Okay, so the bar is going to open on Saturday. It really is. I’ve never been so deeply immersed in anything for so long in my life. But that’s not what I’m here to write about, at 1:30am after being in the bar since 8am, and before returning to it at 8am tomorrow. What I’m here to talk about is what I’ve taken to calling the Fantastic Four.
Two nights ago, realizing that we’d never finish construction and touch-ups by anywhere near our extended extended extended deadline of 8/27, my partner Chris called a guy who’s worked for him previously, a floor guy, mostly. A hard-drinking, fast-and-gruff talking carpenter. He showed up the next night and brought three other guys with him. They came after a day of work putting up siding and busted out about half a dozen jobs that needed doing in about five hours while drinking two cases of Bud. One of them actually said “get ‘er done” in what I thought was an un-ironic way (although later on, I was less certain). They worked hard and fast and dirty.
At first I was intimidated. As I said to Chris as I passed him in the hallway, “Those are some men up there.” You know, men, men who build shit, men who, well, get her done. Macho American Men. I helped them where I could, and played gopher for them. I fed money into the juke box, picked out the Zeppelin and old Johnny Cash in our juke that’s mostly full of odder tunes of our own choosing.
I worried that they’d unmask me as not-a-man, I guess. But as the night wore on, of course, we got more and more comfortable with each other, and I realized, as I so often have, that I’d been judging these guys unfairly. One of them stuck some of his own money in the juke and played the Breeders and the Smiths (The Smiths!). They were, beneath the bluster, to a one, really wanting to help out, and almost gentle even, under the bluster.
I’m exhausted and punchy, but I think I do have a point here, let’s see if I can find it. Behind every macho guy, there’s a person. Behind every “liberated” geek, there’s a guy wrestling with his masculinity. Same goes for women too, of course, in terms of books and covers not necessarily matching. And one of the things I’m looking most forward to, in opening a bar in this largely working-class New England town, is something I’ve missed since I bartended in NYC over a decade ago – getting to know people who I’d otherwise have no more than the most superficial contact with, people, in this case men, who I’d just keep judging from afar if I didn’t spend evenings serving drinks to or drinking with.
