On the subway ride home from work, I was thinking about one of the characters in the new book. I am just getting to know her. I was sketching out a few things. For some reason, I started thinking about my days as a waitress for a few years post college, and the lessons I learned from that.
In particular I remember this bar I worked at in DC where, at the end of the night, a couple of bikers would always come in and drink whiskey with bottle-of-Bud-backs. During my whole time there I swore I would never drink a whiskey in my life. I was 23 and so impressionable. It seemed to me that the minute you sat on that bar stool with a whiskey you would never leave. The idea of being a regular somewhere, I would just never want to be that. I guess I thought being a regular at a bar meant you were a drunk. And some of those guys, they were drunks.
No disrespect to anyone. Seriously, no disrepect at all. And also: it’s not like I didn’t drink myself. It was just newer for me then, and I wasn’t set in my ways. I wasn’t set on that bar stool.
Also being a regular at a bar meant that everyone knew your bullshit, and probably I was terrified of anyone knowing things about me that I barely understood myself. But beyond that I never wanted to be that old person sitting at the end of the bar who didn’t have anywhere else to go at the end of the night, except for home. And home, for whatever reason, wasn’t enough, or maybe was just too much.
