I end up talking with Brandy, the bartender, for a few minutes when I return to the bar for the third butt-fucking cowboy of the night. I've come to realize that my initial impression of her needs some revision. She is not contemptuous, nor is she particularly contentious; rather, she seems contemplative and somewhat despondent. As she talks, she gently fingers the locket at the end of a silver necklace. She expresses a distant lament about a seafaring transient when I ask her about the cherished piece of jewelry. “I knew what I was getting into when the whole thing started,” she says. “Look, I'm sorry I've been so bitchy tonight,” she adds after a moment of silence. “I have the tendency to take my problems out on other people sometimes. On a normal night, I'm actually a pleasant person to be around,” with a forced smile. “Seriously,” she adds. “It's just that I always get this way whenever he leaves.”
She removes her glasses to rub her eyes. I realize that they are of a variety that is more prevalent in cartoons and poetry and song than reality. “Look, I'm the one who's supposed to be listening to sob stories,” she says with a contrived laugh. “I'm not the one who tells them.” The ox-eyed goddess of libations becomes sighted again. “Let me buy your table a round.”
Che has departed by the time I return. His friends complain about his petulance. An exchange-student shakes his head and recites the following: “He is an idealist without ideals; a vagrant upon the political landscape. He decries humanity both for its greed and its laziness, so he is never surprised by the misery created by the free-market or the corruption and inefficiency of the state.” He sighs. “Such a bathetic contempt for humanity — how European.”
“I don't even understand why he comes out anymore,” someone adds as I take my seat. “He's so fucking negative, so self-righteous.”
“Everything has to be so fucking dramatic.”
“It's so fucking annoying.”
“Where do you think he went?”
“He probably went home.”
“It's not even midnight.”
“He probably went to that chick's place. He's been boinking her pretty regularly.”
“Really? Boinking? Are you fucking Al Bundy?”
“Actually, it's twelve-thirty.”
“Okay — with whom he has been having regular coitus.”
“You're such a tool.”
“Really? Where have I been?”
“He's got a girlfriend?”
“Lady-friend.”
“Fuck-friend.”
“It's fuck-buddy, numb-nuts.”
“Is there really a difference?”
“Fuck-buddy?”
“You don't introduce your lady-friend to your friends.”
“So you're saying he has a mistress?”
“If you really want to call her that.”
“Fuck-buddy.”
“Heard you the first time, Dave.”
“He's not a bad looking guy.”
“Yeah, but he's such a whiny little bitch.”
“Well, if she's not dating him, who the fuck cares?”
“That's not the point.”
“What's she like?”
“What is the point?”
“Who?”
“The lady-friend.”
“You're a fucking douche bag, that's the point.”
“Fuck-buddy.”
“Jesus Dave, you're like a child who wanders into a movie….”
“Hey, who ordered the shots?”
“The bartender picked up the round,” I respond.
“Looks like somebody's getting his dick wet tonight.”
“And it's not going to be you, you misogynistic fuck-stain.”
“Yeah, it's Alex's old roommate.”
“Thanks for spelling that one out, Dave.”
“I'm not a misogynist, you bitch.”
“Fine. You're a fucking twat, then.”
The shots are taken. The mood once again becomes gregarious and far less slanderous. Personal stories and quotes from favorite movies and television shows are traded like baseball cards. Dumb and Dumber has a surprisingly large number of fans. Books eventually get their time in the limelight. One of the nameless cites Cormac McCarthy as his favorite author. He claims the judge in Blood Meridian to be metaphorically tied to Cain, but cannot provide an explanation as to what the bear at the end of the book is supposed to symbolize. “Is the bear the wilderness of North America? I mean, there is that one bear that kills one of the guys in the group in, like, the middle of the book. The bear in the last chapter could represent the…the…you know, the….”
“Subjugation?”
“Yeah…and destruction of the wildness, as well as the breakdown in Western morality — like the sanctity of life and all that. I don't know, though; something tells me it goes deeper than that.” He asks if there is a bear anywhere in the Bible. Someone responds that Sodom was filled with them. Laughter. This is followed by an etymological query: Is there such a thing as a Gomorrite? A debate on sexual perversions—“A socially constructed concept,” as is evidently not obvious from the word's appearance almost exclusively in value statements — blossoms from the fecund question. I hear of felching for the first time. Munging is defined. The conversation ends with an awkward silence among intoxicated and slack-jawed extroverts.
Two people decide to make their way to the dance floor soon after, which initiates a domino effect that nearly empties the table within a few minutes. As the organs begin to grind, minutes dissolve into memories, smiles become abundant, sexual tensions oscillate. Ilkay disappears. The music ceases to have a discernible melody. At one thirty, I get a text message from Tomas that reads: “LIC party like orgy stop get yer ass herf [sic.] now stop.” Tables get rearranged, reconstructed. People find themselves in new contexts, experiencing transculturation on a microcosmic scale — at least that's what one of the grad-students muses at one point. Vinati and I eventually find ourselves sitting next to one another.
“Evan Klein and the Babymakers,” I respond to a question about my high school band.
She laughs. “Evan Klein and the Babymakers.”
“I was one of the Babymakers…obviously.”
“And you played the bass? You played the bass in a band called Evan Klein and the Babymakers?”
“Yeah.”
“Any relation to Naomi Klein?”
“I wouldn't know.”
“Do you know her?”
“No.”
“Oh, she's great. Probably the best journalist out there right now.”
“I'll check her out.”
“You should.”
“Is she a friend of yours? Another girl from Queens?”
“No, she's Canadian. And I was just born in Queens. We moved to a brownstone on Berkley Street, about half a block away from Prospect Park, when I was four”
“What do your parents do?”
“Is that your phone?”
I look: Tomas.
“It's not important.”
Caesura
“You were saying.”
“Well, my dad owns a few restaurants — mostly in Brooklyn.” She names three in Park Slope.
“Never heard of them.”
“Not a fan of Indian food?”
“Not a frequenter of Park Slope.”
“You should go there more often. There's a new bar that opens, like, every week.”
“You're still there, I take it?”
“No, I've moved into a place in Williamsburg last September. It's kind of a shithole, but it's cheap.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“You're there, too?”
“Bushwick.”
“Bushwick or East Williamsburg?”
“Bushwick — a few blocks from the Knickerbocker stop on the M.”
“Shut up,” she exclaims. “Why are you living all the way out there? It's dangerous.”