Too much time on my hands means trouble for my cat
January 24, 2010
Dearest Stephanie,
Here is my cat, dressed as royalty:
I declared her Queen of the House, yet she looks so sad. Why do you suppose that is?
love,
Stella
Lead On Me
January 23, 2010
Photo by geishaboy500
Dear Stella,
You know those horror movies where the evil dude is killed off, only to reappear again and again and again? How does he do it? The severed hand regenerated; the loped head resituated—or not. Hand or no hand, head or no head, here he comes again!
Apparently I have some kind freaky regenerating sense of hope. No matter the severity of the execution, no matter how bloody or stumpy a past experience has made me, optimism picks itself off the darkened road, a carcass come to life.
It’s the only way I can explain why, after all I know about this city, I felt optimistic about the stack of job leads I got from Bartending School. “Wow!” I said, as the Career Counselor handed me a thick stack of index cards. I really thought—bless my little optimistic heart—that these were what she said they were: job leads.
Perhaps my mistake was in the language. She did not say these were job prospects, or job possibilities, or even jobs. Each card was merely a job lead, a route, a clue, the beginning of a story.
And certainly they were that. The pile of rubble that was the bar I was sent to can certainly be seen as a clue to something. Was there a fire? Was it an accident or arson? Surely if I picked through the rubble I might find the beginning of an intriguing story, not my story, but a story nonetheless.
And alas, the next bar, Nutters, was the beginning of someone else’s story as well. I knew this immediately from the saturated smoke smell, the black ashtrays lining the bar, the toothless patrons haggling over Yuenglings, their crumbled dollar bills falling out of pockets onto the floor. And still I persevered, either out of curiosity or stunned paralysis. “Hi,” I said as I handed the bartender my resume, “I got your name from the Bartending School and wanted to drop off my resume.”
The woman—shoulder length black hair, mysterious Pittsburgh age (20 or 50?), heavy black eyeliner, a hint of blue—studied my resume, then looked up at me. “Honey,” she said in a whisper, leaning over the bar toward me, “You seem like a nice girl.” She paused, looked toward the customers in the corner bending to pick up the stray dollar bills, “They’re real rough here. And if you’re new? It’ll be like sharks to blood. They’ll run right over you, and they won’t stop. You’ll have security on Friday nights but the owners won’t pay for it any other night, so you’ll be on your own.”
Eyes wide, I found myself nodding, leaning in to hear. “This one girl started last week, and she’s bartended for years—she was in tears.” She emphasized the words and raised her eyebrows. “She’s coming back tonight though to give it another try, with me this time. I’ve been here for years, so they know they can’t run all over me—I mean, they still try, but…”
Though this was certainly not my story, I stayed for almost twenty minutes hearing the sad story of Tara’s career as a bartender. She thought she was going to die at first behind that bar, but she really needed the money. She was never a bitch in real life, but she had to become one to survive. And then, as many stories do in Pittsburgh when I’m not with Dawn and people assume we’re on the same page, this story turned to race.
“I’m not racist or anything,” (a familiar lead in Pittsburgh, I’ve discovered) “but there are times I’m the only white person here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a ‘stupid white bitch.’”
Dawn had been circling the block, my job lead chauffeur and cheerleader, and when I got back in the car, I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. “Well…?” she asked hopefully. I shook my head, more of a shaking off than anything else, and we drove to the next “lead.”
For the next two hours, I followed someone else’s story, clues to lives I would not be living. I would not become the bartender at the empty “upscale” restaurant with the long wooden bar. “What are the clientele like?” I asked. “Few and far between,” the owner replied. And then she added in that optimistic tone I know all too well, “But we’re gonna stick it out. We know they’ll come; we’ll wait for them.”
The next bar was boarded up, and two more were closed even though the card specifically said to stop by between 2:00 and 4:00 Monday through Friday. One restaurant didn’t even have a bar, but the manager was more than happy to consider me as a waitress who “would make my own drinks.”
I wasn’t going to stop in Noho, whose online pictures seemed cold, sparse, eerie, despite the comforting namesake. But when I walked in, I was pleasantly surprised. No smoke, no rubble, no missing teeth. A long wrap around bar and an abundance of windows. And—get this—a happy bartender! Young, fresh, relaxed. “I love it here,” she told me. She wore all black—no dorky uniform—said she had never bartended before she started working there and was able to train herself. “It’s a good time for you to start,” she said, as she took my resume and the three page application. “If you get the job, you’ll be able to get your bearings before we get really busy with baseball season.”
