Date with Jen G

DATE: Saturday, July 30
PLACES: Bradford's Pub, Harrah's Mardi Gras High-Limit Bar
POISONS OF CHOICE: Bud Light draft, double tequila sunrises
CAST OF CHARACTERS: You and Jen G


NARRATIVE NOTE: The author has decided to experiment with second-person narrative, a technique he is shamelessly ripping off from vastly talented memoirist Mary Karr, author of The Liar's Club and Cherry. Who he hopes will never hear about it and decide to sue and who, he rather suspects, probably stole the second-person thing from one of her own influences.

When you have a night cleared to hang out one-on-one with a friend you don't see on a completely regular basis, on occasions where you've actually made plans that involve nothing but drinking and conversation, you take people to Bradford's in Westport Plaza.

Westport is a St. Louis County business-office/bar-and-restaurant complex that peaked in the late '80s, from what you've been told. Its social drinking attractions are mainly of the middle-class preppie and professional fortysomething varieties. A few bars and clubs are worth visiting and about a dozen aren't.

You live within almost immediate walking distance of Westport - which you think would mean something to a guy without a car who likes to party on a too-regular basis - but you hardly ever go anymore. Your favorite bar closed down more than a year ago, and you've gotten pretty burned out on karaoke, the main source of Westport's barroom entertainment.

But you like Bradford's, an unassuming, almost flimsy-seeming hole in the wall that offers an inviting jukebox, horseshoe-shaped bar and a Desert Storm-era, fishing-themed pinball machine. And it has a patio.

Westport is set up half like an indoor mall and half like an outdoor one, and patio space is monopolized mainly by two of the larger restaurant/bars, Trainwreck and Patrick's. Both of which issue forth loud fucking band and DJ music and charge a cover on the weekends even if you're sitting outside.

Bradford's is relatively tucked away, but it has patio seating for about thirty at a prime peoplewatching locale in the Westport ouevre. Directly in front of the bar - facing outward from the building - and to the left are the entrance doors to the inner part of Westport.

In front of Bradford's and to the right, is a sidewalk leading to the massive fairly new nightclub Margarita Mama's. People in club clothes constantly scurry back and forth on that sidewalk, passing Bradford's and occasionally offering random snatches of loud, drunk dialogue. On a weekend night, you're guaranteed the passing of a bachelorette party every fifteen to twenty minutes.

Facing away from the bar on the patio, you can stare straight ahead at the tinted windows of the Funny Bone comedy club - it offers a fairly frazzling view of bartenders and barbacks running back and forth to make drinks and keep the bar stocked.

One floor above the Funny Bone, there's an Irish restaurant and bar called O'Toole's. When O'Toole's has karaoke and you're sitting on the Bradford's patio, through the last tinted window on the left, you have a perfectly clear view of the singers holding microphones and squinting through alcohol-glazed eyes at the lyrics on the monitor. The varying body language is fascinating, and there's ample opportunity for comic commentary on hair and clothing styles.

--

That's what your friend Jen G and you are doing right now - peoplewatching on the Bradford's patio and sipping Bud Light drafts. Your original glass has just been confiscated by the cocktail server, who informs you that, if you're outside enjoying the weather and the bad clothing, you're only allowed to drink from bar-issued white plastic Budweiser cups. Pouring the beer from the glass to the cup has already made it taste flat as hell.

As was the case with most of your current friends, you met Jen G through work. There were two other Jens working with you at the time, which necessitated the first-initial-of-last-name suffix. The "Jen" and the "G" in her identity among you and your other friends are inseparable. It sounds weird to just call her Jen - her essence almost seems naked without the G.

You made a date with Jen G - actually, she came up to you at Hilltop on Thursday night and asked you on the date. This is purely a social date, mind you, to briefly rekindle what was at one time a fruitful friendship of the work-and-party-together variety.

Jen G used to close at work with you three to four times a week, and she was the type that kept late hours, liked to drink and had an unhappy home life. Therefore she was out often and seemed to end up sitting next to you at the casino bar every Friday night, while her boyfriend of six years was off gambling with your friend Emma.

You would sit at the main Mardi Gras bar at Harrah's and bounce back and forth low-pitched comments about the people walking down what you two referred to as the "blue carpet." It was a main-vein traffic area for drinkers and gamblers of all ages and abilities.

