When Matthew said “dive bar”, I had something entirely different in mind.
First of all, there was loud karaoke, which was bound to mess my writing-in-a-dark-corner vibe. In fact, there weren’t any dark corners in this place; the 20 ft ceilings saw to that. I am used to dive bars being a bit more claustrophobic, and so my hopes were anything but high for this night: St.Patty’s.
A couple of off-key women were inadequately singing R&B, filling every inch of the space with unadulterated atrocity. I had prior honestly believed all black women were at least moderately gifted in the voice department. A group of middle-aged Mexican men sat clustered to my right, and whenever I walked by them, I felt tall and out of place.
I ordered a Corona and a glass. After the first sip, I wished I’d ordered vodka (sticking mostly to beer will prove to pay off for me in the long run). The place itself was out of place in City Heights, San Diego. It looked like it belonged in Portland. Or even somewhere on the east coast. Anywhere but here.
The bartender, female, had frizzy hair that might have horrifically been the work of a bad perm, if not unfortunate genes. She was 40ish and mostly thin, but with a protruding potbelly that showed unforgivingly (yes, its a real word; screw you spellcheck) through her thin, white wife-beater. A rave-worthy flashing green necklace in the shape of a four-leafed clover glowed between her pendulous breasts. On a particularly out-of-key song, she walks over to me, leans in intimately across the bar, and tells me she’ll have the guy turn the mic down a bit. A racial stereotype died right there with a wobbling, cracking screech. It would have made Mary J. Blige’s heart stop instantly.
I order a $1 cherry bomb, and as I pick it up to drink/chew it, a loud female voice says “she’s cute”. Certain I feel eyes on me, I turn towards it. A short, rotund, but otherwise quite beautiful black woman shouts down the bar, pointing at me.
“You’re really cute,” she says, directly at me this time, noticing me noticing. Yet I don’t get the sense that she is hitting on me, and I thank her as I blush and slam my cherry bomb.
“Yeah, I love your hair,” her younger friend adds.
“You sing?” the bartender leans in and asks me, joining in.
“Well, I can somewhat carry a tune,” I say, “but no, I only sing in my car and the shower.”
“I couldn’t carry a tune if you stuck it in a bucket, and glued the handle to my hand!” she laughs with a hearty rasp, and turns to an approaching patron with a beneficent smile.
Overhearing, one of the black women pressure me: “This ain’t American Idol baby; you just keep going if you forget some words.”
I blush again; pretend not to hear this time.
The three of them make their way back over to the karaoke area, and bust in with second, and third, microphones on a young Mexican woman doing a pretty good job of Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic”. They slaughter the second half on her, but she seems to not mind. When they all make their way outside, I follow, intent on buying a cigarette off one of them. My payment is refused, and a menthol is handed to me, and a lighter extended to my tip. Facing her, I get another good look at the woman who had called me cute. She has green eyes, and for all I can tell, they are natural. Her face has a stately and exotic grace to it. She is the aunt to the two other women, she confides in me, but she only looks about 10 years older. When she tells me she is 51, I am not surprised, but once again impressed by how well African Americans age. If only WASPS had such longevity. Luckily, being a well-oiled full Italian, I land somewhere in between.
A white man, who looks like he just stepped off the bus from Long Beach circa 1998, tells me, “You have nice feet.” I look down at my hot-pink toes and realize they are glowing preternaturally in the neon light.
“Yeah, I had a woman the last six years, with beautiful feet. Now I got a foot thing. It is hard to find nice feet.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and continue to puff.
Slowly, I turn my toes away from him, feeling slightly violated by his stare. I pray he isn’t fantasizing about shrimping them. (Is THAT how jumbo shrimp was mentioned? I know I heard my favorite oxymoron somewhere that night…)
“How old do you think I am?” he asks me, leaning too close to my face.
“38?” I lie generously.
“44” he announces proudly, landing closer to my internal guesstimate. And a hard-looking 44. I’m not sure who’s been feeding this guy lines.
Back at the bar, I drink one more beer. This time, when the women get up again for their smoke break, they signal me to come along.
Sharing a cigarette, I finally introduce myself to them.
Lycee, the most talkative of the bunch, asks me if I am 25. When I tell her I’m 32, she’s stunned. She tells me she is 33, and her cousin; a spirited and ginormous (both horizontally and vertically) woman, black as the night, is 31. I’m like an age Oreo, standing sweetly between them. The early thirties trinity. Double chocolate, and a dab of vanilla. (How boring that I should be vanilla?)
“You smoke?” the larger one asks me. She towers over me about 5″, and must weight well over 300lbs.
“I sure do,” I answer.
Grabbing my arm, she pulls me down the side of the building to meet up with “Ms Ironic” (I find out her name is Anna; the third Anna I’ve met in a week) from a few songs ago. Lycee tells me she quit weed years ago, and stays behind, shooing me to join them.
We drag on glass pipe, and I appear to be the only one paranoid enough to at least periodically glance out to the street for an oncoming cop. The large one, Tunesia, speaks emphatically, waving her hands around and camping on the pipe like a mountain man. She tells me of a story where she was busted by a cop with a blunt between her lips in a parked car.
