We become each other’s stories. Family is the story we inherit, but everyone
else… They are the stories told to us,
the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we retell until they are no longer a
person at all but an anecdote demonstrating who we were and who we’ve become.
And now here’s a story:
When
I drink a martini it’s because I like the way the glass feels against my
lips. When the martini glass sits on the
bar in front of me I like to run my finger up and down its slender stem because
this single movement makes my boredom feel beautiful. And when I pull my small notebook out of my
purse and start making notes in it while my friends maintain a light but steady
flow of conversation between each other, it is because I am dramatically
discontented in the present moment and concerned that most of life will be like
this from here on out – mostly mundane.
It
was my fifth night of my new life in New York City. My lips kissed the rim of my second French
martini as I watched the bartender. He
was short and dark and not very good at his job. He seemed happily average at all things and
oddly confident that either one of my friends or myself would join him for some
late night Mexican food once he finished his shift. I would join him, but not because he
interested me – only because anyone who had ever interested me was long gone
and I felt that I was getting too old to keep passing up the chance to go out
and see if someone I deemed boring upon first impression could pleasantly
surprise me.
I
was in what my friends had told me was a “trendy” jazz bar in the West Village
and I was dressed in a little black dress and new patent leather heels and
cascading vintage jewelry, all of which I had had no use for all summer. Nevertheless, the night felt worse than a night
of eight dollar wine bottles and iTunes dancing on kitchen floors in Chicago
and small-town Wisconsin. It was worse
because no one else seemed to understand that it could be anything less than
wonderful. Somehow the sheer fact that
it was a jazz bar in the West Village was supposed to be enough to ensure
happiness. At least with my family and
with my best of friends, when I said that I was worried that this was as good
as it gets, they would all nod in agreement because our hearts all beat upon
the same artistically, temperamental, terror drum.
Between
saying “goodnight” to my friends and meeting up with the bartender I wandered the
streets of the West Village. It was late
and they were empty but brightened by the glow that spilled forth from the windows
of big brownstone houses and white brick apartments. On a street corner, between a large pile of
garbage and a sleeping homeless man, I texted my brother and one of the most
interesting people I know. I asked them
each if they thought that most people were secretly as lonely and discontent as
I was. They each replied that they
did. And we all agreed that most people
are just better at faking it than I am.
So
I put on a smile and spent the early morning hours listening to the bartender
tell me about himself. He also told me
what food to order and what beer to drink.
And I told myself that he would, at least, make a good story about my
first week in New York.
As
it turns out, he doesn’t make a very good story. The only good story here is that when I
walked alone into my apartment that morning I was pleased to prove yet again
that I am no longer the person I was ten months ago, fingering my martini glass
and going home with a boyfriend I hated just to pass the time. Now when I feel bored with life and everyone
around me, I have the small comfort that I am not alone in this feeling. And I have the even greater comfort of
knowing that I did once find a place filled with people with whom I never felt
bored or discontented -- with whom time was not a tedious thing but a
delightfully graceless dance that we wove together through songs and smiles and
stolen kisses upon a kitchen floor.
And
so sometimes I am the kind of woman who orders a martini because she likes the
way the glass feels as it receives her lips’ cool kiss. But always, in my heart of hearts, I am the woman
– the girl, the happiest – dancing on that kitchen floor.
Remember
how I wrote before that we become each other’s stories? The bartender became just one more story that
brings me back to my favorite one to tell.
*The title of this post is taken from a line in the W.B. Yeats poem, "When You Are Old."
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