should have a drink at the bar when I finished or just go home and go to bed, and it was spiraling into trying to decide how to live. This often happened. It was like that Stephen Dobyns poem—I wanted to “go downtown and get crazy drunk [and] tip over all the trash cans we can find” or I wanted to take the subway back to my neighborhood, tiptoe through the apartment, unplug the lights in the window, and go to sleep. The bar was still mostly full. The candles had started going out because we lit them too early. I slid a few cans of Narragansett behind the others in the lowboy, grabbed my bag from the hook in the liquor room, and stepped into the warm rambunctious night, headed for the train.