“He leans in the window all serious, and I’m about to die,” she says, “and then says ‘let me hit that,’” she laughs, “mothafucker actually said let me hit that!”
“And what did I say to you then?” Lycee asks, walking over to join the conversation.
Tunesia continues: “She turns to me and says, and as if it were the most normal thing in the world to smoke a blunt with a cop, ‘well..let the man hit it!’”
“We ended up hanging out with that mothafucker all night!” Tunesia laughs, blowing out a thin poof of smoke.
“You like reggae?” they ask me, hugging me and pulling on my arms.
“Yes” I lie.
“OOOOOoooo! We taking you out Sunday” they insist.
Naturally, I ask them all their signs. Turns out, Lycee has two daughters; both Scorpios. The aunt’s mother is a Scorpio as well, and she says this with just the right amount of reverie typically afforded Scorpio moms. They check out my tattoo, and ask if I am pierced. When I flash my double tongue studs, Lycee grabs me and shrieks; “you a freak, huh? I like you!”
The next thing I know, I am promising erroneously to ask my LA friends for triple-stack E for her. We continue to chat, and I somehow keep saying things that seem to amuse them. Every five minutes I get a “girl, you with US now!”
“What are you?” the aunt finally asks, after I catch her staring, “you look so young…”
“As do you,” I say earnestly, “and I’m Italian.”
Another round of shrieks, and the elder one grabs me and gives me a hug.
“I LOVE that!” she tells me from within her grip.
When she releases me, we try to high-five and miss. This is my first indication that I am actually drunk, other than the flawless manner with which I seem to be making friends. Somehow, I never get accepted so fast sober. That is the power of alcohol.
Turns out, 2 of the three of us are from the east coast. You can’t come from the east coast and not love Italians…
Back inside again, I debate leaving, and then order another beer. I mentally tally the damage with a guilty, nervous feeling in my gut. $1.50 surcharge for using my card too. Each dollar spent hurts like a back-stabbing friend…
The lovely older woman is by now, and by far, the most intoxicated. Lycee however seems to have a boundless ability to slam any drink she can talk any of the old men at the bar into buying her, without seeming even slightly more drunk then she was when I came in. I watch her imbibe whiskey, tequila, multiple pink vodkas, several beers, and three cherry bombs in the space of an hour. At some point Auntie leans down the bar and, drunk goggles all the more fogged and misty now; upgrades her compliment to me.
“You really are beautiful. Beautiful white girl.”
I blush yet again. I try to compliment her back (after all, she’s a black woman with green eyes!) but she isn’t having it. She only repeats “beautiful white girl” and the other two chime in, in agreement. She even tugs on Longbeach foot guy at her side, now fully wooing her with his whiskey breath, and insists to him, “look at her; isn’t she beautiful?”
I can’t figure out to what I owe this night of non-stop compliments. Now, everywhere they go, they drag me, arm-in-arm. We are a fabulous foursome; with me their new fast friend, and when Anna joins us again outside, we are a fivesome of loud, sassy, steadily-drunkening women of three races. Almost every flavor. Naturally, a series of men attempt to tag along throughout the night. When one particularly mousy one tries to buy one of them a drink, she insists this time to buy one for us all.
“What do you want, girl?” Lycee asks me.
“Shit,” I think, “if the dude is buying…” and I order a watermelon Jollyrancher. Don’t think I can stomach another Corona.
As I drink it the aunt hugs and caresses my back. I still believe it to be in a non-sexual way (hey, I really don’t know) and just enjoy the instant acceptance I am getting that is so usually rare. And I see auntie also caress the hand of her niece, and for a second I feel a sting over what my own family is missing. The intimacy is palpable, and inwardly sulk at my own culture-less middle-class white “culture”. White kids grow up alone. That is one thing people overlook. Some of the white folk may have the money, but they rarely have decent, intimate familial bonds…
One more cigarette outside, and vows of new friendship are sloppily made. I keep having to mentally throw myself back in the moment to enjoy it, instead of floating outside myself and analyzing it all as it happens. I always catch myself doing this when I start giving manufactured, cliche responses. Gotta tell myself to “be here now” all the time and turn off the incessant inner dialog.
There is laughter filling the night. The bartender joins us, sitting on the back of a parked motorcycle. I never get to ask if it is hers or not. The aunt comes over to me; gives me another hug.
“Get down with your crown, princess!” she insists to me in a drunken slur.
Something about this saying makes me smile inside, and outside, so huge it pulls muscles in my abs as well as my face. I should. I should get down with my mothafuckin crown! Who was I to walk in there so sure I wouldn’t have a good time? Who cares if they can’t sing; if they are slightly scandalous in their drink-fishing with the men…they are FUN, dammit. Why do I build imaginary walls around my good time before it ever even happens? I vowed not to do this again, and we shut down the place. Auntie was walked out last with the help of three people. The bartender looked tired but handled our slow leaving graciously.
Messy goodnights and numbers were shared outside the doors. Promises were made. I felt fine to drive, but somehow ended up parking in front of a driveway. A warning text at 7:00am may have very well saved my ass from being towed. In my groggy, four hours of sleep brain, I couldn’t understand how the neighbor who’s driveway I blocked got my number! Now I have two things to thank Matthew for…
