So tonight this guy hated us, me and Rich. Rich is my new friend, made via cute stoner guy who is gone, but not forgotten (though almost.) Rich and I decided recently that out of bad things (like my relationship with cute stoner guy) sometimes comes good, and now we are friends. Then we decided to go out tonight, and we were hated by this guy.

This guy was a big blond sort of thing, married, with kids, kind of bitter, but not so much so that you would know it, unless he was drunk. Tonight he was drunk. His name was Perry.

Rich and I were sitting at Nancy Whiskey in Tribeca, a bar I visit rarely, but am fond of nonetheless. The bartender, Barry, a lovely Irish man in his 40s, is kind to me when I'm there, greets me with a kiss, chats me up, buys me most of my drinks, that sort of thing. There's a nice vibe there. I feel comfortable.

We sat alone at a table in the corner, engrossed deeply in a highly stimulating conversation. I got up to go the bathroom. When I returned, Perry and his friends had taken over the table, and Rich sat glumly on the end.

I was friendly immediately, but it was too late. Perry had decided we weren't his type. Perry and Rich had had some sort of nasty exchange while I was gone (the details of which were never fully revealed to me), and the scent of ill-directed testosterone still lingered.

Still, I carried on, unaware, with friendly chit-chat. The woman sitting next to me was also named Jami, though hers was spelled Jamye (I am not making this up), which she immediately blamed on her parents. Seated next to her was a guy, the name of whom I can't recall except to say that it was something like Garrison, but not.

You get the picture. We were surrounded by people with stupid names or stupid spellings of their names.

And still, I was friendly.

Finally Jayme said to Perry, "Why don't you tell us what's on your mind?"

He looked miserable, and said, "I don't like him," and then pointed to Rich. And then he looked at me and said, "And I don't like her either."

"Why?" I said.

"Because I would never be friends with you. I can just tell. I know that I don't like you."

Now I try not to editorialize too much in stories like these, but I can't resist. Could you imagine? Could you imagine being someone like that? To be the kind of person who, after five minutes of sitting next to two completely harmless people at a table in a bar (and let me remind you, they sat down and took over our table, and not the reverse), would decide and then state that you disliked them on impact?

He lives in the suburbs and works in marketing.

Rich wanted to kick his ass, but controlled himself. Instead we both stayed put, and decided we would make this guy fall in love with us. Neither of us communicated this fact to each other. We just did it.

We carried on in our conversation, but Perry couldn't stay away, and neither could his friends. They kept asking us questions, me mostly. I answered them straight up, and slowly, Perry began to realize that he was a complete asshole. (Whether or not he'll remember it tomorrow is a different story.)

Twenty minutes later Perry was telling us about his son, his career, and his history with the bar. (He apparently hated us because he had been coming there for years and viewed us as invading hipsters. The fact that he hadn't been there in months - because he lives in the suburbs with his sweet little family and never goes out anymore or clearly has any fun at all - and that we could have been regulars and he would never have known it was completely lost on him.) At the end of our discussion, he even decided that Rich and I were destined to be a couple, even though we repeatedly told him we were just friends.

I would hate to be married to him. I will stay single forever, I promise you, just so I will not have to marry a controlling piece of shit like that.

Later we sat at the bar and Barry the bartender told us that in all of his dealings with him in the past, he had decided Perry was an arrogant piece of shit, and if he never came back to the bar, it would be too soon. And then he fed us free beer until we couldn't drink anymore.

archives | w-w home | mail