Players Playing

Life at HQ is slowly settling into the a routine that looks like the New Normal.  There will be no house guests again until Punk Patriot arrives in June.  He'll be in the city for Left Forum.  If he wins the DFA scholarship competition, he'll then go on to Netroots Nation.  He's been to Netroots Nation before and seems to find it educational and inspiring.

There's still time to vote for him if you're inclined to help a brother out by clicking on a link.

http://nn13.democracyforamerica.com/applicants/351

As it happens, my dear old friend Pineapple Head will be working at Left Forum, manning the table for MoRUS, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space.  It's a growing organization in the East Village that preserves and promotes grassroots urban space activism like housing and gardens.  It's all very exciting, I suppose - or at least I feel like I'm working on the Revolution without ever disturbing myself from my regular routine.   Other people are doing the hard work.  I'll surely attend Left Forum, however, because there's a possibility that I'll meet a man that I like there.

The British Banker may have confirmed that it's time for me to rethink my ideas about potential romantic partners, but beyond that, he was fully useless.  Although it always stretched the limits of the imagination to think that a banker could be any help to anybody, I had at least hoped that the bar he said he frequented would provide a suitable alternative to Cafe Luxembourg since they have a happy hour.  Cafe Luxembourg never discounts anything.  They develop a consistent, reliable group of faithful regulars by slipping us freebies - much more subtle.

I had been to 'Cesca, the place where the Banker goes, years ago for dinner with Buzz Kill, and again with that married guy who was trying to impress me (Stonerdate  08.04.09).  I'd been there another couple of times for drinks when I was computer dating.  'Cesca is nice, but over time, I'd come to associate it with married men and alcoholics and hadn't been there in ages.  Nevertheless, the idea that there could be eligible bachelors at a bar as geographically accessible as Cafe Luxembourg at half the price was so compelling that I decided to check out the happy hour.

It was easy enough to pop in there for a drink last week before Woody got here.  I was meeting Gigi downtown later that evening and had a little time to kill anyway.  For the record, I don't hang out in bars.  I hang out at bars in fancy restaurants.  Gigi likes bars at fancy hotels, too, but whenever we go to a fancy hotel bar, I think we look like hookers.  That may be okay for her because she's young, beautiful and lithe.  I'm old, pudgy and creaky.  Actually, I'm still an attractive red head, but I've got my own money, and can drink almost any man under the table and kick his ass.  In truth, the only man I've ever met who challenges me that way is The Man from San Antone.  We're on speaking terms again, but since he's nowhere in sight, he is largely irrelevant.

But back to the bar at 'Cesca.

I wasn't worried that I'd run into the Banker because I figured I could go to that bar 200 times and never see him.  This is a big city, after all.  There was another Brit there who was badly, if expensively, dressed and wearing a wedding ring.  He was talking to the bartender about going out drinking yet again with the person he was meeting and how all the drinking was wearing him out.  Since I was on my way to meet Gigi and didn't like the bar anyway - mainly because they had CNN on TVs at either end of the bar and that severely undermines the relaxation factor at a happy hour even if the sound is off - so I was in the middle of paying my tab when the British Banker himself joined the other Brit at the bar.

He didn't see me at first, but when we made eye contact, he was stunned and visibly shaken.  To me, that indicated he had never once considered that a woman he had been aggressively chatting up would turn up in his territory.  He may have also been afraid I was a stalker when I was simply doing a little reconnaissance.  I didn't stay to clarify.  I finished my wine, swooshed my periwinkle cashmere shawl around myself and left, retaining my impression of the place as a hang out for married men and alcoholics.  There seemed to be some regular folks from that neighborhood, too - but Cafe Luxembourg is infinitely superior unless, of course, you're in the mood for Italian.  'Cesca has really good Italian food and is conveniently situated near Lincoln Center.

If that banker had been half the player he thinks he is, he would have said something like, "What a pleasant surprise," even if he were suspicious about my motives and/or sanity.  He'd have bought me another drink while he assessed the situation.  That's what The Man would have done because he can back up his bullshit, no matter how deep it gets.  The good news is that I must meet whatever criteria 40-something year old men who think they are hot shit have established for determining which women to hit on in bars.  If I were as old and creaky as all that, he wouldn't have hit on me at all.

The other good news is that I was able to get along very nicely with Woody Konopak for the whole five days and seven nights he was here.  My mom and I got along very nicely, and we spent three weeks together - and that included four days in a car as well as a week in my little apartment.  When you add three months at Gigi's place last summer, and another three months living with my buddy the tapper during the renovation project - it looks like I really could live with somebody again.  For the longest time during and after my divorce, I thought I never, ever wanted to live with anyone again.

I'm still not so sure I'd ever want to have an old man in my house for any length of time, and I'm pretty sure most old men would say the same thing about old women.  The point is that I'm not ready for a rocking chair just yet.  The experience with the banker suggests I'm looking for a Player who has had enough playing - not because I've been so impressed by Players but because I'm apparently a bit of a Player myself.