What’s that? The severed head making it’s way back up the spine? Humpty Dumpty piecing herself back together again? The regenerative spirit finding herself yet another beating heart?
love,
Stephanie
Your daily absurdity
January 22, 2010
My dearest Stephanie,
This morning, I saw a police officer in a Dunkin’ Donuts. Isn’t that just the bestest?! I mean, it’s a cliche punch line come to life! What more can I ask as a harbinger that this will be a beautiful day?
I almost ran him over as I swerved into the parking lot at an accelerated pace. But my car has good breaks, so I turned a lemon into lemonade by stopping and letting him pass. I smiled at him innocently like I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he bought it. He smiled and did a “thank you” wave. He was cute, too–blonde with a chiseled face.
I ended up behind him on line, and I was really disappointed that he didn’t purchase any actual donuts. Boo! He did, however, buy five coffees of varying types and sizes, I guess to bring back to his peeps at the station. Why do you suppose police officers prefer Dunkin’ Donuts’ coffee over Starbucks’? There’s a Startucks about a quarter mile up the road. The paramedics always go to Starbucks.
To be honest, it kind of worried me that he didn’t buy any donuts. It seemed wrong, out of symmetry. My beautiful moment was slightly tarnished. It got me thinking about how earlier this morning another police officer almost caught me talking on my cell phone. I was driving down my street, and he was coming the other way. At first, I didn’t realize it was a police car because in my town they don’t have the big rack of lights on the hood. Pretty sneaky! But I saw the two-tone thing and dropped my phone into my lap. When our cars passed each other, the officer looked at me like he knew I’d just been Breaking the Law. But maybe that was just me.
Though I’ve not found myself on The Wrong Side of the Law, I have to admit: police officers make me nervous. Is it that they’re packing heat, do you think?
love,
Stella.
Shit my mother says
January 20, 2010
Dearest Stephanie,
I wish that I’d kept a meticulous diary of all the crazy shit my mother says. I feel like it would provide a lot of insight into my deepest fears and flaws. Yesterday, I got a voicemail from her. In it, she said this:
Hello Stella. This is your mother. I wanted to tell you that your father and I are still alive. I thought you might be interested to know that.
Ha! Good one, right? So I called her back. I brief excerpt of our conversation:
My mother (answering the phone): Hello?
Me: Hi mom, it’s me.
My mother: Who’s “me”?
Me: It’s Stella, mom.
My mother: Who’s “Stella”? Do I know a Stella? I don’t recognize your voice. I haven’t heard it in so long.
Me: I talked to you a few days ago, mom.
I won’t bore you with the rest of the details, so tedious. But it got me thinking: how serious are people when they say that every woman eventually turns into her mother? I’m scared.
love,
Stella
In which I rant about God’s Most Foulest Creation, Part I
January 19, 2010
Dear Stephanie,
Scholars, philosophers, and theologians have no doubt debated extensively about the identity of God’s most-foulest creation. Is it the mosquito? The rat? The cockroach? To what extent do you act versus react against the foulest creation? How many of God’s foulest creations can you fit on the head of a pin?
I have conducted extensive research, and I am here to conclusively reveal the identity of God’s Most-Foulest Creation: It is a particular genus of
The Financially Successful Middle-Aged Divorced/Never-Been-Married Man.
See now, right off the bat, I feel like a jerk because I realize that I’m providing more evidence for my theory that I’ve become an evil, hateful, spiteful bitch.
But oh how these motherfuckers vex me.
I may have mentioned that my manager’s deepest desire was for me to populate my bar with these men, night after night. “Stella, this town is full of lonely divorced men who would come every night just to see you; you just gotta flirt with them more, not let them see your boundaries so much.” He said this encouragingly as if it were some sort of prize or gift he knew I coveted rather than a flesh and blood enactment of my personal version of hell (I am convinced that when I die and go to hell, I will preside over a bar through which these men endlessly cycle, like Sisyphus and his rock).
“Interesting business plan,” I replied. “Are you going to provide the security detail when they stalk me?”
“They’re not going to stalk you,” he laughed dismissively.
