Accidental Ambivalence

Seen and Heard: Big City Bar

As you're all aware by now, I spent last weekend with Bradshaw in Big City. We sat outside at one of the many bars that is within a five-minute walk of her apartment, and while this exchange wasn't exactly acquired because I was eavesdropping - because it wasn't a quiet conversation and everyone heard - it was amusing enough to qualify for a Seen and Heard post.

A couple walks out of the bar, somewhere in their forties I would guess. The woman, dressed in something that I might wear to a bar but my mother - who is forty - wouldn't have been caught dead in and a pair of wedges I might have stolen off her feet, stepped outside and almost immediately fell down. Yes, fell down. Flat on her ass. I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing, quite a show of my self-control since I was a bit intoxicated myself. The gentleman with her was carrying a bar glass, sipping what was obviously the last of many drinks. He looked at the woman, then kept walking. She pulled herself off the ground, probably flashing anyone who was looking in the process, then stumbled behind him, weaving very obviously on the crowded sidewalk. A waiter comes up behind them, telling the gentleman that he cannot take the glass with him down the street. The gentleman, belligerently drunk, turns, gives the waiter a dirty look, knocks back the rest of the drink, and slams the now-empty glass onto the nearest metal table. Which just happened to be occupied by a couple who hadn't seemed to see the rest of the exchange, because they were obviously startled.

The gentleman grabbed his very drunk companion by the wrist, seemed to realize that she wasn't going to be able to keep up, and then let go, crossing the street angrily while she lurched and weaved and stumbled a good ten feet behind him.

The waiter picked up the empty glass, apologized to the couple seated at the table, and looked at our table where the seven of us had been watching the exchange in disbelieving amusement. He shook his head, smiled, and shrugged. "Drunk asses."

I kind of wish he had been our waiter.

*Yes, literally.

Labels: alcohol, eavesdropping

posted by nicalyse @ 1:13 PM