Jeff Burkhart: Some ideas should just stay ideas
He looked uncomfortable from the moment that he sat down, as evidenced by the fact that he got up immediately and moved, and then he moved again.
Ask anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant, and they will tell you that too many choices is a far bigger problem than too few. If you only have one sauvignon blanc, guess what? There aren’t any necessary questions; the answer becomes binary. It’s either yes or no. But add in a few more choices, and it’s a five-minute conversation followed by as many tastes as there are types of wine.
Once he found his preferred spot to sit, it was apparent that he was waiting for someone. My first guess was a date, if his freshly gelled hair, pristine golf shirt, breath mint and cologne were any indication.
“I’ll have a soda water,” he said, looking around uncomfortably.
I was now guessing that not only was it a date, but a first date, because first dates are about first impressions. And nobody likes to arrive and find their date already drinking. If you don’t know this by now, then you’ve probably had a lot of first dates and probably far fewer second ones.
He made small talk with me in the way that every bartender knows will end immediately when their friends arrive.
“So, how long have you — oh, hey, Alisa, so great to see you!” he said, turning away from me and standing to embrace his date.
Then he shook hands with her other date.
The word “awkward” wouldn’t do the situation justice. And it just goes to prove how wrong one can be about any observation.
“This is my friend Mike,” said Alisa to the man she came in with. “And this is, uh, my, uh, other friend, John.”
A most unconvincing handshake followed. Even though both men appeared to be in their 40s, their mannerisms were that of two errant adolescent schoolboys being forced to apologize to each other.
John was the mirror image of Mike: same age, same height and even the same golf shirt. It was like two sides of the same coin.
Alisa did her best to manage. But introducing your previous male “friend” to your new boyfriend is going to be uncomfortable — for you and certainly for them.
When newly dating, not everybody is exactly honest, especially when it comes to past relationships. You don’t really know this new person, so it’s not as if you’re going to share every intimate detail. And that’s where trouble can start. If the relationship blossoms, you’re eventually going to have to set the record straight or continue the lies of omission.
There’s always that point when past relationships are discussed. And that is the very province of omission. Maybe that “friend” was more than a “friend.” Or maybe it wasn’t you who initiated the breakup. Or yes, you were interested, but they weren’t, or a thousand other subtleties imbued solely with distorted perspective. We often remember things how we would like to remember them, not as they actually were.
So here we were now. Mike knew the score, and so did Alisa, but John, well, he wasn’t sure. You could cut the awkwardness with a knife, which was odd because I forgot to deliver the knife for their appetizer. Freudian slip? Maybe.
And Sigmund Freud would have had a field day with this dynamic. So too, I suspect, would his therapeutic contemporaries Carl Jung and Alfred Adler — not sure about Karen Horney, but being able to work her name into a story about male-female dynamics is priceless and telling, perhaps.
What followed was the most awkward 53 minutes that I have experienced in quite a while. And if it’s awkward to be around, it must have been extremely awkward to have participated in.
Eventually, the first to arrive was also the first to leave. Mike got up and said his goodbyes, only to be followed by his erstwhile doppelganger, leaving her all alone at the bar.
“Remind me to never do that again,” she said aloud.
“I will,” I said.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked, looking at me with narrowing eyes and turning just enough for me to see the cellphone in her hand.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• It’s not always all about you, neither behind the bar nor in front of it.
• Sometimes your ex doesn’t want to meet your current lover any more than your current lover wants to meet your ex, especially if one of them doesn’t know the exact situation.
• “Life itself still remains a very effective therapist,” once wrote Karen Horney.
• If your past is still affecting your future, then it isn’t really your past. It’s your present.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com