“You know I live in this town, right?” I said. “I see these fuckers everywhere—Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, CVS, other restaurants.” [I would like you to know, Stephanie, that I’m sitting in Starbucks as I’m writing this, and I looked up just now and saw one of them staring at me. I looked away and pretended I didn’t recognize him; that’s how I do.] “You know they ask me out, right?”
“They know it’s a game,” he continued ignoring the “asking me out part.” Then he paused contemplatively. “Well, except for maybe [name of potential stalker], oh and maybe [another name]. … I’ll let you know who to watch out for. What are you worried about? I’ll walk you to your car at the end of the night.”
Well that’s a relief. The male manager who I outweigh will escort me to my car. Phew. And to think I was worried.
The cynical reader might at this point be wondering, Aren’t you being a little self-absorbed here, Stella? Perhaps your manager was right to call you a sissy. To this I will concede that perhaps I have an unusually low threshold for sexual innuendo/harassment.
When told by a male customer who has just been delivered a martini without spilling a drop, “I’ll bet you exhibit that kind of control when making love,” it’s entirely possible that a female bartender (who is not me) will not then immediately be griped by the desire to vomit in this customer’s face. Nor will she then fantasize about reaching back for the oversized Belvedere bottle and using it to bash his skull in repeatedly for the purposes of murdering him.
These other female bartenders instead have some perfect, witty comment at the ready that humbles the male customer just enough but not too much. I however just stand there staring at him with a horrified and disgusted scowl on my face until it’s so awkward that he feels compelled to apologize for “offending” me. I don’t do this with intent; it’s simply a reflection of how I feel. and also a consequence of being struck dumb by the sheer grotesqueness of his discourse. Later, when Boo asks me, “What did that guy say to you?!” I will be too embarrassed to repeat it; in fact, it will take perhaps weeks before I can verbalize it.
From my manager’s perspective, this probably isn’t so good for business because the customer possibly feels bad and possibly also embarrassed. Or (as is also possible), the customers thinks, Well, how odd. This bartender doesn’t seem to enjoy my sexual commentary. It does not seem likely that she will fuck me. Humph, she’s no fun at all. And this customer is not likely to return to my bar.
My manager understandably doesn’t favor this outcome, but from my perspective, it’s perfect! That’s exactly what I hope will happen! I want the customer to apologize because in fact he has offended me. I do not want to make a witty comment that will make him feel it’s okay to speak to me in this way or in any way to mitigate the revulsion I feel for him. I want him to be uncomfortable and embarrassed and never, ever to darken my bar again unless he can behave “appropriately,” by which I mean not implicating me in any sort of sexual scenario. Ah but alas, it’s too late for that.
Admittedly, I do not own or run a successful restaurant (then again, neither does my manager), so I readily concede that my business plan may not be sound, but I’ll share it with you anyway. I had this kooky idea that maybe you could provide fresh, delicious food at a reasonable price and provide quality customer service (sexual favors not included). Call me crazy, but I had a bizarre notion that this would cause patrons to want to return because they had a positive experience dining in your establishment and being served by dignified professionals. Perhaps they would pass the word on to their friends and acquaintances, thus generating “buzz” about your establishment. I’ve heard talk about something called “advertising” too, like in newspapers and on the radio and stuff and also via something called “direct mail.” Though, again, I admit that I am not a “business professional.”
Nevertheless, I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, these would provide a better outcome than pimping out the bartender.
Just a thought.
Love,
Stella
Eternal questions
January 14, 2010
Dear Stephanie,
I have some
Eternal and Unanswerable Questions
as well as
Questions That May Have Answers
But I’m Not Sure I Want To Know Them
They include:
1. I spent a good bit of cash getting my car’s interior detailed. They cleaned everything out, including the space between the seats and the middle console. Yet. Shit has filled that space, all kinds of shit I don’t even recall bringing into the car. Why does that keep happening?
2a. Each time I use them, I neatly coil my iPod headphones before putting them away. Yet. Each time I take them out to use them again, they are a tangled mess. How do they keep getting this way?
2b. In this vein, what’s the deal with Christmas lights?
2c. And socks disappearing in the dryer?
