You know what I don't miss? Bars. Dive bars, swanky bars, clubby bars, dirty bars, smelly bars, bright bars, darks bars. Basically all things bars. I don't miss sidling up to the counter, trying to ingratiate myself to some shitty bartender in a leather corset to pay some exorbitant amount of money for something that's going to ruin the next 36 hours of my existence. I don't miss bar bathrooms, or bar talk, or bar hook ups or bar meet ups or bar outfits. I don't miss spending half the night trying to get some guy to come talk to you, only to spend the remainder of the night either wishing he'd shut up or puking in a house plant. And I really, really don't miss the inevitable sightings of your former best friend/roommate/ex-boyfriend-girlfriend-both-at-the-same-time. Moreover, I reeeeeally don't miss running into professors and teaching assistants while out at bars, because that's just uncomfortable for everyone.
So there you have it. I was never one for bars, even in the heyday of my bar hopping youth. I mean, I remember having fun at both bars we hosted parties at on the nights before our wedding (except the one night I drank enough Amaretto to forget how to use my brain or operate the English language, which was klassy). But there's something about bars, in New York especially, that just makes me say out loud everytime: thank f-ing god. I'm just so glad that I don't have to get all dressed up, sit in dark smokey room listening to some guy drone on about his recent third attempt to complete his dissertation in Advancements in Basket Weaving in the dismal hopes of not meeting a serial killer or a tattoo artist (not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm mean, I totally dig LA Ink) or worse, a Finance Guy. Finance Guy is the friggen worst. Second only really to Girl Seeking Finance Guy (but thankfully I've never had any interest in dating her). I don't know, it all just seems so desperate--what with everyone trying to one up everyone else---my job that pays me this, my school where I studied this, my apartment that's located here, my clothes that I bought there, my house in the country my studio my warehouse my restaurant my venereal disease(s).
Gah.
I didn't really ever wonder about what "married life" would be like. I never drew a line between one particular day when I happened to get all dressed up in a big white dress and invited about 300 people to come, watch and get wasted and any other day of my life with Andy. But suddenly you have this overt and recognizable symbol that exists externally in the form of a wedding band (+/- engagement ring) and all a sudden its this great sigh of relief because no one (well, that's an overstatement but the numbers are pared down significantly) is going to come up to you and ask you if you feel like a dirty martini because "baby you sure look like one to me". And that's just really fantastic that's what that is. Because guys tend to look kind of terrified half the time they do things like that (assuming of course that they can open their eyelids) and the girls look like they've just had a root canal without anesthesia and really no one in the whole of the place looks like they're having any kind of fun whatsoever, but half of them will swap mucus membranes by the night's ending and well, that's all I need to say about that.
