She's Got the Look

M used to say I had a look about me . . . I looked "fuckable" and for that reason I would do well as a bartender. This was years before I bought a bar. By the time the bar was in hand I had forgotten what he said. Of course, as soon as the deal was sealed, he reminded me, "I always said you'd make a good bartender. You've got that 'fuckable' look." Like he had orchestrated the whole thing. And in retrospect I wonder if he didn't, because hell, I never wanted to own a bar before . . . so what transpired there? I can't remember exactly. It happened so quick and it seemed like it happened when he wasn't even around . . . but who the hell knows what REALLY happened?

M had a point. I did look "fuckable" and it did play well in the bartending scene. I had men and women hitting on me, tipping me. I mean EVERYONE! It was bizarre. It was enough to destroy my faith in the human race altogether. Because nobody was out of bounds. Nobody was out of play. I had my pick. And that was not a good thing. But the tips were good. Yeah, the tips were everything.

I remember one night, I had a group of sports in from the states and one of them was quite young in his early 20s and he was hot, worked out a lot, biceps bulging, and he was flirting with me at the bar and I was flirting back, partly because of the American bills that kept pouring into the till and partly because he was gorgeous and charming and charismatic and just different and new from the usual crowd. We were having a good time. We were having a great time until he indicated that he was willing to pay for an even better time. Pay for me, and my services. And isn't that always where my "fuckability" factor ends? With the promise of money? Everything's cool until you lay $500 on the table, then I'm history. This doesn't make as much sense to me as it seemed to in the moment as I pretended to protect the last shred of my dignity. Meanwhile, M would have easily sold me for that if he'd been there and been even more convinced of my "fuckability." He would've started a marketing campaign at the sports camps, no doubt.

In the movie "Match Point" Scarlett has a line about the way that men always saw her, and she doesn't really seem to understand why, but it is what it is. I relate to that character. I don't know how this will translate into my 40s, but the first 30 years have been a burden of "fuckability."

Mood: confused
Drinking: absenthe
Listening To: disco inferno
Hair: kinda cute