Friday, February 5, 2010

seven minutes early

Last night I arrived at dinner about seven minutes early, waiting for a (notoriously late) friend of mine, and was greeted by the perky hostess with that question that is always asked and which always stops me in my tracks: "Do you want to take a seat at the bar?"

I NEVER KNOW WHAT TO DO.

My options, all really great:

1) I mosey on over to the bar and fumble to a seat amidst the women in black dresses and Clive Owen lookalikes. I decide to order a drink so as to seem less strange than I feel (and appear, I'm sure), clunky messenger bag slung over my shoulder, forehead scrunched up like I am working on an 11th grade geometry test. Somehow I always end up ordering the least suave drink ever ("Do you guys have mojitos?!") and pretty much down it as I continually crane my neck to see if my friend has arrived while simultaneously fooling around with my Blackberry, as if to make sure all these people around me (who I am sure just cannot stop chattering with their friends all about me) know that I've just got so much going on.

2) I sit at the bar and don't order a drink. This tends to be my default decision, but it is fraught with a WHOLE 'NOTHER set of complications. I mean, continually and furtively whipping your neck around while constantly checking your Blackberry like you're Lauren Conrad are ALMOST permissible behaviors when you have a drink in front of you, but when you are sitting there like some sort of paranoid New York City Monster without a drink, it's just creepy.

3) Sometimes I decide to avoid the bar all together and wait in the front. In these cases, especially because all restaurants in New York are like the size of a West Village studio bathroom, I feel especially GIANT in my 6'2" frame. I end up squeezed like on top of the hostess' perch in between two other people waiting for tables, forced to move up into a corner to avoid incoming patrons, accidentally whipping my bag into some large man's arm. The hostess keeps eying me distrustfully, making me wonder if she somehow thinks I am lying about the entire existence of my "friend running late." Should I try to look happier? Should I go sit at the bar?! Or, like I did last night, should I mutter "I think I'm just gonna wait outside" and walk out into the 15 degree air, simply because it's all becoming too much to bear?

4 comments:

leonor said...

this is the story of my life. I am always early, 90% of my friends are always late.

I usually go with option 2, which is just as awkward and awful as you described.

Donnell said...

As you've witnessed, option 1. But then I wonder if my friend thinks I have a drinking problem. And I ALWAYS convince myself everyone thinks I'm lying about meeting someone and/or being stood up. Even though, as a hostess, I never even thought about the people who were waiting unless they were constantly pestering me.

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