You and Jen G would keep a running tally of elderly people with oxygen tanks and people in wheelchairs, and you'd bet on which side would win the attendance tally. Twice it was the oxygen tanks; four times, the wheelchair contingent won. One time you both saw an old lady being pushed in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank strapped to its back - you and Jen G didn't know quite how to score that one.

Jen G, when you were hanging out with there all the time, reminded you of yourself in that she had turned 21 and graduated college and just kind of spinning her wheels with a menial day job and too much aimless late-night social activity. In that she loved to sleep the afternoon away and was dreading the Real World. In that she graduated with a media-related degree - a bachelor's in graphic design - and feared she wasn't doing enough with her talent.

She didn't remind you of yourself in that she was saddled to her relationship with the aforementioned boyfriend of six years. A boyfriend who, by the way, also worked with you and hung out in your social circle. Who was on your Monday night men's league bowling team.

You had a thing for Jen G for awhile - practically every guy you knew agreed she was fucking hot in a kind of unassuming way, petite but sporting a meaty, perfectly shaped butt and possessing relatively high levels of humility and low levels of self-esteem.

With the obvious looks and intelligence and all-around sweet, genuine personality, plus the self-esteem problems you could identify with, it was easy to develop a crush.

Of course, you never would have done anything about it. Girls like Jen G need to be rescued, strongly supported and given time to grow into their confidence and identities, and you can't imagine yourself as a rescuer. You're too much in need of rescue your damn self.

And, though you've always been closer to Jen G than the six-year boyfriend, you'd never make a move on her. The boyfriend's your friend too, and besides - it's part of the United States Bowling Congress rules and regulations that you never make a move on a teamate's girl. Even if his average is only 152, and especially if your average is only 129.

Plus you were pretty sure Jen G thought little of you physically - the two of you shared too many jokes and pointed-peoplewatching observations at the expense of chunksters for you to consider a possibility Jen would care to jump your 270-pound frame.

So you were friends, you hung out in groups and occasionally solo, and it was a good time. You even designed a pair of 11" by 17" party posters together for events at your favorite bar, Old Hilltop.

Then, in rapid-fire succession, Jen G landed a Real Job (legitimate graphic design work offered by a former internship boss), moved in with our friend Alison, broke up with the six-year boyfriend and took up with a coworker. Who had been courting her and encouraging her and being pretty damn persistent about things.

--

Jen G - as she has been telling you on the Bradford's Pub patio - is finally happy with her life. She's forced herself to be functional in public at 8:30 in the morning and, to her own surprise, now has the stamina to last the entire day on five hours of sleep with no nap. Jen's new living situation is working out, and the new guy... well, she can't stop talking about him.

She tells you a lot of personal details, a lot, about her new relationship with the coworker and the emotional misery she endured toward the end of her time with my bowling teammate. There's just a host of emotionally bare remarks and moments.

The rules of journalism in a situation like this presuppose that the person you're talking to already knows you're in the business of disseminating biographical information and are likely to regurgitate any personal details. So unless the subject of the interview/conversation tells you a certain statement is off the record, you're allowed and in fact obligated to divulge the fully frank, honest facts of your talk. The people have the right to know, after all.

Jen G knows you gossip, and she knows you've started posting moments from your life on the Internet again for Whoever to read. She tells you all heaps of personal shit anyway, and only once does she tell you to keep a certain detail to yourself.

Actually, Jen issues a kind of a blanket gag order regarding one set of details, stuff she wants to keep under wraps for the sake of the six-year boyfriend. She's still trying to do the post-breakup Let's Be Friends thing, and he's still painfully in love with her, by his own admission.

And you will honor her request, pass up a lot of juicy shit in the retelling of this particular evening. You're not interested in burning bridges with the damaging and scandalous a forum like this, or in casual conversation with friends.

Suffice it to say, the girl's at a fucking happy place in her life, and you guys will talk about it at great length over the course of the evening. And you'll keep it to yourself. And maybe shamelessly congratulate yourself for doing something a good friend is supposed to do anyway.

--

As the night unfolds, you get ample opportunity to catch Jen G up on some of the more entertaining social drinking moments and idle workplace gossip and spout your usual half-buzzed, half-baked lofty theories about human nature and idealism about the simple pleasures of life. And you have plenty of comically goofy moments, too.

You guys bump into Jen G's cousin Nick inside the bar. Cousin Nick (EMMA I CHANGED IT) is there with a couple friends, leaning against the front left hexagonal curve of the bar and bullshitting over a beer. He has the kind of practically model-gorgeous face that makes you wonder why he's not exploiting his jackpot of good looks by picking up a sluttily dressed, early 20s hottie at one of the louder nearby drinking spots.

