october 26

So here's another about age:

Last Friday night, Lisa and Todd and A* and this new guy named Norm and I all go to McCormick's. It is the end of a hellish week and we drink. Clients. Anthrax. Layoffs. I drink Margaritas. Lisa drinks Jack and Coke. The boys drink scotch. And talk only to each other. Lisa and I watch the game and sing "God Bless America" during the seventh inning.

We leave McCormick's for Tube. I am the only one who knows the lameness of this bar but it is my idea to go. There's something soothing about it's smooth, green plainness. Lisa and I sing "God Bless America" again as we trek through downtown. She can sing and I can't but somehow we get into this perfect pitch and it feels so good to sing out loud and let myself feel proud and nostalgic and a little sad.

At Tube there are two seats at the bar. The boys have been ignoring us so we sit there and banish them to the tables.

Lisa and I drink more. Me, something rich and Christmas-y with vanilla rum. She, something light with vodka and watermelon juice.

There is a cute blonde boy sitting next to me. His is quite drunk and his glasses keep falling off. We actually end up discussing business: he's a manager at an accounting firm that specializes in healthcare and says he can get me some introductions. I find out later that my husband watches this conversation, which lasts for the better part of an hour and does, I admit, include harmless flirting. My husband is insanely jealous.

Lisa and I switch drinks. I mean, we each order what the other had in the last round.

I just want to forget this week. And forget about what I need to do next week. And before that, what I have to do over the weekend.

Then we order a shot of Ouzo. But only after I tell my Ouzo story:

When I was 17 and in Chicago I lived in a building for women studying in the arts called The Three Arts Club. It was like Bosom Buddies: No Men Above The First Floor. This building had a ballroom and a courtyard and always had some wedding on the weekends. Sometimes two or three.

One night the drunken male guests of some wedding kept sneaking up to our floor and acting like dicks. Being the bad-ass little girls that we were, we retaliated by "going to the bar." This bar was O'Leary's. We--Monica and Amy, my suitemates, and Rose and I-- storm into this narrow, rotting old pub with a sinking wood floor like the world had done us wrong. This was our usual attitude. We were faced with a bar filled with newly-enlisted sailorboys who were out on their first night away from the base after just completing their basic training.

Oh, shit.

Girls like me, and like Monica, from Kenosha, who grew up in port towns, know about sailors. Our mamas told us about them and their tricks. And they scared us so good we just didn't even bother.

Now we were faced with a whole barfull and they were cute and drunk and horny. Monica and I tried to look disgusted and aloof but since we knew what was about to happen I'm sure we just looked horrified.

Amy and Rose were farm girls from bumfuck Michigan. They were stupid girls. Stupid, fucking idiots. And they thought they were hot shit now that they were in the big city and they were going to go back to the hotel with these drunken sailorboys no matter how many times and in how many ways Monica and I told them they would be gang raped.

Amy, is the first person I'd ever met who said she hated the f*ggots (pronounced fay-guts) with AIDS, but she felt sorry for the babies who had it. She also was a rabid pro-lifer who, by March the following year, moved into a seedy motel with her drug-running boyfriend and had an abortion.

Monica and I also had to yank her naked body out of a hotel room later that night.

But this was a story about Ouzo. And about getting old. I will get back to that.

I was sitting at a table in O'Leary's next to this dark, skinny guy with big brown eyes who was just shaking his head.

"You know what's going to happen, don't you?" I asked him, right in his ear so he could hear me over the blaring music.

He nodded.

"You wanna get outta here?" He nodded. We went across the street to Third Coast Cafe. He ordered Irish coffee not knowing it was an alcoholic drink. He was 18.

This boy named Bob and I were away from home and our families and our friends for the first time in our lives. He was Italian from an Italian family like I'd only seen on TV. His accent was all Philly. I, still the hippy anti-war chick, asked endless questions about why he joined the military. I really didn't have any clue that this is how some people had to pay for school.

We met up again at O'Leary's the next weekend. The thing about Chicago bars back then is they were fanatical about carding. But Nick, the bartender, liked me because once I smacked him upside the head after he grabbed my ass. He always let me and my friends drink there.

This night Bob and I thought everyone was an undercover cop. I have no idea why. I think we were both so innocent that we just fed off of each other's paranoia. He ordered Ouzo for me because he thought I would like the candy taste. In walked some big guy that we were convinced was a cop.

I downed the Ouzo. We scrambled out of the bar.

Half-way across the street it hit me in the head and my knees buckled and my muscles turned to liquid and I melted into a heap in the middle of the intersection. Bob, ever the gentleman, scraped me off the pavement and wiped me back onto the sidewalk.

A few weeks later my evil roommate--I don't even remember her name, she was short-lived--told Bob I'd moved to Boston. He thought I didn't want to see him again and I never did.

So Lisa and I are sharing this shot of Ouzo in this sterile, green, tube-shaped bar 10 years later.

I am not only old enough to sit at this bar, but I have earned it, goddammit.

I am not protesting this war in the street, but I am singing for my lost countrymen. I am pleading silently with God to just end it. Let it be over and everyone just go home.

I am not drinking tonight with just one soul who might understand me, but surrounded by friends with whom I share my work, my gripes, my victories, my bed. Even the people I don't know--like the drunk, blonde accountant-boy--are my friends tonight. We are in this together.

I am not questioning. I know the answer. The answer is that it doesn't make sense and it never will. And we're all just doing the best we can, not knowing exactly what's the right thing to do. No one is right, exactly, and I can't even say that anyone is completely wrong. Well, a few, maybe. But most of us are just doing what's right for us.

I used to call myself an idealist, rationalizing that someone had to fight for the ideal. I don't believe that anymore. The so-called ideal is purely subjective; my ideal will most certainly not be your ideal. In the grand scheme of things, doing my genuine best, acting on my instincts, will do the world a hell of a lot better than striving for the ideal. I'd just spend all my time trying to figure out what the fuck that was anyway.

And when you know this, you know you are old.

- october 26