traffic, and we hit all the green lights, and no pedestrian steps off the curb while texting right in front of this 2007 Camry, and we go sixty miles per hour on city streets, and I can figure out how to bend the space-time continuum, I will be only twenty-seven minutes late.
8:30 p.m.: i swore i was just gonna eat rice.
So far I have ordered: two cocktails (one on purpose, and the other I had to get to replace that one, because I didn’t want to tell anyone that I don’t really know what Lillet is, and when the drink came, I hated it and immediately replaced it with a wine, which, if we’re being honest, I didn’t really like, either); water—that we had to pay for—so I wouldn’t have to dry swallow a naproxen; a bread basket, which is fine, I guess, except it’s fucking health bread with seeds and that’s definitely going to be a problem on the way out; some baked-cheese business with herbs on top that is impossible to eat while looking sexy, thank God these hoes are my friends; a deconstructed designer salad that came piled high with shaved fennel and preserved lemon and asparagus ribbons, and yes, it was gross, but I want the people who love me to think I care about myself; and a fancy vegan dessert donut, which, come on, just why.
9:30 p.m.: in the backseat of the cab dissolving three imodium under my tongue just in case.
Wow, remember when I used to be cool!
10:20 p.m.: i know the door guy!
Remember that opening scene in The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg was trying to shame Rooney Mara for getting their underage asses into a Harvard bar by snarking, “the reason we’re able to sit here and drink right now is because you used to sleep with the door guy!” as if she was supposed to apologize for that shit?! Or, I don’t know, feel ashamed? Let me tell you about a little dream I have called “I Fucked All the Door Guys.” In that magical fantasy world, I never have to stand in an interminable line outside the Promontory while shifting my weight from foot to foot and puffing air into my mittened palms to try to stay warm, or shout “LOOK AT MY NECK” when I get stiff-armed and carded in the doorway at Hopleaf because that grunting ogre barring the entry of regular peasants FUCKED ME ONE TIME, and, sure, he was disappointed, but now he’s not going to make me catch hypothermia. I never tried to sneak into bars when I was an underage child because I never managed to find a fake ID featuring the photo of an unzipped body bag, but I have stood outside on a Thursday night in February in Chicago, huddled with other pigeons pecking around beneath an underperforming heat lamp, and that is an overrated experience. Anyway, that’s why I suggested my friends and I go to a place where I know a guy. We got out of the car, and I nodded at the imposing mountain of outerwear piled on a broken stool outside the door. He grunted and got up to wave us past the line, and I heard some little racist say, “Who the fuck is that bitch, Oprah?” and I yelled, “YES, BEFORE THE MEAT WAGON.”
10:30 p.m.: are there really not any chairs?
We split up: one of my ladies makes a beeline for the crowd surrounding the bar, the one who drank the most of that expensive filtered water goes to find a bathroom, and I start circling the room trying to stake out a seat because I have arthritis in my knees. I knew we should’ve skipped dinner and gotten here before it got dark to snag ourselves a table. Now we have to spend the next hour or two hours or six days hovering anxiously near a table crowded with People Who Look Like They Might Get Up. It may surprise you to know that the seats being occupied by your newly single dad and his middle-management pals are the least likely to become available, despite the fact that they look like they should’ve been in bed three beers ago; those boneheads are gonna be here all fucking night, risking it all (all = a duplex in Aurora with a bored wife and uninterested kids) for a bottle-service waitress with