240 point deduction
note: this is one of the wierder of the experiences while being out here. it's definitely rated PG-13 and could easily be a part of a film that Mom (hi, Mom!) would have easily walked out on. please know that this is NOT my usual scene, and a type that i've avoided since. but i have also learned to always finish all of my beers.
* * *
i was having a terrible time in my apartment: serious roommate struggles, living in a super small room with squalor and general rioting outside my windows and i needed to get the hell out of there for a while. it was a monday night. who goes out on a monday night? i remembered that my friend, farrah, worked as a bartender at a dingy bar in the sunset, a foggy neighborhood with shoddy storefronts and a few neon lights now and then along the boulevards. it would be an hour and a half ride on two buses; a trip that would start at 9:45 or around then. i hadn't eaten a thing since lunch, and that meal was probably pretty measly, so i packed some food and went to the bus stop.
farrah is behind the bar, but noone else is inside the place. it was a huge space: about the square footage of an average-sized suburban house in texas or tennessee - with as much flavor. it was a "korean karaoke" bar: korean only, i could figure, because the bar owner was a 42 year-old petite, gorgeous lady from south / korea named jenny. the karoake machine played songs in english, but with hilarious, completely irrelevant images on the screen in the background. no music notes, no flashing colors (are these relevant, really?), but dolphins gliding through the breaking waves, alternating angles from the sky moving in and out and through buddhist temples and young girls holding hands and dancing. sometimes at the same time.
sometimes the petite dark-haired bar owner comes by to sit or stand with farrah behind the counter that i've decided to flop my crossed arms over. she never says a word to me. not a word. she directs all commentary to farrah, faces her head towards the hipster in pink and black and red. no eye contact. not a hint of interraction. i throw jokes out there, soooooometimes i get an obviously involuntary chuckle.
farrah's a gorgeous girl with wide white streaks pressed into her huge head of jet black hair. a nose ring, bright pink eyeshadow and an outfit made for a quintessential punk-rocker. black and red and safety pins, lacey undershirt and a wide pink belt around her waist. maybe two, three people float in and out of that enormous, echoing space throughout the night. a fourth person comes in, another friend of farrah's, one of the many that she had begged to come by that night to keep her company. the friend with a name that i was not supposed to forget, she had named herself with a san francisco name that noone is supposed to forget. she walks to the bathroom to do a line. i feel wildly uncomfortable, but try to play it real cool, just hoping and praying that she "knew" what she was doing.
her friend leaves, the 2-3 wandering souls wander out as well: it's farrah and jenny and me now. we sit there for another hour upon the previous two, but jenny refuses to talk to me. always talking to farrah. completely ignoring me and the six empty corona bottles resting in a perfectly nonlinear arrangement in front of me.
finally i say something to her about it. i turn towards her during a conversation break, i try to use the conversation tactics i gained while wandering through other places, trying trying, but in a super cool way, to pull from her why she won't say a thing to me. "i've sat here!" i say. "did i offend you?" i try. "what did i say? why are you ignoring me.... completely ignoring the hell out of me?!"
my question was irrelevant but i persist. flashbacks to working with kids with 'attitudes,' 'attitudes' that are probably warranted for them - and i know i have backing, that there is legitimacy in my claim. i'm not totally off.
jenny finally looks at me, straight in the eyes, jenny, this woman whose comments on the evening's events have been fairly hilarious and spot on, this woman who i had respect for without knowing anything about her - other than she moved here alone from a super far away place with absolutely nothing and was able to get to the point that she was doing something, that she owned a bar. forget the fact that nobody inside. it was a monday.
jenny finally looks at me. "you have not finished a single beer at my bar. i have granted you six beers, and you have finished none of them."
shock and awe sweep over my face. what in the world are you talking about, i think. i say it. calmly, though firmly. "i have finished all of them!" i stretch my arms over the bar counter, palms up. the stretching turns to pointing, palms up with fingers stretched at various times in different directions towards each empty bottle.
jenny grasps a bottle, slowly, and then dumps the dregs on the top of my head. slowly, the 1/2 inch of undrank beer from 3 hours ago soaks the top of my head. what doesn't stick to my hair hits my cheeks, the front of my shirt, my nose, drips from the edge of my glasses.
"you have not finished your beer."
* * *
she reveals to me that it is a korean custom. that if you don't finish your beer, and all of it, every drop, then it is taken as an insult to whomever provided you with your drink. i remember her shaking her bottle of her head quickly after each drink. she had be showing everyone that she had, in fact, finished every drop, every bit of that beer. she had done it so quickly though, far too quick to figure out what the awkward-looking arm-shake-over-the-head signified. i just thought she was awkward. or gangly.
