At the Karaoke Bar: Songs I Know By Heart

 I used to be convinced there was something fabulous and memorable and life changing happening in bars all over New York City -- if only I could manage to be at the right one at the right time.  This perception of potential ruined my ability to see where I was or what I really had.  Now I think the same thing is happening everywhere from the Top of the Standard to the dingiest karaoke bar on the Upper East Side: people are trying to drink their dreams to life or they're drinking because they stopped trying; people are looking for love or they don't believe in finding it anymore.  
On this particular night I was with my friend at a dingy karaoke bar on the Upper East Side.  I stood leaning against a table near the stage with a bottle of Corona in my hand.  Corona is the only drink I can stomach these days.  Every other drink tastes like memories that make me sick.  Coronas tastes comforting to me.
So I sipped my comfort drink and watched a couple slow dancing in front of the stage.  The man's hands cupped the woman's very pronounced butt cheeks and they were making out quite intensely.  I liked them a lot.  I always like couples who aren't ashamed to get drunk and publicly display their affection.
Near the couple, a very drunk and very pudgy man was dancing by himself.  He was blonde and I could tell that he was blacked out.  I knew this man. Well, more precisely, I knew his type.  I had woken up to the sounds of this man falling into the bedroom, too drunk to walk or to undress himself.  I had sat up for hours with him late into the night, while he puked and punched things.  I also knew this man is always the most fun because he always feels like he has the most to compensate for. 
As I watched the drunk man, someone bumped against me.  I turned and my heart and I both jumped.  I recognized him.  I recognized his four-day unshaven shadowed cheeks and his carelessly wrinkled button down shirt.  He looked just like the man I had once considered my Rick Springfield back when I had been Jessie's Girl.  In the flash of this man's shoulder against mine, I felt my Rick's lips on my cheek.
I turned away from him.  The outrageously drunk man had climbed to the stage and was shouting, slurring, mumbling, and moaning into the microphone and the whole bar was singing with him -- or for him.  The song was Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You."  I joined the rest of the bar in singing and dancing.  And there was Rick Springfield again, dancing in front of me, smiling at me, trying to get me to dance with him but not trying all that hard because he didn't care all that much and neither did I.  Yet I liked him for his easy-almost-carelessness.  And I had always liked men in button down shirts and four-day unshaven shadow cheeks.  Like my Rick, this one was a bad dancer but because he didn't care it made him look good.  I turned away from him, but I liked the feeling of familiarity. 
I also liked the communal feeling in the bar that was created by the fact that is was Thanksgiving weekend, which meant it was officially the Christmas season in New York.  As depressing as the pervasive feeling of desperation that hovers in karaoke bars can be, the song and the season and the way they were making everyone smile made me happy.  I liked thinking that, at heart, all anyone wants for Christmas is someone to call their "You."  Someone to call their "I love You."
After the drunk guy plodded off the stage, a big hipped girl in a mini skirt and knee high black boots took his place.  Her song was Cher's "Believe."  I could tell from the fierce look in her dark eyes and the clarity of her voice when she sang "Do you believe in life after love?" and the way her friends kept cheering her on and the way she shouted "Fuck you!" to the ceiling at the end of the song that every verse was personal to her.  She sang, "I've had time to think it through and maybe I'm too good for you," and I raised my Corona to her.  I knew her too.  I had been her.  More than once.  The first time I needed to believe in life after love, I was at a drag bar in Chicago, spontaneously standing up and singing with a queen dressed as Cher.  The most recent time I sang that song was at a karaoke bar in Astoria in October.  I think it's the song that women sing to prove they're okay after a break-up, but - let me tell you - you're not okay until you stop singing Cher songs to prove you are.  And if you start singing "If I Could Turn Back Time," then you're in real trouble.  
The next person on the stage was a twenty-something man with shoulder length dark curly hair  He sang an obscure rock song and he sang it well.  I recognized him too.  He looked just like someone I had slept with in Chicago. And I felt like I knew how many months he had been clean, how he rolled a joint and how very well indeed he kissed.  And now I knew better, but I almost wished I didn't.  I kept my eyes on his while he sang and after his song he approached me but I pretended not to notice him until he walked away.  And then I pretended not to care.
The night played on with the usual mix.  There was a group celebrating a birthday and a group of drunk girls who were over dressed and over eager.  There was a creepy old guy in a leather jacket and a midlife crisis.  Men came up to me, introduced themselves and then went on their way when I wouldn't give them more than a single smile.
And then came Mike and his wingman.  I had been watching Mike hover awkwardly around the bar.  He was decent looking, preppy in the way I liked.  Now that he was standing before me, I realized that I knew him too.  Mike was a younger version of the professor I had briefly dated years ago in Chicago.  As it happened, Mike was a fifth grade economics teacher.  He had a kind smile and -- as far as I was concerned -- nothing interesting to say.  His wingman spoke for him, bought a round of shots for the group for him, and signed him up for karaoke.  The two of them sang Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" and they were very good.  I felt like I should like them.  They seemed nice and fun but I didn't care to know them, so though I let Mike put his number in my phone, I was relived when they left and I knew I'd never contact him.
Eventually, it was time for my friend and I to take the stage.  I had chosen for us a song of friendship and girl power: The Spice Girls, "Wannabe."  In my experience, no women hoping to meet men will ever sing this song in public.  I had considered this before I picked it and I felt I was making the right choice.
It wasn't that I didn't see any worthwhile men at the bar.  It's that I don't see any worth in meeting new people -- men -- anymore.  I feel like I already know them all and I certainly know what I went through with each one.  
I remember once being terrified of commitment because I felt like picking one person out of all the possibilities meant giving up seemingly infinite potential.  I remember thinking there is no such thing as the right person, merely the right time.  Now I think there if definitely a right person, as well as a right time.  It's a matter of having that person in your life when you've figured out that all those tantalizing possibilities you once perceived are really just more of the same old things.  The right person is worth the monotony of commitment because really everything and anything becomes routine, familiar, boring.  That's not a fact of relationships, it's a fact of life.  
Next time I do karaoke I'm singing, "If I Could Turn Back Time."
As I stood thinking about this, the outrageously drunk man returned to the stage.  This time he was singing Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life."  While I danced to the song, I remembered the man I had danced to this song with in Chicago, in a sweltering apartment.  I remembered the way his shirt was soaked with sweat and the way he drunkenly careened into me as we danced.  I remembered the way he kissed me and the way I kissed his friend.  And I remembered being happy because it was all new and exciting.  Now, though, I don't want anything new.  I want one particular same old thing.
The song continued and I noticed the creepy old guy dancing with a heavyset girl from the birthday party.  He was enthusiastically twirling her like she was the prettiest girl at the bar and her smile was bigger than anyone's.
After "Semi-Charmed Life," the over dressed drunk girls took the stage.  Like the outrageously drunk man had done earlier, they were singing Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You."  Once again everyone in the bar was dancing and singing along.  And so was I.  And I was smiling because I really do believe that everyone wants someone.  One.  Not ones.  Everybody wants somebody to love.  And if it's really going to be love, then not just anyone will do.  There is only one YOU.