The Gift

So, on Friday, I had two pints of tasty, tasty Blue Moon, one flaming shot of...something, half a cheeseburger and fries, and a tequila shot. I didn't pay a dime for any of them. Nevertheless, I still got home with zero of the forty smackers I set out with.

Here's how it happened: on Friday, I went out with K and some friends of his, to a bar that at first blush seemed somewhat blah and Midtown-y. I wasn't looking forward to $6 and $7 pints. And even after my tasty edamame salad, I was getting hungry, because we got a late start. Anyway, K's friend greets us and absolutely refuses to let K pay for our first round of drinks. Or our second. He swears that he and the bartenders are buddies, that the bartender will take care of us. I thought he was straight lying; isn't that always a lie? I was sitting there tipsily thinking about money and status and generosity, and if and how this guy could afford to buy us all so many drinks.

Evidently, though, it's not always a lie: four rounds of drinks for six people, including two of flaming shots (I only partook of one), mysteriously came to $30 on K's friend's tab. Hmmm. Um. Okay. If you insist. We did have to pay for the burger we split, though: K paid cheerfully, because what's $14 for six drinks and a burger?

And his friend paid cheerfully for our cab ride down to the club we were headed to next, for the same reason. I was all ready to pay cheerfully for K and me to get in ($5/person), but he beat me to it. And then I didn't really feel like another drink would be necessary just yet, so I hung around talking and thinking about how cool it would be if I got home with both of those crisp twenties still in my wallet.

And then, whilst K and I were hanging around outside, canoodling a little and waiting for our mutual friend to show up, one of K's friends, who'd been joyously drunk-enthusiastic when we'd last seen her inside just a few moments before, came stumbling out of the club in tears. I guess she'd just hit her limit, hard, to bathetic effect. Right about then, the mutual friend showed up, took in the chaos, and very helpfully assisted me in manhandling the young lady in question into a taxi, shoving money into her hands (we each contributed a twenty--this girl lives in Flushing. It would be Queens, you know?)

So we went back into the club for awhile, and the newly arrived mutual friend bought herself, K, and me each a tequila shot for our troubles.

And then it was late and we were far from the subway and K had to wake up early the next morning to go snowboarding, so I treated him (mostly!) to a cab ride home.

(The drunk friend left her phone in the cab, by the way, and the cabdriver called K and me at 3 a.m., after I'd cut K's thumb open with our kitchen scissors whilst over-cavalierly snipping the club entry bracelet off him, offering to drive the phone up to our East Harlem apartment from Houston Street if we'd pay the fare. Hell no; not after I paid the first fare!--Besides, we were out of cash.)

And the moral of the story is: it's good to have the gift of befriending bartenders, and it's good to be nice to your friends, and it's good to go out and get smashed on flaming shots every now and again.