* * *
i was having a terrible time in my apartment: serious roommate struggles, living in a super small room with squalor and general rioting outside my windows and i needed to get the hell out of there for a while. it was a monday night. who goes out on a monday night? i remembered that my friend, farrah, worked as a bartender at a dingy bar in the sunset, a foggy neighborhood with shoddy storefronts and a few neon lights now and then along the boulevards. it would be an hour and a half ride on two buses; a trip that would start at 9:45 or around then. i hadn't eaten a thing since lunch, and that meal was probably pretty measly, so i packed some food and went to the bus stop.
farrah is behind the bar, but noone else is inside the place. it was a huge space: about the square footage of an average-sized suburban house in texas or tennessee - with as much flavor. it was a "korean karaoke" bar: korean only, i could figure, because the bar owner was a 42 year-old petite, gorgeous lady from south / korea named jenny. the karoake machine played songs in english, but with hilarious, completely irrelevant images on the screen in the background. no music notes, no flashing colors (are these relevant, really?), but dolphins gliding through the breaking waves, alternating angles from the sky moving in and out and through buddhist temples and young girls holding hands and dancing. sometimes at the same time.
sometimes the petite dark-haired bar owner comes by to sit or stand with farrah behind the counter that i've decided to flop my crossed arms over. she never says a word to me. not a word. she directs all commentary to farrah, faces her head towards the hipster in pink and black and red. no eye contact. not a hint of interraction. i throw jokes out there, soooooometimes i get an obviously involuntary chuckle.
farrah's a gorgeous girl with wide white streaks pressed into her huge head of jet black hair. a nose ring, bright pink eyeshadow and an outfit made for a quintessential punk-rocker. black and red and safety pins, lacey undershirt and a wide pink belt around her waist. maybe two, three people float in and out of that enormous, echoing space throughout the night. a fourth person comes in, another friend of farrah's, one of the many that she had begged to come by that night to keep her company. the friend with a name that i was not supposed to forget, she had named herself with a san francisco name that noone is supposed to forget. she walks to the bathroom to do a line. i feel wildly uncomfortable, but try to play it real cool, just hoping and praying that she "knew" what she was doing.
her friend leaves, the 2-3 wandering souls wander out as well: it's farrah and jenny and me now. we sit there for another hour upon the previous two, but jenny refuses to talk to me. always talking to farrah. completely ignoring me and the six empty corona bottles resting in a perfectly nonlinear arrangement in front of me.
finally i say something to her about it. i turn towards her during a conversation break, i try to use the conversation tactics i gained while wandering through other places, trying trying, but in a super cool way, to pull from her why she won't say a thing to me. "i've sat here!" i say. "did i offend you?" i try. "what did i say? why are you ignoring me.... completely ignoring the hell out of me?!"
my question was irrelevant but i persist. flashbacks to working with kids with 'attitudes,' 'attitudes' that are probably warranted for them - and i know i have backing, that there is legitimacy in my claim. i'm not totally off.
jenny finally looks at me, straight in the eyes, jenny, this woman whose comments on the evening's events have been fairly hilarious and spot on, this woman who i had respect for without knowing anything about her - other than she moved here alone from a super far away place with absolutely nothing and was able to get to the point that she was doing something, that she owned a bar. forget the fact that nobody inside. it was a monday.
jenny finally looks at me. "you have not finished a single beer at my bar. i have granted you six beers, and you have finished none of them."
shock and awe sweep over my face. what in the world are you talking about, i think. i say it. calmly, though firmly. "i have finished all of them!" i stretch my arms over the bar counter, palms up. the stretching turns to pointing, palms up with fingers stretched at various times in different directions towards each empty bottle.
jenny grasps a bottle, slowly, and then dumps the dregs on the top of my head. slowly, the 1/2 inch of undrank beer from 3 hours ago soaks the top of my head. what doesn't stick to my hair hits my cheeks, the front of my shirt, my nose, drips from the edge of my glasses.
"you have not finished your beer."
* * *
she reveals to me that it is a korean custom. that if you don't finish your beer, and all of it, every drop, then it is taken as an insult to whomever provided you with your drink. i remember her shaking her bottle of her head quickly after each drink. she had be showing everyone that she had, in fact, finished every drop, every bit of that beer. she had done it so quickly though, far too quick to figure out what the awkward-looking arm-shake-over-the-head signified. i just thought she was awkward. or gangly.
posted by jasembera at
6:42 PM
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4 comments
