The Bartender and the Tended (2024)

  Looking out a bus window rolling into the Harvard Square subway station underground, my mind is on its own commute, streets like the surface of Mars. It’s early May 2022, days after my 20th birthday, and I find myself mid-way deep in a quarter-life crisis. I’m about to start my new bartending gig where I will be serving, who I have to assume, are the best and the brightest students the world has to offer, while I am about to finish my second year in community college following an underwhelming gap year mostly spent doing a barely convincing starving artist act. Hold your applause. The East Coast, old-money, Kennedy worship and tennis court chic aesthetics that have come into vogue within the past three years are juxtaposed heavily with images of depressive excess, silver-spoonism and late-night disorder I would end up finding myself on the other side of; and despite my most base middle-class instincts, I assumed this would end up an exhibition of pity more so than envy. Boston is an area forever cursed to live in the shadow of its megalith of a step-sibling, New York City, and when in Boston proper, there is a clear want for recognition in terms of media and culture. The one thing Boston can confidently say, standing on their own, is that THEY are the smart one, like a nerdy older sister watching their extroverted younger sibling live cinematically while they sit in their room reading (give or take an Adderall addiction).

   To be fair, academia is a culture unto itself, to say nothing of the Ivy League. Ivy League students often come from “legacies”, or one or more family members that have attended an institution, meaning that there is a unique set of rules, norms, routines, and standards that go along with being part of it, not to mention a reputation to uphold. This shouldn’t come as any kind of shock. Stories of rich and successful families taking care of their own are pretty much as cliche as you can get in 2024, mostly due to intense public interest in decapitating the bourgeoisie and media touchstones like The Social Network or Legally Blonde half-filling in the blanks for us in terms of their day-to-day. Somewhere subconsciously, I suspect it’s American dream rhetoric fed to us since birth doing its job, telling us that the fashion and the lifestyles of the rich and famous are something to aspire to and ultimately, imitate; and anything giving anyone a hand up must be fundamentally unjust. But in our modern, holy year of 2024, stardom and fortune are more accessible than ever. Paul Fussell referred to the richest of the rich as the “out-of-sight”. Well, how “out-of-sight” are these kids when thrown into a mixed social situation, or worse, given an American Express Platinum and let loose in a dive bar? Is the social dichotomy between the children of the 1% and the children of the 50% off, ones such as myself, one that still very much exists despite the illusion of democratization of wealth?

    Two months later, I find myself standing behind a 20-seat long polished oak bar talking to one of a dozen regulars I see every week. He is a grad student at Harvard Divinity. A fitting placement, I think to myself, as I slide a third sazerac across the counter while he laments about his barely-functional alcoholism and how he’s lost everything, even his trust fund his grandparents had gifted him. I indulge, and ask how much longer he plans on attending due to the situation. He explains through a drooping mouth that he will most likely have to drop out and fall back on his own bartending job until he can afford to re-enroll, partially because he is still paying off a settlement with an ex-girlfriend. For what? I didn’t have the stomach to ask, but it sounded to me that his parents didn’t need to liquidate that trust fund, he was doing it himself way more effectively. This was a story I encountered on an almost daily basis: gather round’ all and listen to the woes of the heir. It never did much for me.

Not long thereafter I am confronted with the news of a full-buyout of the bar upon walking in, the stench of the pre-shift cigarette still fresh on my tongue and t-shirt. As per usual, the scene breaks down faster than it took to set the bar up, with undergrads climbing on tables in Louboutins and blatantly slipping in and out of the handicapped bathroom in groups of three or four to do coke out of their Jodie bags to keep their tolerance up enough to continue drinking until we kick them out. On the perimeter of the room stand adults in tailored suits and slip gowns, presumably the parents, sipping Gimlets and Manhattans and talking about the upcoming holiday vacations they have in the works. Despite many of the patrons being my own age, I am very clearly an ant to be stepped on in a Jimmy Choo boot fresh-out-of-the box if I say I can’t make something, or worse, cut them off. The energy in the room is one of compliance. My managers step back, the servers step back. All is fair in vodka and soda. Plus, with the hefty “don’t worry about this” parental tip-out that we are sure to receive at the end of the night, why bother? Bother due to the principal, I think to myself. Bother because the out-of-court settlement is never as satisfying as the guilty verdict, and as the bartender, I am judge, jury, and executioner. Positions to humble this way are few and far between, and if they can take every advantage, why can’t I? What felt like a few moments after I had this thought, a girl in a crushed velvet cami dress stumbles up to the bar, eyes cocked, to order her umpteenth whatever. “I can’t”. Words I couldn’t believe even as they were leaving my own mouth, I would surely catch some flack for this if she said something.

