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Rachelle: Are you still on for the Textile Museum at 2:00?
Rachelle: Tetanus?
Rachelle: No
Rachelle: No, I am certain there’s no such thing as a “Tetanus Museum.”
Rachelle: Well, I’m sorry you misunderstood.
Rachelle: But we have passes for the Textile Museum and we agreed to meet there in 30 minutes.
Rachelle: But you were so keen on seeing the Kimono of Itchiku Kobuta! You said that’s what you were going to name your Fantasy baseball team! What happened?
Rachelle: Really, Pickle?
Rachelle: You think it’s cultural appropriation?
Rachelle: And you don’t want to exercise your white privilege by exploiting something that was not created for the white, male gaze?
Rachelle: And in order to achieve that goal you’ve gone to The Keg Mansion, the place where everything is specially made for you, is that right?
Rachelle: Yes, yes, I know you have a gift card.
Rachelle: And yes, I know The Keg is your safe space.
Rachelle: You’ve said it many times.
Rachelle: Will you do me a favour? Just have a look around.
Rachelle: Do you see a bunch of men who more or less look like you, all eating steak and drinking wine?
Rachelle: Yes, or drinking Caesars.
Rachelle: And are they all being served by hot, young women laughing at all the jokes they’re being told through gritted, shoot-me-now teeth?
Rachelle: In the exploitation Olympics, I think that beats going to a fabric museum, don’t you?
Rachelle: Look, do you even know what false equivalency means?.
Rachelle: I thought not.
Rachelle: Oh, I see.
Rachelle: I was all wrong about Madison the server.
Rachelle: She’s different, is she?
Rachelle: Well maybe when she said that she didn’t mean funny ha-ha?
Rachelle: Okay, let’s just never mind.
Rachelle: Are you going to meet me or not?
Rachelle: Oh, your wedge salad just arrived!
Rachelle: Well obviously your hands are tied.
Rachelle: Yes.
Rachelle: That was sarcasm.
Rachelle: Because you’re being a jerk.
Rachelle: Sweet Jesus.
Rachelle: In no way am I discriminating against you for eating meat.
Rachelle: I’m a Social Justice Warrior? I’m not even sure I know what one is.
Rachelle: You’re drunk.
Rachelle: You Keg-Sized your Caesar, didn’t you?
Rachelle: Yes, I am psychic.
Rachelle: I can also detect something slurry and aggressive in all your texts.
Rachelle: It’s like you’re campaigning for something.
Rachelle: Shouting from the podium!
Rachelle: Throwing emoticons everywhere!
Rachelle: Like angry confetti.
Rachelle: Whatever.
Rachelle: Just remember that the doctor said you could only have one drink a day, okay?
Rachelle: No, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.
Rachelle: I’m going to go to the museum then have a power skating session with Pierre.
Rachelle: No, he wasn’t deported.
Rachelle: He was in Costa Rica on a spiritual retreat.
Rachelle: Very tan. And he shaved off his moustache.
Rachelle: I know it’s a dream of yours to one day grow a full beard like Pierre does so effortlessly, but it’s just not your path, Pickle.
Rachelle: Yes, yours is the path of low testosterone and patchy facial hair.
Rachelle: We all have our crosses to bear, dear.
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Upstairs at the bar there’s an unrelenting press of people. So many of them. Jostling together excitedly, they’re all hopeful on this festive night out, each one wanting to feel special in some regard, each one waiting for their life to pivot. Unshaven Bros in sports toques and ball caps, beta predators who only move in packs of two and threes, are looking over at a cluster of Friday night women worrying their phones. Men are pushed up against the bar three deep, each one competing for something.
The bartender is at the centre of it all.
Although completely overwhelmed, she’s working calmly through the chaos. Surrounded on all sides by some sort of want, she makes a millions subtle calculations with each one of her actions. Each person is a problem that must be solved, a fire that must be extinguished. Her face determined, she moves fluidly and with purpose, and all the men encircling her at the bar with their steaks and Keg-sized glasses of red wine, are watching.
A man around 60 leans in. Everyone is leaning in, trying to flag her attention. This man, he’s lived his life handsome, and the confident residue of that lingers within him still, “Can I be next?” he asks in a salesman’s voice. The bartender forces a smile and takes his order, and all the other men waiting stiffen a little, jealous.
He is pleased with himself, this man. He feels special.
When she returns, he leans in yet further, “That tattoo on your right forearm, the roman numerals, are they from your favourite Shakespeare passage? Are you an actress?”
It is not clear that she is flattered by this attention, but she gives a partial, evasive answer.
“It’s a date,” she says, giving the man a polite, discouraging smile. Gesturing to how busy she is, she moves to disengage and tend to other preening, signalling men, but this man was not finished. “This is my favourite passage,” he began, and then in his best Shakespearian accent:
“If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die…”
And she is trapped, so trapped she is almost suspended in air.
Her eyes close for just a moment, as if it is all too much, and then she reanimates herself and begins to applaud robustly, cutting the man’s recitation short. It was as if a battle had been won, and she got to keep the secret of the tattoo– something so important, so crucial to who she wanted to be, that she had it written into her flesh–for herself.
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