The restaurant is a swanky, New York City style joint that serves handmade pasta and affogatos.
Exposed bulbs hang from dramatically high ceilings. Walls are the color of wine. Hardwood floors are dark and slick beneath the muted click of high heels and loafers.
Two older women sit at the bar.
They’re in their mid-sixties, their hair in the soft transition from blonde to gray. They wear modest, fuzzy sweaters. No makeup. Minimal jewelry. One of them gestures to the bartender. Two dirty martinis, please.
I can tell the bartender (a Brazilian man with a five o'clock shadow) immediately takes a liking to them. A few seats away, waiting for a friend to arrive, I can’t help but study these women.
Are they best friends from high school? Are they awkward neighbors trying to get to know each other? Are they celebrating something? Grieving something?
It’s a game I like to play with myself sometimes. What draws people out of the comfort of their homes and into the chaos of the public (not to mention, at 8 pm on a Wednesday night)?
Around us, the restaurant is filling up fast. Background noise begins to rise like the tide: the clatter of forks and plates, high-pitched peals of laughter, crushed ice vigorously shaken in a cocktail shaker. Servers weave in and out of the crowd, carrying glasses of wine, baskets of focaccia, platters of pappardelle. Frank Sinatra floats from the speakers. What were the chances we’d be sharing love before the night was through? Something in your eyes was so inviting, something in your smile was so exciting.
My friend is late. I order another glass of wine.
Two young women appear at the bar.
They breeze in with contagious energy and a cloud of strong perfume, wearing dresses, fur coats, big gold earrings, bold lipstick, tendrils of hair curled around their face. I watch the older women watch them order tequila cocktails (I’m waiting for someone, okay? I’m not being creepy).
Oftentimes, I see older women look at younger women with disdain and distaste, judging their bodies and clothes and personalities. The inverse is also true. Younger women look at older women like they’re stuffy, irrelevant, out-of-date.
But as the young women slide into the seats next to the older women, the four of them strike up a conversation. Total strangers chatting like schoolgirls reuniting after summer. When they all have their drinks, they clink their glasses together, squeal with laughter, then dive back into conversation.
I imagine it may be like looking in a mirror.
Maybe the older women see themselves in these young strangers, back when they themselves were young and energetic and a bit ditzy. Remember when we were like that?
Maybe the younger women glimpse their future selves in these older strangers. Maybe they’ll become the type of women who still care about grabbing drinks on a Wednesday night and getting to know their bartender. I hope we’ll be like this when we’re older.
I’ve been spending a lot of time alone (and at home) recently – being surrounded by strangers and their stories gets me thinking.
About the infectious energy of public places. About the importance of human closeness. About how something as simple as a night out for dinner can act as an escape or an immersion, a remembering or a forgetting, and whether you’re an introvert or extrovert it’s kind of really important to immerse yourself in public places every now and then to remind yourself that you’re a part of something greater than yourself.
You don’t come to restaurants like this to grab a quick bite and jet back off to the safety of the couch. You come here because it’s mysterious and electric and buzzy and fun. You come here to experience, to indulge, to brush shoulders with strangers and immerse yourself in unfamiliar terrain; to have someone you’ve never met tell you, as he slides a toothpick through an olive and drops it into your martini, how he grew up in Rio and how his daughter is going to medical school.
There is something to leaving the comfort of my home. To “getting out.”
Surrounded by the stories of hundreds of strangers makes me pay more attention to my own. It reminds me of who I am. It reminds me that I can become anything I’d like. It reminds me that humans are impossibly fluid. We can make and remake and evolve and shift and change and become and through it all, we see bits and pieces of ourselves, old and new, reflected in the eyes of people we’ve never even met.
It feels oddly nice to sit here and quietly observe how I am a part of something greater than me, where I am not the main character but a simple, passing side story.
The door to the restaurant opens and a woman walks in. I walk away from the bar, hug my friend hello, and follow the server to our table. Behind me, someone quickly takes my seat.
Thanks for reading The G Word.
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See you next week,
G
I needed to read this part today: "It reminds me that I can become anything I’d like. It reminds me that humans are impossibly fluid. We can make and remake and evolve and shift and change and become and through it all, we see bits and pieces of ourselves, old and new, reflected in the eyes of people we’ve never even met."
Also, when you set this scene: "Around us, the restaurant is filling up fast. Background noise begins to rise like the tide: the clatter of forks and plates, high-pitched peals of laughter, crushed ice vigorously shaken in a cocktail shaker. Servers weave in and out of the crowd, carrying glasses of wine, baskets of focaccia, platters of pappardelle. Frank Sinatra floats from the speakers."
*Chef's kiss*
Lovely piece!
Beautiful, G. “Sonder” is the word that comes to mind when I read your piece. You evoke the feeling so eloquently