Before the first word of protest could leave her lips, the uneven eyes I had just been silently judging a few seconds before rolled back, along with the rest of her, as she promptly hit the ground. At the pre-shift meeting the next day I hear rumors that a number of cocktails at the buyout had been spiked, by whom is anyone's guess. A shiver runs down my spine thinking of what that final drink may have done had I served it, even if my denial was ultimately self-serving and egotistical. I wonder to myself if it had been the drugs they were all doing rather than some evil frat boys. 40/60 shot at best, but I’ve never been one to gamble. That was the last we ever spoke of it.

I hated the bar scene, I barely tolerated the students, I resented the leering eyes of the law students and the condescending smirks from the sorority girls. It was clear to me, however, that many of them wanted to understand me; and as much as I hate to admit it, I did reciprocate this feeling on several occasions. It was tourism on both sides, I didn’t feel uncomfortable when my regulars asked me about my tips or my unextraordinary high school years, all of the questions felt surprisingly earnest through a couple of stiff drinks. They would gawk at me when I talked about never having driven a car, it made me laugh, I started using it in all of my bartop banter. I felt like I was in the movies, reeling through freeze frames of first encounters and seemingly endless evenings drinking vodka-pineapples a few inches behind the cameras just trying to push through. I had been to three parties at Harvard prior to landing this job, and all I was really able to gather was that even that was three too many. It was like any other college, only the buildings were drafty and the conversation was always forgettable. The movies exaggerate, suspend disbelief. I was never able to figure out if where I worked was particularly crazy or if the students I had met before were particularly tame. I worked with a handful of kids that went to Harvard, but they were mostly reserved and gave little away that working the bar on a busy Saturday night didn’t, and I never felt any desire to pry.

One long night, after shaking so many espresso martinis that I was likely one order away from developing carpal tunnel, I looked over my shoulder to see a girl that had come in a few times before sitting alone at the end of the bar nursing a Manhattan. It was my general rule to avoid sad-drunks at all costs, but the look on her face was one I had never seen before. I was intrigued. Her glassy eyes reflected the cherry in her drink being twirled around by a black cocktail straw as she perched at the end of her stool, head in the palm of her skillfully-accessorized right hand. I made my way in her direction and poured her a glass of water, thinking of what to say. Not a sound could leave my lips before she looked up at me with tears and zig-zags of melted mascara streaming down her face. She reached into her jeans and pulled out what appeared to be a program of some sort. When she flipped it towards me and opened the small pamphlet, I was met with a picture of a classically beautiful brunette and two dates separated by a 22-year-long hyphen bookending the small page. I looked up to see my grieving guest eyeing me, as if to say that pity was the last thing she needed at that moment. All I could muster up was “what happened?”. Through her next three drinks she told me a story of overbearing academic parents, law school finals, a failed LSAT and a handful of klonopin with a vodka chaser.

And there I stood, in my liquor-stained navy apron, at a loss.

I’ve always told myself that people are a product of what they know, but what do I know?

I walked around the bar and took the shaking young woman’s hand into my own and said nothing. We were fresh out of words. Her head fell onto my shoulder while her breath picked up and released, as she squeezed my fingers and felt her heartbreak. I didn’t need to understand her life. We were alone in that moment, experiencing tragedy and humanity in its fullness. I looked up at the glass shelves holding bottles of Blantons and Tangerey and Don Julio and realized what I did understand; there was no place in my heart for personal exceptionalism. Her and I were there, then, together.