But here’s the one I’m deeply fretting about:
3. How did I go from being a sweet, compassionate, loving person to a sort of hateful, evil bitch ?
eg:
I served a mature couple (somewhere in their 40s or 50s) a few weeks ago. The man had come in first, and I made small talk with him while pouring his wine. Then a woman (girlfriend? wife?) joined him at the bar.
I greeted her politely, and she looked at me then looked away in disgust. For the brief moment that she glanced in my direction, she wore a sour expression on her face. It was something like a frown and a smirk combined into one, as if either a) I’d made some grossly inappropriate comment—perhaps a derisive comment about her frizzy hair?—or b) I was a glob of mustard that had fallen out of her sandwich onto her brand new, expensive silk shirt—though it’s not the mustard’s fault she’s a clumsy fool. Did the mustard leap out of the sandwich onto her shirt? I think not.
She wouldn’t look me in the eye, placed her order without any standard discourse or gestures practiced by polite people the world over (I’m thinking of simple things, like addressing the person taking your order and using “please” and “thank you”) all the while looking annoyed. And she repeatedly made comments under her breath, all the while wearing the frown/smirk. I have a feeling she wasn’t complementing my quality customer service.
Can you believe that nasty shit?
What a freak. I mean, she’s a grown-ass woman. Seriously.
I ceased addressing her. When I asked, “How are you doing? How is everything?” I appreciated the fact that “you” is both singular and plural because I addressed the question to the man only, as if she wasn’t sitting next to him glaring at me. I did that thing where I put my elbows on the bar and lean towards him, smiling deeply into his eyes. And excuse me, but he ate that shit up.
I worried that I’d become totally evil, but then I also felt strongly that she needed to learn a lesson about consequences.
When she went to the bathroom, the man and I engaged in conversation. She strode back to the bar at a brisk pace. I feared momentarily that she was going to leap across the bar and tear my hair out.
Bring it, bitch. I’m heavily armed back here, when you think about it. I’ve got a full, oversized bottle of Belvedere (it’s a virtual billy club), knives, matches. I am all set.
But she just gave me a dirty look and accusingly asked him, “What was she telling you?”
FREAK!
I want to make it clear that I was not offended by her treatment of me. I did not take her behavior personally (as if it reflected on me specifically) or feel wronged. I understood that it was about her issues. I simply felt embarrassed to be in the presence of such an idiot. I experienced a brief but ephemeral moment of insight into man’s claim that women are psycho.
But no, usually, men think women are psycho because women do not read men’s minds and also because men compartmentalize more successfully than women do.
I started to feel badly about it all, though. What if he was a compulsive cheater, and she was justifiably paranoid, and I was feeding into all that freaky shit?
Well, it’s kind of not my problem.
Um, right?
Love,
Stella
Dear Stephanie,
Have you ever longed for something so profound that it defies expression? You try your best to put it into words, but it cannot be contained in language. I (and you and Virginia Woolf and French theorists) have referred to language as an unstable container because words are slippery things whose connotative meanings users cannot control. What I conjure when I hear “boundary” is perhaps entirely different from what you conjure.
Thus is created the “failure to communicate.”
While I’ve pledged to be more outspoken, to speak my mind, I’m continually reminded how almost impossible it feels to speak my heart.
As if these two are entirely distinct entities. Of course they are not. I suppose it might be useful to say that I use “my mind” to designate my conscious realm, the one in which I appear to know what I want, who I am, where to find meaning. Unlike my “heart,” which is my way of referring to all that is intuitive but not quite expressable.
This is the beauty of a friend like you: somehow, you seem to find words that give my heart expression when I cannot. Though even this does not necessarily make me capable of speaking those words myself at all times and in all circumstance. That would be unrealistic!
Still, it’s funny and beautiful how your mere existence inspires me to speak the unspeakable. All the fears that hold me back—of being judged or of making a mistake that might cause someone hurt or of speaking the truth that causes someone hurt—seem to melt away into vapor, colorless, smell-less and without potency. I feel safe with you not because I believe you would never hurt me but because I believe you would never intend to hurt me, and so I can concentrate on understanding you. In some magical way, this expands me.
All this is to say: Your presence loosens my tongue because it opens my heart. I cannot explain the “why” of it, but how I treasure it!
