Okay, it's the end of the week.  The last shift, a busy jazz night with the Satin Doll Trio.

J gives me a ride back, and I pass out on couch, leaving a small plastic container of curry chicken salad and a salmon tartar out in my backpack overnight.  I wake with a thick-headed feeling, puffy eyes.  Shave off scraggly beard of a week's growth in the shower.  Noon time.  Haven't been able to get through to mom yet, after several tries.  Red streak up her left arm, she mentioned, from the bee sting.

Okay, hard to be optimistic, is how it starts.  I don't get the chance to write much during the workweek.  Actually trying to be productive, do something with my life, my time, do something healthy, get out there
.

 

Tuesday, I am feeling bad.  I almost stay in, in bed, feeling horrible about snapping at the late night guys who came in after the door was locked, the waiter who works part time letting them slip in up the stairs, we'll only stay for one round, and then of course there's too much friendship not to appreciate their visit, until I just want to get home, want to start my new clean life with Becky's good yoga influence.

Yes, I started yelling, accused my friend of disrespecting my book...  couldn't find my cell phone, felt trapped, after I fed them some bread, an onion tart.  I was so almost out of there, had wiped off the bar, done the report...  But the political animal in me...  wanted to hear about their lives...  one from New York State, the Lake George area, or was it further north, his father a Fifth Grade teacher at the local public school, Ticonderoga...


That was Monday night, when I snapped, passive aggressively.  Tuesday was getting out to Arlington, meet Becky for Ginger Turmeric tea, ride with her down to her work place, see the glorious gym equipment and law students working out intensely, the quiet yoga class led by her...

Mom has called several times, Monday night, and into Tuesday morning, sounding like she was giving up on things, "bereft," as she put it.  Feeling horrible on all fronts, but with the afterglow of yoga and a quick bite with Becky, then getting to work, the Circulator free bus to Georgetown full of people, slowly dragging its way through the gritty city, past gleaming Washington Circle all remade and unrecognizable from when I first came to town, all the buildings, then down K, under the Whitehurst, and up Wisconsin, the shabbiness of Georgetown, closed business signs, and finally to some safety at the top of the old hill finally, where it is quiet, peaceful, predictable, actually, when taken in with the rest of the city...  The good job of wine and a good restaurant.  Get through the night, wine tasting, all the familiar people, get home safe, don't be foolish, get to bed.

And then, Wednesday, my usual biweekly session with therapist over the iPhone screen.

And what made me snap, start yelling...

Plenty to talk about with Dr. Heather.  I give her a quick wrap up of the last two weeks.

Assertiveness.  You're passive too long, unrealistically, and then it swings the other way, you snap.  Perhaps that reaction is a step, a beginning, an attempt to find the middle ground of a coherent reaction, an adult balance.

 The stress of sort of being gaslighted, mom saying she doesn't have anything to eat, after her lady was there to get her groceries and wine, "no, I don't want to hear about Barb..."  Very stressful.  Highly.  Crazy making.

It's a good session.  I'm getting out there, trying to curtail the bad habits and fight my way toward the good, the light of yoga, of my own practice under the trees, and being friends with Becky, her dance, her music, her good health and habits, as if far away from the restaurant world, and yet somehow it's still possible to schedule things and do things with her, a bite to eat, karaoke...  and she doesn't see anything wrong with my profession, as it's interesting, meet lots of people.


Wednesday night, I see him coming up the stairs, talking on his cell, wearing a linen shirt, by himself tonight, for the time being.  The same guy, of team late night Khaos, the same guy I snapped at.  I feel intimidated by him, cowed somehow.  I feel bad.  I know I should apologize.  As it turns out, he barely remembers the incident.  Remind me who I was here with, he asks me, diplomatically exploring the situation.  I'm too busy to do more than politely acknowledge him, take care of his immediate need, a green tea, "a splash" of wine.

Heather has told me I have upset his normal expectations.  We should at least address the thing, the issue, whatever it is.

We have a decent conversation dancing around the issue, perhaps, and I've been running around anyway, all night, moving at speed.   There's still plenty of things to do, the other server to dodge when he comes up with bottles to restock.  King of Khaos engages a couple in conversation, where you from, are you married, etc.   Have you ever cheated on your husband, oh, you're both from Ohio...  J comes up from downstairs, and they were busy too.  So the conversation bobs along in its own way, and I'm not all that much a part of it, the closer, still having to close.


Yes, there is stuff here.  And a decreasing amount of time to, as they say, "figure it out."

KoK, an Alpha type, proud of the number of pushups he can do, and not a shy person around attractive women, though not married, he knows, he's got it immediately figured out, how to drop in, implanting himself into the last night bar, at the time when I've just about had it, and need a little wine, say, on the rocks, just to cool down and have a little sugar.

Heather has told me, there are techniques, so I don't fall into my own excesses, so that I can remember my life and my problems and what I might want to be doing, like grocery shopping, or thinking of the next day.  There is the broken record.  Repeat, without variation, "if the door is locked, the bar is closed.  If the door is locked, the bar is closed."

And as far as my personal life, I could succumb to pessimism, easily enough, it's too late.  If I had worked on such things and love and personal happiness of relationships outside of work, I might have stood a chance...  That's what you get for being a professional.  Or were you otherwise distracted, depressed, caught in a living situation that was marked by a feeling of constant retreat, isolation, as if to recover physically from sort of burning the candle at both ends as comes with any job you have these days...


Memories of Monday night late, I put, by his request, Townes Van Zandt, Snowin' on Raton, on over the bar's sound system.  The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, came up earlier, gratifying.  There's a tall man with a grey beard talking about cycling up from lower New York State all the way up to Montreal, in 1976.  I take a swig of Minervois.  The Kermit Lynch 2015 young vines high-yield Gamay is tasting a bit rough, even on the rocks. The boys have a bit of Bordeaux.  I'll ring it in tomorrow with the cash they give me tomorrow.  It's getting later.

It's when I bring up my old book, with the Central New York State setting, with my new friend from this group, that KoK pipes up, joking, "oh, I've seen my ex-wife carrying around Ted's book (and other related bar people," and it strikes my ears as a bit of a dis. In the same way he talks about his mythical blog I keep up on, over the mythical bar life, part of it...  "I'd never rat you out," implying that he would prefer I leave him out of it, for professional reasons, sure, I get that.  Making me the bad guy, me the dirty one, me the one lacking morals...  when I'm the poor bastard who waits on people out of the good Jesus in his heart...

But yes, it's a pattern, my lacking as far as being able to be assertive.  Goes back a long ways.  Wasn't helped by my dealings with the Upper West Side Princess Virgo.  Wasn't helped by lots of situations.  And then you put a little tendency toward enjoying a glass of wine or a beer, a long-standing habit, that's not going to help.

No one wants to be written about.  To write about someone, anyway, is passive aggression, I suppose.