Shot of Grey Goose, and You

Dear Stella,

Scene I

I am in my Big Blue Bartender uniform at Hotel Bar. I’m washing glass doors, noting how the business men who enter (I hold the door open for them, smile) don’t meet my eyes. I make them uncomfortable.

I don’t make the man sitting by himself in the corner uncomfortable though. “You’re doing a good job there,” he says.

“It’s not neuroscience,” I reply. “I’m sure you could do a good job too.”

He reminds me of the man in Wendy’s, my senior year of high school, who told me I would make someone a fine housewife someday when I cleaned the legs of the table at which he sat.

Do I make these men uncomfortable because they want to imagine that the windows clean themselves, or that they are just naturally, perpetually clean? Perhaps the thought of a real human being’s labor behind their good time is like seeing the poor or the dirty or the sick—visible reminders that outside this room (even worse, in it), all is not perfect. Not even a giant plate of cheesy nachos can guard against such a view.

Or do I make them uncomfortable because something about me just fits—a woman washing windows, or waiting on them, or carrying their food scraps. Maybe on some level they know they aren’t supposed to, but how can they not find a woman serving them to be a turn on, skin or no skin showing?

Scene II

I’m dragging heavy floor mats from the back patio at Cool Bar. They are a strain to lift and even more of a strain to drag. I’ve got a black stretch mini skirt on, and my off-the-shoulder shirt slides further down my arm with my attempts to maneuver the mats. One of the guys working on the back patio— a friend of the owners and my age—comes inside for water. He sits quietly at the end of the bar with his water as I lose myself in the manual labor. It’s the first thing I do when I arrive at the bar, and it transports me from anxious over-thinking head to heaving, sweating, muscular body.

I’m aware that he’s aware of me, though we don’t meet eyes or speak. He seems more respectful than uncomfortable. He asks nicely for his water, and when I hold the door open for him so he can bring water to others on the patio, it feels like we are playing out a satisfying gender role reversal.

This scene, unlike Scene I, feels good. Why? I’m showing more skin; I’m being watched as I work. So what’s different? Why did I feel degraded in the first scene and yet in the second, I embrace the eroticism of the female body working?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that at Cool Bar, I feel protected by the work the owners and employees do everyday, in small and big ways, to say “No” to customers’ expectations. This bar is not about selling “Niceness” nor about selling the illusion of being able to have just because you can pay for it.

When your ex-manager told you to not show your boundaries so clearly, he was, it seems to me, trying to sell customers the illusion of being able to have you off the menu as well as the drinks, seeing the female bartender as something one can have for the taking, for the right price (or any price). And even though Hotel Bar thought of itself as “upscale” (cue laugh track) and no one explicitly told me to hide my boundaries, their Customer-is-Always-Right approach created an attitude that we bartenders and servers exist solely to please. For the women, this means playing into cultural stereotypes and fetishes, especially when waitressing or washing windows—doing a “woman’s work.”

Customers at Cool Bar are trained immediately that we are not here to serve them. The owners don’t care if you come back or not. It’s simple: if you show respect you’ll get served and if you don’t, you won’t. Want that drink? Then put your finger down and stop tapping the menu maniacally on the bar.

At Cool Bar, we women bartenders don’t do women’s work. The men clean, take away dirty dishes, cut garnishes, and make sure we have everything we need to do our jobs. The men don’t have to worry about someone mistaking them for a French maid, so doing this work is less compromising for them. And neither do I, in this bar, which frees me up to be sexy. Because here, my sex appeal isn’t for sale. It’s something to behold and even desire, but in this space at least, it’s not on the menu.

It is not the refusal or absence of erotics that I’m after. I wouldn’t be working in a bar if I wanted to erase my body. But Cool Bar gives me the freedom and power to define and determine the erotics I participate in. To not the be pawn in someone else’s clichéd erotic drama. To shut down any situation I don’t like. Permission to say “No.”

I can’t think of anything more sexy.

love,
Stephanie