The best way I can think of explaining it is by telling you about Nice Guy Manager. Even Kim, who rarely likes most people because she actually has rather good instincts about people, has said, “He’s a really nice guy.” Hence the nickname. Some of my favorite moments at Asian-Fusion, on which I will think back fondly when I’m gone, have been my exchanges with him because somehow in his presence, I can speak all the silliest, truest parts of me with ease (because in truth I believe deeply that the silly is sublime).
He’ll come to the bar and ask, “Can I see the remote?” And I’ll pick it up and go Vanna White on that shit. Then he’ll nod solemnly and say, “Thank you.” After a number of these exchanges, he now asks, “Can I see the remote…in my hand?”
Or I’ll ask him at the end of the night, “What’s my declare amount?” and one night, the answer was, “69. Hehe. Get what I’m saying?” And I cocked my head to the side and said, “No. I. Do. Not. Understand. What. You. Are. Trying. To. Say.”
Then there’s the time he went to CVS, which is located a short walk from the restaurant. As he was heading for the door, I called out, “Will you get me a Kit Kat?” and he replied, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” “That’s so mean!” I said to his retreating back.
When he walked through the door, I said, “I can’t believe you didn’t get me a Kit Kat.” But then he pulled a large pack of mini Kit Kats out of his pocket, and I said, “Yay! You’re so nice!”
But one of my favorites is from a recent night, when he was doing an inventory of every bottle of wine on the premises.
“You know what would be a really nice break from all that inventory?” I asked.
“What?”
“Taking that big-ass tray of dishes into the kitchen for me,” I replied, nodding my head in the direction of the overflowing dish tray under one of the sinks.
He laughed then stole a look or two at the dish tray, and actually, he’s such a kind-hearted person that he probably would have taken the dishes into the kitchen for me. Which is exactly why I would never allow it.
So I said, “No, I’m kidding. I can take it in myself.” Then I paused dramatically before adding, “Even though it took me four trips to the stockroom today because nobody stocked over the last two days…Four trips! Up and down all those stairs!”
Then he smile in a way that can best be described thusly: “!” And he moved in the general direction of the tray, but I actually stood in front of it with my arms outstretched to block his access.
“Stella!” he exclaimed.
“No, really! I’m just kidding. I don’t want you to take the tray into the kitchen. I just want you to feel a little bit bad for not taking the tray into the kitchen. No, I’m kidding about that too.” All of which was entirely true. And it almost always feels good to be able to speak the truth in an uncomplicated way. It’s the catharsis of confession.
I’ve been learning that, though there is only one Stephanie and your impact on me is utterly unique unto you, if I pay attention, I encounter people who have this magical capacity to open my heart, and these people can pop up almost anywhere. (Though by way of disclaimer, I’d like to add that I understand that “safe” is not quantifiable and that I have sometimes mistakenly felt safe when in actuality I was not.)
When I think of people I have loved who are no longer in my life but who are still in this world, I feel a rush of love all over again. I have a tendency to mourn what I have lost when I would do better to celebrate a beautiful moment I participated in creating. I have a bad habit of being sad when something ends when I would do better to remember that every ending is also a beginning.
I suppose I’m thinking of endings and beginnings because my time at Asian-Fusion is coming to an end, and I don’t want to feel sad about leaving because I know that it’s time. It’s a gut instinct, which I too often ignore in favor of cold, detached rationality. I want to listen to my gut more.
Have you ever played Boggle? If so, then you know that about one or two minutes into a round, you will likely find yourself staring at the block of letters convinced that you have found all the words there are to find. But then you shift the position of the block, maybe by moving it one degree to the right, and—surprise, surprise!—you discover a bevy of words you didn’t see before. All it took was changing your vantage point. I understand that it’s time to change my vantage point.
Somewhere beyond the boundaries of my material world, people I have loved go about their daily business, and even if they do not think of me, they carry pieces of me with them.
It’s a comforting thought!
Love,
Stella
The thermostat in the bar and other absurd bartending episodes
January 4, 2010
Dear Stephanie,
The thermostat at Asian-Fusion Two is located directly above the service bar (see below).
All summer long (and still now in winter), I bore witness to this comical farce: a manager would come to the bar and say, “is it so freezing in here or what?!” (or alternately, “is it boiling in here or what?!”), and proceed to fiddle with the thermostat. I would nod agreeably recognizing that my input was not required. The question was rhetorical.
A short while later, a server would come to the bar and ask (again rhetorically), “Why is it so fucking hot/cold in here?!” At this, I would shrug agreeably and watch the server fiddle with the thermostat.
