You go to the new bar on the Lower East Side with one of your best girlfriends on a rainy night. You want to see a rock show, forget that you might be a little blue (because of the weather, because of the holidays, because sometimes you just feel blue and there is nothing you can do about it), and have a few drinks. Within minutes you see the ex-boyfriend, the one you dated for a few months this spring and liked an awful lot until he faded away and then you were forced to hate him. He is there with what you presume is his new girlfriend. You are not happy about any of this.

He seems paler now, and smaller, and you wonder how you ever dated someone that tiny in the first place. "He's like, two feet tall," you say to your friend. "What was I thinking?" You have now grown to like men who tower over you, who make you feel small. You got sick of fighting it already, the way most smaller guys felt uncomfortable around you, which then made you feel uncomfortable.

It started a few years ago, when you had a crush on another guy, this one four inches shorter than you. You never noticed his height until he brought it up one day.

"You're not that short," you told him.

"Tall girls always say that," he said.

"I'm not that tall," you said. It was silent between you after that.

You will never date anyone shorter than you for the rest of your life you have decided. This guy standing in the bar in front of you tonight was the last of the shrimps. He called himself that first, not you, by the way. A shrimp. But once it was said out loud, you couldn't forget it. He was shiny and pink and soft and tiny, with dark, delicate membranes. He was slippery too. And then you popped him in your mouth, and he was gone.

You wave hello. You can't stop yourself. You know him, you liked him, you once made love to him frequently. How can you not say hello? You quickly glance at what you think is his girlfriend. You've seen pictures of her before on his website. You're pretty sure that's the one. She's two feet tall too. They look like they should be dating.

You hate this bar. Why did you go out again tonight? This bar really sucks.

He comes over and shakes your hand, and your friend's hand. You wish you were wearing the boots with three-inch heels instead of the boots with one-inch heels so you could tower over him even more than you already do. You wish you could drown him with your height.

You make lame conversation for exactly thirty seconds until your friend grabs you and says, "We should go." And you say, out loud, in front of the ex and anyone else who can hear you, "Thank you," because it is a desperate moment, and you don't know how to extricate yourself in any other way, and you really are grateful. Maybe you should have saved the thank you for later, maybe it sounded rude, but you are operating without any editorial process and there is nothing to be done about it.

You hide in the room where the band is playing for the rest of the night, and successfully avoid him. The two bands that play are really, really good. You bounce your head along with the music. Yea. You're pretty sure you'll never find true love in your life, so you better goddamn like the music. You are really into this music. You are tired of getting your heart broken. Can you believe how good these bands are? You wish they would play forever.

***

Later on your friend tells you that he's not as cute as he was when you were dating. It makes you feel better though you're not sure why.

"He's just a short skinny guy in a bar now," she says.

"He was cuter then, right?" you say.

"Much cuter," she says. "He's not hot anymore."

He's not, you agree. He was somehow healthier then. Maybe he was trying harder. Who knows?

Everything your friend says is so right. You love her so much you wish you could marry her.

***

You grab a cab home, and the door sticks when you try to open it, only opens a tiny bit, maybe the width of your finger. The cabbie rolls down the window and tells you it's broken, and to try the other door. You jam the door shut with your knee and walk around to the other side.

After you tell the cabbie where you live, he says, "You are a very smart woman."

"Why?" you say.

"Because you closed that door. You don't know how many people tried to open that door, then got in the other side, and left it open. Everyone. You're the first person to close it all night."

"That's stupid," you say.

"I just want to know: Why did you close it?" he says.

You think for a minute, try to remember. It was only sixty seconds ago that you closed the door but you can't remember what the instinct was. Finally you say, "Because it was open."

"You're smart," he says.

"Maybe everyone else was drunk," you say.

"Since five o'clock tonight?"

"Maybe they are stupid," you say.

"Well you're smart, I know that," he says.

You have no idea how to explain the way other people make decisions to the cabbie, because you don't know yourself. You wish everyone was as easily impressed as he was. You wish he was your judge and jury. You wonder if he is tall. You can never tell with a cabbie. They're always seated.

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