Fuck Ups: Tending the Bartender (Part 1)

My local bar is a nice Brooklyn neighborhood dive with a pool table, a back garden, and a cocaine pusher named Ken. I know every single one of the bartenders who works after nine by name. None of them seem to mind that I am underage, and they consistently buy back everyone's third round as long as the customers tip. For me, they buy back every other round until closing time, after which they buy every round until sunrise. The owner drops by and stays for a few drinks with his girlfriend every few nights, and he always buys my drink for me if I order next to him at the bar.

Needless to say, my gal pals and I have spent many a wondrous night (and morning) of binge drinking at this poet-girl haven. And over the course of those nights, some of us have gotten friendlier with the staff than others. I tend to go for the bartenders no matter where I am (notice the Part 1 attached to this article's title) because I find that chatting them up helps distract them from carding me, and once I'm chatting, I turn into Vilma Kaplan, Bundle of Lust. This Fuck Up is one of my own tales:

It all started out good. The girls and one or two of our male friends met up and gathered at our usual table in the back for a rousing night of liquored-up hijinks. We chit-chatted the night away, the group dwindling as we blurred into the wee hours, until finally, it was just me and my friend Z left. We moved up to the bar to hang out with the two bartenders and the last few hooligans trying to catch a pussycat to pet before close.

Bartender 1 was a hot Irishman with a manly platinum wedding band that somehow managed to increase his sex appeal. Around forty, he was the kind of older man I always fantasized about and was slowly working my way up to.(I'd made good clean strides from 18 year olds to 30 year olds, but not yet beyond that.) For the sake of this Fuck Up, let's call him The Fantasy.

Bartender 2 was a new guy, we all called him The Kid, even though he was 28, much older than me. I struck up a nice conversation with The Kid about college degrees and homelessness while my friend Z made her move on The Fantasy. He'd been oggling her for weeks, and the tension was driving her nuts. She knew if she could keep him interested, she could keep herself in a veritable fountain of free beer.

At four a.m., the bar officially closed and the middle-aged, male regulars got kicked to the curb to wait for their cabs. We, the cute young thangs, were invited to smoke indoors, and have our pick of drinks as long as we could keep the bartenders entertained. Quickly, however, The Fantasy got that gleam in his eye that meant he'd figured he could swing me and Z for a threesome, and he started grumbling at The Kid to clean up and get out. I made a few joked with The Kid about how I wished he could stay, but..., and he made a few jokes about what a slut The Fantasy was. We both said, "Duh!" to each other's jokes, and The Fantasy hustled The Kid out the front door and pulled down the window gate behind him.

After that, it was a lot of slinky smiles. The Fantasy went in back to put up the chairs and turn off the lights, and Z and I popped open the antique cash register to pilfer quarters for the juke box. I put on Bruce Springsteen or some other such suitable fodder for young Fucking Up. Z came up to me and said, "Watch me?"

"Huh?" I asked, very confused by her request.

Z said, "I don't want to sleep with him.

"So let's go home," I said, seeing no dilemma.

"I don't want to go yet," she said and peeked into the dark back room where The Fantasy was prowling around.

"Okay, so let's stay. If you don't want to sleep with him, don't sleep with him." It went on like this for about half a song before I got frustrated and said, "I have no idea what you want me to do."

To this, Z replied, "I'm going to go into the back. I want you to stay up here. If I don't come back up here after two songs, come back. Whatever's going on, just go with it."

"Go with it?" I asked, trying to get her to tell me whether or not we were going to fuck The Fantasy in the back of the bar.

She scrunched up her face, through her hands in the air and huffed, "Go with it," as she walked into the The Fantasy's lair.

I sat at the bar, toyed with the idea of pocketing a few bucks from the till, poured myself another Jack rocks, squirted some club soda in the sink out of the nifty beverage hose, changed the lineup on the juke box, blah,blah, blah. Then, it was time. Two songs were up, and I made my way into the back, ready to play dumb.

