All’s fair in love, right?
Shakespeare might have said it best when he created the title “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Perhaps the Bard was referring to the lateness inherent after the summer solstice, when it stays light outside long enough for some bars to close even with the sun still up. (There are some who say, “Never do in the light of day what you might do in the dead of night.”)
“Two glasses of champagne,” said the solo man walking up to and standing at the empty bar after entering from the dining room.
Sure, the overhead lights had dimmed — they’re on a timer — but that didn’t change the fact that the ambient light was as bright as a supermarket.
“Two champagnes?” I asked.
“Yeah, the most expensive ones,” said the man, slicking back some of the remaining thin hair on his head — hair that was heavily gelled and teased.
“Who’s the other one for?” I asked, not because I really cared who it was for, but because I cared how old they were.
In the bar business, there are some immediate red flags. One is a person walking in from the dining room and ordering drinks when they’re sitting at a table. Why not order from your server? Unless it’s because that server has already refused you service for some reason.
“My guest,” said the man, either ignoring the gist of the question or avoiding it altogether.
“Why aren’t you ordering through your server?” I asked.
He looked at me for a second while he processed that request. And then with the eagerness of someone carrying a secret but just dying to tell someone else, he told me.
“I’m on two dates,” he said. “One in the dining room, and one on the patio.”
Now I have seen a lot of things in my day. There was that older gentleman who stacked up internet dates at 25-minute intervals all afternoon, like a mass casting call. Then there was the woman who I saw three nights in a row with three different men, and all three times she was wearing the exact same outfit.
Trending on the internet is the Coldplay jumbotron event, where the CEO of a company and his head of HR were caught embracing inappropriately at a team-building event. But those of us in the bar business see things like that every week.
“What are you doing?” asked a former boss of mine, once, of a friend of his in the bar.
“That’s not your wife,” he continued.
“So what,” his friend replied. “What about bar confidentiality?”
“First, there’s no such thing,” my boss said. “And two, I know your wife. We get together as friends. How am I supposed to look her in the eye?”
“You could lie,” the man said.
“Get out of here,” my boss said.
I didn’t know this newest gelled-hair guy. It’s not really a bartender’s mandate to police behavior — only respective to the laws — and whether or not “bar confidentiality” exists or not, there’s something called discretion. I don’t know why many people do what they do, but as long as it’s not illegal or personal, we bartenders tend not to get involved.
All’s fair in love and war, right? The Bard himself never actually said that; his contemporary John Lyly did in his 1578 novel entitled “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit.”
The man spent the next hour and a half of daylight juggling the two women in the two different rooms. How could it be that neither woman noticed that their “date” was gone for at least half of their date? “I have to take this call” and “I have to use the restroom” are only going to work for just so long.
At one point, both women got up and passed each other on their ways to the restroom. The man certainly had a type, as the two women noticed themselves, actually stopping to compliment each other on their respective outfits.
Eventually, all things must come to an end, and the man paid both substantial tabs before walking both women to their cars separately.
Before he left, he had to tell me that he “got away with it.”
Twenty minutes later, both women reappeared in the restaurant, both with different dates. And they didn’t get walked to their cars at the end of those dates. They both left with them.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• Prepping for a date might sometimes include another date.
• Lyly’s full quote is actually “Impiety may lawfully be committed in love, which is lawless.” The war part was added sometime in the 19th century.
• Apparently what happens in Foxborough doesn’t always stay in Foxborough. And that’s just as true for Vegas, Mexico, and yes, even Marin.
• Those seeking to take advantage are often the first to be taken advantage of.