Tension: Trials at a bar never cease to amaze

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: WHALETAIL.COM
A night at the bar wouldn’t be the same without some whale tail.

So you're standing in a line to get into The Frog on a frigid Friday night with 500 other huddled, frozen girls wearing tight black dresses and high heels unnaturally arching their backs, making them look like a penguin waddle of Guns N' Roses groupies who spent too many hours playing the piano and guys with their side-cocky angled hats and baggy jeans strutting around looking through narrow steely eyes for the dude they will pick a fight with later. You see a uniformed pack of hormones waiting for mating season to begin: whale-tails, sunglasses, ankle-tall boots, guys with rings on every finger and bright white unlaced sneakers.

Finally a short, stony-faced, unnaturally ripped doorman who looks like a cross between a balding 10-year-old boy and a retired drill sergeant cards you. He's wearing a t-shirt that conveniently says BOUNCER on the back that is five sizes to small to accentuate his Ferrigno physique.

You walk in greeted by the boom-booming of bass and the instant judgment of the entire bar. You wind your way to an empty slot, trying not to walk in beat to the music.

So you get to talking — or shouting — and you're telling a group of people a story. Then someone comes over and distracts a couple of people, so you focus your story more on the few remaining patrons, but it's a happening night at the bar, and a couple more people drift away. Next thing you know, you are looking around for the only person still looking at you, even if it's ‘getdrunk- way-too-fast guy'? He gives you an acknowledging nod of the head, and a waft of a silent burp, which smells like a Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, to impart that he is listening. That lonely moment when you realize that you are boring, and the ‘getdrunk- way-too-fast guy' is feeling sorry for you.

The night blurs by into foggy vignettes of overpriced beer, bar-trolling dudes hyped up on testosterone looking for lust and violence (one and the same to these guys). Some guy with a loud, bellowing voice spitting cornerof- the-mouth foam at you telling the most disgusting lies about things he did to ‘this chick' last night. The shooter lady with more cleavage than face forces a couple of test tubes down your throat. A Flaming Asshole and an Orgasm later you really start spinning. You stumble-walk through the hordes across sticky floors to the washroom that looks like the end of the night at an enema convention.

With ringing ears, and the 2 a.m. lights turned on, you make your escape. Now the fun really begins.

Small congregations of dudes proclaiming, “I am so f-ing wasted, I had like 15 beers, five Jägerbombs and a shot of tequila,” when really they nursed one beer all night and a shot of Schnapps that someone left on the bar. Their hat so cocky now that it barely stays on their head as they look past their nose for that guy who was talking to the girl they wish they had. Testosterone and Schnapps, mixing it up for the big obligatory after-bar fight. Gaggles of giggling girls fade away, the end of the grand tease, as their flirting promises amount to a hasty departure, the words, “Did you see that guy...?” fading into the night.

Broke, smoked and stoked. You make it home to do again tomorrow.

Of course, most of us are not personified quite so easily (and insultingly) as this article describes. Most of us are just being ourselves, and must stand back and watch the grand parade march to its own offbeat. We all join this parade in our own way, and if even for a moment we are distracted by the pressures of marching, then this is a good thing.

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