"Escape" from the Bar Scene

While I have been away (both physically AND electronically) another blog has been competing for my readers' attention. Well, I guess they were not originally my readers, since the Blog X's distribution list is comprised of poker-playing, football-watching men that all belong to the same Mens' Club

(Are Mens' Clubs still legal?? I remember my grandfather telling me twenty years ago, as we drove by the Eire Pub en route to his house, that it was the last remaining Gentlemans' Club and wasn't it a shame when, from time to time, "the ladies" would try to infiltrate. "Well, Grandpa," I would respond to this repetitive tidbit every time we passed Adams St. in good old "Dot", "it seems to me that the ladies are the reason the men established the club in the first place -- to have a place of their own, and that they SHOULD be welcome once in a while to remind you men of from what you are escaping." HaHa. And Grandpa, knowing how ridiculous I really thought that was, not to mention the idea of a Men's Club in the first place, would laugh, remembering his granddaughter's backwardly feminist views in his mind, and say "That's my girl!")

So while Blog X has been vying for my and other readerships, have I become complacent? Could be. I was concerning myself last week, not with thinking up new bartending observations and blogworthy recipes. I was instead looking for the perfect pair of jeans (didn't find them), shoes (again, came up short), and jewelry (had to settle for what was already in my closet) for a night away. I actually scored a Saturday night off of work to take part in a Ladies Weekend (no men allowed!).

While I was planning, shopping, and just plain reflecting upon the night to come, where kids would be hundreds of miles away, and husbands would be gathered together in quiet deference to their deserving wives (At least that's what I think went on, from the looks of all the empties, the Skoal containers and the tear-stained pizza boxes), I failed to notice any comical bar happenings at work.

In my defense, I WAS only at work one night. So maybe on Saturday night, while I was dancing inside a disco-ball party van, 'X-Ray Woman' came back to Brady's to beg for 'Too-Good-for-Her, Nice-Guy' to take her back.

And perhaps, while I was drinking with the rest of the Saturday-afternoon shopping-widowers (as one of only 2 shopping-widows. If I couldn't find the perfect clothes and accessories on the mainland, I CERTAINLY wasn't going to find a bargain outfit here!), Karen stormed in after calling in "sick" 3 nights in a row, demanding her old job back as "Busiest Night Bartender."

And just as we near-forty-year-olds were "fighting off" twenty-something dirty dancing wannabees on the sticky, slippery floor at the Hen Gable, metrosexual Jason, Brady's owner, may have actually admitted that he was in fact gay like we had all suspected, and that he had just left his controlling, domineering wife, Victoria for another man.

While we were in our own Members-Only Club-like atmosphere, these things could very well have been happening simultaneously back in Gossip-riddled Suburbia. But we left it all behind to shake our booties, even though booty actually meant "boot cast" from an Achilles injury (and it may have well been souped up with wheels and sparkles because every guy wanted to dance with it), and "fight off" raunchy dancers, which actually resulted in pool table injuries.

I guess it's all the same to a female bartender though: you are either catering to inebriated patrons who throw you lots of low-lighting-induced, alcohol-inspired compliments ("Wow - YOU have THREE kids?? You don't look old enough to have ONE!") or you ARE one of the patrons, and are still on the receiving end of these "compliments". Female patrons tend to have flashing neon letters on their foreheads that appear only to the men (or sometimes in the ladies' room at the Hen Gable to an adventurous and bold woman or two), that say "Please talk to me right now, and assume that I want to talk to you, and not my girlfriends whom I came here with, since you are a Man, and I, I AM A WOMAN." Look carefully - those letters materialize from almost thin-air at around 11:00 at most bars whether or not you are bartender or patron -- the common denominator, being, though, that you are female. Makes us wish for our own Eire-type Club, that is for sure.

I particularly like it when females turn the tables on these assuming males, and actually watched with great satisfaction when one woman at Brady's walked right up to her male friend that had been guilty of extreme neon-letter-reading last time they were together, tapped him squarely on the shoulder and said, "Mike, I am here now. You can start hitting on me," before poor Mike even got the chance to give her the 'hi-I-want-to-hug-you-but-only-as-a-cover-for-groping-you" hug.

The look on Mike's face - and on that of his friends' - was of sheer shock and disbelief. He then looked at me, his friendly bartender, mouth agape, as if to say, " Was it really that noticeable last time?" "Yes, Mike, it REALLY was" I reply in Bartender ESP as I refill his Man-opolitan, and hope that he applies this exchange to all his recent dealings with females, including his friendly female bartender, and is maybe a little bit regretful of his Modus operandi. You can tell he is wondering now, if it was too much to ask the bartender, as she was bending down to retrieve the Cointreau from the back of the bar, how many lunges she does to do to look like that. Or at least we females can all HOPE.

So the female-only club idea may have some merit. Where else would we be able to strut our stuff - booty-cast and all - without the hip-tap, or the "come on, just one dance" eyes, or even the "let's go get a drink" nod??? There just may be a place for good ole Dot here in Scituate. But then... where would blogwriters get such good fodder? And without it, my edge over Blog X would be lost, and I would have to create distribution lists to recruit off-topic readers too... Nah, co-ed bars have their place in good ole Scituate. Most of them, anyway.