I'm a sentimentalist
I’m a sentimentalist and there’s nothing sadder than a drunk girl with an empty glass. Especially around the holidays. I ran into Our Friend Jane recently, who wasted no time in asking me to buy her a drink — a gift, in the spirit of the season — to replace all those she’d made disappear. I gestured appropriately to the barman and seated myself next to dreamy Janey, wondering what she wanted to get off her chest this time, and if it’d be dirty.
I looked around our little slice of heaven, the local bar. I nodded to my compatriots. It attracts a crowd — if a handful of deadbeats can be called a crowd — with not much in common except loneliness and drunkenness, the holiest of human attributes. Unlike most New York bars, there is a wide ethnic range. It’s sort of like the U.N., but without all the diplomacy. It is a Bar That Looks Like America, especially because it’s going to shit.
“Love,” Jane whispered into the ether.
All right. “I seem to recall the name,” I said.
“Love,” she repeated. “Why can’t I be in love? I was in love with this boy, but something happened. Something happened then. I need to be in love now. I should be in love. Someone like me? Someone giving like me? Should be in love.”
“Well….” I offered.
“And this boy, this boy, he was so sweet. He was beautiful, so smart — and kind.”
“Well, what’d you do to the poor sap?”
“He was so good-looking.”
“Yeah, all right,” I said, knowing my role as straight man. “How good-looking was he?”
“Well, he was very good-looking. You know how good-looking you are? Imagine forty, fifty times better than that.”
I whistled appreciatively. “Sounds nice.”
Jane smiled at me sadly. I looked into the dimming depths of her eyes. She may or may not have a beautiful face, but everything still shows on it, and that counts for something. “I’m sorry you’re sad, Janey,” I said, and raised my glass. “Here’s to new love in the new year.”
We toasted gravely and I slid her a dollar to put into the jukebox. She skittered over in the stillness and plugged away at the dusty old fairgrounds. She’s the kind of woman who plays songs on the jukebox like she’s discovering something. As speakers blared out “wild horses, how come you taste so good?” she picked her way back to the high stool and stared, sighing, at the worn wood surface we slouched on.
But she was already a dozen drinks ahead of me, lost.
by Jack, December 12, 2003 12:24 PM | More from Drinking & Women | More from Jane
Within the Chronology
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"Well..." you offered.
"I could fall in love with you, but I guess that would just be projection or rebound love or something...?
"Or something...?"
"Or drunkenness, or codependence, or something..."
"Or something...?"
I leaned over to kiss her. She stood still but ever so gently parted her lips as if to accept with reservation. She let the kiss linger without pushing me away or engaging me.
"Something like that?"
"Please." She rolled her eyes or, at least, gave the impression of rolling her eyes.
"Please?"
"Ok." And we left together. And the rest remains behind closed doors (in the great tradition of great movies quoting great songs).
Someone writes my blog better than me. Or something.