If God had given you that face, and Mom wouldn't have allowed you unrestricted access to the cookie jar, you'd be off fishing for one-night-only tail right now. Not talking to your friends about the Sammy Davis Jr. episode of "All in the Family" in a bar this low-key and outdated, like Nick is currently doing. Or maybe you would, just by virtue of the fact that you'd be guaranteed to be the best-looking dude in the bar. And because, pretty face or no, you'd always be a dork at heart.

When you get back out to the patio, Jen G tells you Cousin Nick does very fucking well with the ladies and in fact possesses the deserved confidence to hang back and let his favorite pick approach him in a bar. Which apparently happens quite a bit when you look like Cousin Nick.

JEN G: Yeah, did you see that perfect dimple on his chin?
ME: I did. I never got the whole chin-dimple thing. The chin dimple seems like some odd evolutionary eyesore that probably used to have a function several species back but is completely obsolete now.
JEN G: It always reminds me of John Travolta.
ME: And see, John Travolta is an evolutionary eyesore, so the whole thing fits.
JEN G (laughs)
ME: I mean, have you seen Travolta lately?
JEN G: Nick wasn't born with the chin dimple, anyway, was my point. He got it sledding with me and another cousin when we were all like 11.
ME: What, he was going headfirst on the sled?"
JEN G: Yeah, down this huge steep hill.
ME: I never had the balls to go headfirst.
JEN G: I bet Nick never did again either. He somehow got thrown and landed face down on a rock. Lost three teeth.
ME: God, did they reset them?
JEN G: Yeah, we saved the teeth, the chin dimple was born and the rest is the stuff of legend.

When you go back to the bar to retrieve the next round, you notice Cousin Nick sitting next to a fucking hot but down-to-earth-looking blonde around his own age. She's playing the touch-screen interactive game/trivia box, and he's leaning across to push the screen, helping her out. Mouth practically to her ear. They're both laughing.

Judging from the overall body language, you'd say Nick's already well on his way to taking her home. And you're proven right about 20 minutes later, when you see Cousin Nick emerge from the bar with the blonde and head off to the parking lot together.

You and Jen G exchange a few lines about how you wish you were part of the physically flawless elite. How you both know it's a superficial, relatively meaningless thing to long for but, god dammit, it would sure be cool to have.

--

When last call comes at Bradford's, there's no question what the next step will be. No preplanned social date with Jen G would be complete without a couple hours at the casino bar spent downing drinks, having conversation that ranges from profound to absurd, and watching the parade of humanity roll by, oxygen tanks and wheelchairs and all.

Even on a post-bar Saturday night you two are able to land a plum position in the inside corner of the Mardi Gras High Limit bar. Behind you people are betting $25 to $500 a hand on blackjack and poker. Around you, no real crowd or overpowering noise. Just a lot to look at and talk about.

Jen G has always indulged and even topped your darkest urges to gawk at and comment about the extreme of human personal appearance. For every mullet you spot on a woman, Jen can point out three people over the 450-pound mark. For all the decrepit senior citizens you notice who are out way past his or her bedtimes - like 24 years past their bedtimes - Jen sniffs out an amputee or a thoroughly unconvincing toupee.

On your way in, you both spotted a truly miserable sight - a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties, slouched in a wheelchair, looking to be about three-and-a-half feet from top to bottom. She had a kind of shrunken head, prematurely withered, with mouth open and top and lower jaws eschew.

You just feel bad for this woman, but you're also tragically amused, and you feel a kind of inexplicable contempt you're loathe to acknowledge. Jen's half drunk, trying her hardest not to laugh out loud at the human nubbin, especially when you remark that at birth the woman in question "probably looked like a peeled grape."

--

It's a great date, all in all, and the perfect combination of social familiarity with each other and everything seeming fresh because you haven't hung out in so long.

You both say you'll do it again sometime. You keep making jokes about how Jen G has been the perfect gentleman tonight - she drove you, bought you both a pretzel with cheese, even lit your Black and Mild at the casino bar. You promise her that, if she plays her cards right, she may even get a close-mouthed kiss at the door.

You end up hugging her. The rules of the United States Bowling Congress and good taste, after all, prevent you from going any further. Jen is somebody else's girl, and she's a fun fucking friend to hang out with. Even if she has joined the nine-to-five world.