"Oh, oops," I said, rather sarcastically, as I approached The Fantasy, who was pretty involved in grabbing Z's ass while she jerked him off with a nonplussed expression on her face.

He leered over at me and said, "Come here."

"Would your wife like this?" I asked because I'm a bitch and wanted him to be sure I knew exactly how base the whole situation was (but I was damn well going to enjoy myself anyway). The Fantasy ignored me and grabbed me by the front of my shirt to kiss me when I obeyed. As far as kisses go, I'd rate it a ten out of ten for pornographic fantasy and a three out of ten for real life fun. But I was not deterred. I am a girl who likes sex, especially sloppy, fairly anonymous sex, and I take on the task of hooking up with a lot of enthusiasm. I kissed The Fantasy with willful abandon, and even started to warm up a little as his hands wandered over to my body from Z's.

Z was still fairly expressionless as she cupped The Fantasy's balls. She said, "Yeah, grab her tits. She has epic tits," to which we all responded with murmurs of agreement.

The Fantasy was clearly overwhelmed by the two women in front of him, though and as he fumbled, I was starting to understand the unexcited look on Z's face. He kept pushing on the top of my head and whispering, "Get on your knees, baby."

I said, "No, stop pushing on my head," so he started begging, which really annoyed me. But I was all about making the best of the situation, so I kissed him to shut him up, and he got over the fact that I wasn't going to suck him off. (Sorry I'm not a better feminist. I aspire to be one.)

Z frowned at me and pointed at The Fantasy's cock with her free hand while he was busy eyes-closed groaning. First, I sighed with disappointment, then I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. "Let me," I said, taking over the manual activity while Z went to work making out. I thought he was just having a hard time getting it up. He was an older guy, and he'd had his fair share to drink. But when I got his dick in my hand, I had to admit that there just wasn't anything there. The Fantasy was no fantasy at all. He wasn't even a reality. He was barely a thumb. And a flaccid, bumbling thumb at that.

(A side note for fairness: Size is not everything. I have had satisfying encounters with many men with any number of penis sizes. But there is small, and then there is, "Oh, my God, I cannot believe I have been fantasizing about fucking this man against a wall only to realize that his dick is not a dick at all." And if he'd been a better guy, not a cheating scuzzball, I would have had inventive, pleasurable, non-penetrative sex with him for hours. There is so much more to fucking than pentration, I know, and it can be so much more fun. All of that is beside the point. It is situational irony. The Fantasy had the Least Fantastic Cock Ever.)

By this time, Z's dress was on the floor and my shirt was around my waist. Z made a frustrated, disgusted face, and I that was it. I made an executive decision. I dropped The Fantasy's dick to pick up Z's dress and pull it over her head. "We have to go," I said. The Fantasy looked dumbfounded. I took Z's hand, and dragged her up front.

We grabbed our purses just as The Fantasy emerged from the back. "You don't even want another drink?" he asked.

I said, "No," very sternly while Z fixed her hair. I looked at the clock on the wall, which read 7:42 AM, and cringed, "We have class in less than two hours." The Fantasy sighed and let us out the front. As we crawled out of the dark bar into the morning sun, I caught my shirt on the security gate and ripped a hole in it. Once on the sidewalk, we ducked our heads as we walked past shiny moms and dads drinking their morning coffee at the shop next door.

As soon as we were a block away, Z and I both started cracking up. "What the fuck did we just do?" I asked.

"Nothing," Z said, "There was nothing there to do."

Two hours later, I sat in class, still pleasantly drunk, and argued about and obscene Arthur Miller story that somehow paled in comparison to the morning I'd had so far. The Fantasy was ruined for Z and I forever, but he still pitches our free drinks over the bar like a trooper. Even though it was a completely dissatisfying encounter for all three of us, there is something to be said for the simplicity of post-hook up interactions with an older, sluttier, married man.