“Don’t let anyone touch this!” the server would say emphatically, and I would nod companionably.
Repeat two or three times a night, and you get the drift.
***
Saturday night, I arrived for my shift at Asian-Fusion. I went to the bar and took a moment to contemplate the work ahead of me—the numerous trips down to the stock room and ice machine, the setting up of what I estimate to be a 30-foot bar, etc—when one of the managers appeared at the bar and asked, “How would you feel about going to Asian-Fusion Two tonight?”
Here’s where I take a moment to say that I’d been hoping all day that something magical would happen at work that night…the good kind of magic. And here I was being asked to leave the bar I enjoy less to go bartend at the bar I enjoy most. For a brief moment, I feared he was fucking with me. After a very brief pause, I said (not at all cautiously), “Yes! Yes! I’d love to! I haven’t done anything here yet! Can I go now?!”
“Sure,” he said, almost quizzically.
I floated through the restaurant gathering my things, punching out, and bidding a cheerful adieu to the sservers, the sushi chefs, the take-out managers.
‘What? You’re not working here tonight?” They each asked me this.
“Nope. No. I’m going to Asian-Fusion Two.” I could not contain my glee at this unexpected gift.
“You seem to so happy. It’s kind of hurting my feelings,” said the exotically beautiful young server.
“You going to miss me?” I asked the sushi chef with the dimples, just for fun.
“Haha, yes, yes,” he nodded with a laugh.
I also bid adieu to the giant dildo with the facet, as one of my customers has referred to the hot sake container.
On this night, someone else would have to place the dildo on the floor then fill it by delicately tipping the giant cardboard box of sake over.
Asian-Fusion Two was, as usual, quiet, and by 10:30, I’d finished my side-work, the restaurant and bar were both empty, and Boo and I were counting down to closing time. So I leaned back on the garbage can and stretched my legs out in front of me (see garbage can below).
I pulled out my iTouch, and started to play a game of Bejeweled 2, a maddeningly addictive game I’d recently downloaded. I may have also been thinking about making myself a Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic. Or I may have been sipping one (purely in my imagination, you understand).
Needless to say, wherever she was in the universe, our dear owner Vampira sensed all of this intuitively, so at one point when I shifted on the garbage can, I saw a flash of red parka—but because I hadn’t seen her all night, I thought it was a customer and continued playing the game. I don’t even know how I finally figured out that it was her, but I tried to maintain my composure and not leap off the garbage can. Actually, I had to contain myself from laughing because, really?! Laughter is the only possible, sane response to this situation! I did however get off the can and clean the wells. Again.
***
“Did the fur coat tip you well?” I asked Boo. A couple had come in for dinner, and the woman was wearing a ferocious fur, which Boo and I both disapprove of. It was very Silence of the Lambs minus the head/hood.
The animal carcass did not, in fact, tip particularly well.
With the temperatures dipping well below freezing, the furs are out in full force. Not one has hit the 20% mark, to my knowledge.
***
Last night, Boo and I were outside smoking. It was 9:30, and the restaurant had been empty since 8:30. Nevertheless, he was the only server, and I was the only bartender. And we were both outside smoking in swirling winds and sub-freezing temperatures.
“I havn’t seen Vampira all night,” he noted.
“What are you doing?” I gasped. “Why would you even say that?! You know what’s going to happen now!”
Sure enough, no more than 30 seconds later, who should pull in her giant SUV but our illustrious owner herself.
“There she is,” he commented.
“You see what you did?!”
“Well I just wanted to prove a point,” he said, shivering. “She sensed that we were both outside not doing our work, and she came. I’m not going to go in, though. I don’t want to scurry in just because she showed up.”
So he stayed outside for another minute despite the freezing temperatures and the fact that he wasn’t wearing a coat.
***
The bar at Asian-Fusion Two is what I call vertical.
To reach the top shelf bourbons, I have to get up on the cooler pictured above. I do this by putting my knee on the cooler, pushing myself up, and grabbing the bourbon in one swift and to my thinking elegant move.
When my friends come to the bar, they order bourbon just to see me execute this move.
They are not bourbon drinkers, though I have developed a taste for Maker’s Mark Manhattans. Sweet, up, and with a cherry.
love,
Stella
