Aw, there have been many nights where I have had to distract Dana from the Late Husband Who Forgets to Call.
I was bad. It was thoughtless and I have mea-ed and culpa-ed.
However, I have to say the conversation at the Zam Zam was ridiculously engaging. If you had put it in a movie, people would say, "I've been going to bars for twenty years and nobody talks like that. This is bullshit by somebody who's obviously never been in a bar."
I had stopped by because I knew the bartender Josh was working there on Thursday night. The last time I saw him (about a month ago) we had talked about Russian literature and Mahler and critical theory. Anyway, I knew JZ was working late so I swung by and was hanging out until he came on his shift change.
So I'm chatting with some regulars and enjoying my Saphire martini, and all of a sudden an interesting pile of people arrive. I don't even get to talk to the women at the end of the bar from Ohio who played fiddle and loved Magnetic Fields. Which was not a problem, because the woman next to me (from New Jersey) turned out to be a big Virginia Woolf fan, and then we also talked about our favorite things to do in Paris. (Because Josh the bartender was going there on his honeymoon in August. Paris, Berlin, Zurich - sounded like a Gus kind of trip.)
Then the nice, interesting New Jersey woman left, and a British woman named Georgia sat down and we were talking about the band Pavement. Which turned into a discussion about Nietsczhe. At some point there were references to Bob Wills and western swing as well.
And that was all before Josh's professor in critical theory at SF State dropped by. So then I talked to the professor (Sara) and her wife (Didi - French) for several hours. Sara mentioned she was teaching a course in 19th century popular fiction with a focus on the development of the mystery.
I said, "Oh, like...uh...Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone."
And she held up her Penguin edition of The Moonstone.
Then it turned out they were both big Buffy fans, who had missed several seasons of Angel, except they watched the Angel finale. So I had to fill them in.
Then it turned out that she had almost taken a teaching job at my alma mater, Kenyon College, so we had to talk about that.
Then it turned out they were thinking about having a child, so we had to talk about that.
I swear I had my last of three martinis at about 8:30, but I think it punched a hole in the space/time continuum. or possibly it impaired my judgement.
Which is not to rationalize my bad behavior, simply to note how seductive the siren lure of thoughtless self-indulgence was last night.