I got caught cheating on a Sunday.
It was one of those sunny June days in Brooklyn, that ebbing time of
T-shirts and jeans before the humidity hits, when you can still walk
comfortably down the street without drowning in your own sweat. We’d
staked out a Smith Street bar with front window walls that opened outward
onto the sidewalk, giving our seats that breezy, front-porch feeling. Our
first beers were nearing their ends when she appeared out of the passing
crowds on the sidewalk. She saw us before we saw her—which is how it
always happens when you get caught.
“Hey guys,” she said calmly. “Enjoying yourselves?”
Her face betrayed no surprise at seeing us, no anger. But that didn’t
stop me from blurting out: “I’m cheating on you.”
Relationships with bartenders are a nuanced affair. On the one hand,
nothing more is required than attentive service and a nice tip. Between the
pour and the last sip, there is ample time to be filled with quiet or a
head in a book or a good story or a heartfelt question. It depends on the
patron, the bartender and the mood of the day.
But even in the friendliest of relations, there’s always a small
divide between the role of bartender and that of friend. Not to say that
you aren’t friendly with your bartender or that they can’t one
day become your friend, but as long as the sole interaction of your
relationship exists at that long wooden bar separating tap from stool, you
are not true friends.