Working for a living (reprint from May 3, 2007)

The guy next to me at the bar snapped his fingers at the bartender. She was holding five full Corona bottles splayed between her fingers like a bunch of flowers. She looked at him, made a snotty face, put down the bottles and put her finger up in the universal hand sign for "I'll be just a minute". And he complained to his friend, "What a bitch?"

I felt some solidarity with her, like, Hey buddy, I've been her a lot longer than I've been you.
Could you do her job? You in your fancy suit with your perfect, almost femme hair and your imperfect face that becomes beautiful to the girls you date because you are single and have a good job. But really she (the bartender) is better than you because she works for a living. And no, I'm not exactly like her so I can't say for sure what's it's like to be her, because she is beautiful with shiny hair and a perfect C-cup (because she would have to be to be a bartender in Manhattan, now wouldn't she?) but still she works for a living, and I get that because I did, too, for a long time. And, even when you're beautiful with shiny hair and boobs, you're still kind of invisible when you serve people for a living. She will go home with swollen feet and no medical insurance and you will probably go home to a wife in Scarsdale.

I've been thinking about quitting my "career" and becoming a bartender, so that's where those thoughts came from.