We haven’t had a story in a long time. This is an old one, I wrote it in 2001 which is right about the time I first started blogging. I’m posting as a holiday distraction both for me and for you/ Hopefully you’ll like it. As for the astrology, it’s got all elements… in spades.

I wrote this before I developed any filters. I am not sure if this is good or bad or how much difference it makes. I’m just saying the audience was much smaller then, just a few people gathered around to hear a story told. This story is true of course and not embellished.

As for the back story, I got to town when I was 15 and started working as a bartender. In this story it is 6 years later so I was a seasoned in the position. Many who knew me back then would tell you I was in my own class and I’d say that was probably true though why would be hard to pinpoint. I have always been some strangely landed dice.

Scott is in this story. We met in his mother’s bar when I was 15 and he was my on and off boyfriend for 17 years. Everyone else is just who and how I say they are and that includes me…

That’s it, Enjoy!

“Royal Somewhere”

I was 21 and Grocery Man had a bit of a crush on me. It was not a huge crush or an obvious crush but the common kind. A fair number of people sitting at a bar develop a desire for the bartender. It is a pedestal of sorts; it’s the catbird seat or so I was told.

Someone told me I was sitting in the catbird seat and I had to call the library to find out what that meant but anyway, this desire thing happens all the time. When you tend bar people are drinking and you start to look tasty to a percentage of them.

Grocery Man was the sensible type. He kept his crush in check and it didn’t get in the way of us relating. As a bartender, if you want to keep your customers, you really have to find mechanisms to deal with this infatuation thing. The bar wants to keep the customer coming back and the bartender wants the tips so it’s a skill to remain “carrot” in front of a horse.

I can’t date everyone and I can’t flat out reject them either. Like Mohammad Ali – I had to duck and dive. I have to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee because by my nature, I talk way too much to be aloof or inaccessible.  It’s a real trick to be both friendly and unavailable and I’m pretty good at it, credit to Sexy Gal. She was beautiful and alluring but she had a head for business and was masterfully in command when working the bar. I learned from her, so there you go.

Grocery Man was very respectful and generally he’d didn’t drink too much. Occasionally he’d get stupid but I liked him enough to forgive him that. He liked to talk about business which was fairly unusual and a hot topic to me, so it gave us common ground. I considered him not a problem which is high compliment really. Many people in a bar are a problem for the bartender; it’s just a matter of degree.

One day I’d decided to move. I was leaving a boyfriend actually and I needed a new apartment so I did what bartenders do. I asked around and sure enough I had the top tier of a large property management company as customers and I was offered an apartment at the coveted “Royal Somewhere”.

Did someone say “Royal?” My Leo Venus perked up.

I’d been by this place hundreds of times and it was glorious. The whole place was very lush and nirvana looking which is not so common in desert. There was a fountain in front and it even had a stream running through it which was truly astonishing. You don’t think so? That’s because you didn’t grow up in the middle of desert, 10 miles from the grocery store without a TV.

This place even had grass and I would say I pined to live there but I didn’t.  It was so hopelessly out of my price range, I couldn’t afford to pine.  I never even thought about the Royal Somewhere outside of feeling the people who lived there were ultra-fortunate. I thought it was sort of an apartment heaven for the lucky.

The President of this corporation quoted a price and I told him I couldn’t afford it. I was embarrassed but come on. I was totally poor. He nodded and said he’d give me various discounts to get the rent down. He says he’d give me $50 off for a military discount, $50 for senior discount, $50 disability discount…

Hmm.

I asked why they didn’t just have a $150 discount for poor people so I could move in without breaking rules and no one laughed but that was because it was funny.

I took the deal but secretly wish he’d have brought the rent down further. The apartment was still very pricey but I must have said thank you 50 times anyway. You know. Location, location, location.  I didn’t want to appear ungrateful for he did offer so that was that. I made plans to move my humbleness in to this green, lush, I mean lap of luxury.

I was happy and couldn’t wait to get picked up by my first date in my new digs. I was an uptown girl now, and if I’d been able to afford a Mary Tyler Moore hat I would have tossed it in the air for sure.

Skip to Part 2 – Veneer, Baby, That’s All It Is

pictured, Homer, Auguste Leloir, 1841