One night, a little over a year into my new job, I had dinner plans with some of my old friends from the legal side. With people having babies and commuting to the suburbs, these dinners were rare. The emails had bubbled around all day: “Is it still looking OK?” “Is your daughter feeling better?” “Only three more hours until seven. I’m so excited to see you guys!” Everyone seemed to want to reinforce the likelihood that the date would actually happen.
I left the office at 5:30 p.m. and met Jerry for a drink before dinner. We met at the original Rosa Mexicano on First Avenue, home of the famous frozen pomegranate margarita.
“Fernando! How are you?” I asked the bartender as I stretched across the Mexican-tiled bar to kiss him.
“Hey!” Jerry said. “I ordered guacamole.” I hopped on a stool next to him, and within minutes a waiter showed up carrying a bowl made to look like an avocado skin. It was full of chunks of fresh avocado, and the waiter put on a show of adding lime, onions, and crushed tomatoes, and then he sprinkled in mysterious Mexican seasonings and mashed it all up with a pestle. Fernando presented two frothy, pink margaritas that looked more like icy kids’ treats than ridiculously potent alcoholic concoctions.
“Chin, chin!” Jerry said, raising his glass.
“Salud!” I answered.
Our second round came with a tequila sidecar, courtesy of Fernando. When we were about to order our third round, I looked at my watch. It was almost seven o’clock. I had a stomach full of tequila and guacamole, and I no longer felt like having dinner with my girlfriends. Jerry was more than happy to have me stick around.
“You’re full. Catch them for dinner some other time.”
“I can’t,” I told him. “I have to go. I can’t blow this off.”
“Okay, so stay for one more and then I’ll cross town with you. Just tell them you’ll be a little late.”
I left a couple of voicemails for the girls and ordered the third round, which again came with shots on the side.
When I woke up the next morning, I was still in my clothes, and my mouth tasted like the bottom of an ashtray in a Mexican saloon. When did I come home? Oh shit, did I not make it to dinner?
My friend Wendy had left multiple messages, each one more pissed off than the one before:
“Hey, Lisa, got your message that you’re running late, but it’s almost seven-thirty. We need to order.” Beep.
“Hey, it’s eight. We ordered. Are you coming? Should we be worried?” Beep.
“Alright, last message. No idea what happened to you. Not cool that you blew us off.” Beep.
I climbed back into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and called in sick. Physically I was a wreck. Mentally I was worse. Depressed and ashamed, I was the loser who trades a table of girlfriends for a pink margarita. Shorter workdays and less stress didn’t lead me anywhere near a life of diminished drinking. All they did was make it easier to start drinking early.
8
It could be any Friday evening in the mid-1990s, it’s 6:30, and I’m sitting with my friend Karen at J.D.’s Pub in Midtown. She’s also an associate, and the occasion is a farewell party for yet another departing colleague.
We peel the moist labels off our Amstel Light bottles, trying to remove them in one piece without tearing. We talk about how another one of us is “escaping over the fence.” J.D.’s main room is long and dimly lit. We are unwinding, putting the week behind us. Still wrapped tightly in our suit skirts, we sit on dark wood chairs with our jackets hung over the backs.
Along with paying for a fancy party sendoff, the firm tries to help the departing associate land a job with one of the firm’s clients. The higher-ups hope that the associate will then turn around and hire the firm, so these goodbye parties are always crawling with partners.
This group likes to drink, so the open bar is a big draw. No one pays much attention to the table lined with the sterno-warmed buffet trays full of mini egg rolls, chicken fingers, and fried mozzarella sticks. The untouched cubes of cheese on a plate sweat little beads of moisture.
By seven the room is full of smart, overworked, young lawyers. In packs, they lean against the bar, stand in the room’s open space, and, like Karen and me, sit at wooden tables covered in red-and-white checkered tablecloths. People stop by our table to chat, mostly about how exhausted they are, how awful their week has been, and how we need to get together for lunch in the Lawyers’ Dining Room. We all swap work stories, and in each tale the storyteller is the most oppressed of all the firm’s associates.
By eight only the hardcore are left; the people who will close the firm’s tab and move the party on to the next bar, usually a hipper place downtown. We throw back final shots of tequila to fortify us for the journey onward. Unless Karen and I have to return the office, we are a few beers and a couple of shots in, ready to go along with the others.
Most of the time, I end up able to remember at least a few fuzzy memories of the night out with work friends. But sometimes I wake up the next morning still in my suit with no recollection of where I went or with whom. No idea of what I did. Nothing but a big black screen where all my visual memories should have been projected. Then I shudder my way through the next work day, looking for judgment in the eyes of colleagues, fearing the wrong kind of phone call, hoping that I didn’t do something so unredeemable that it will cost me my career.
One day I received an email invitation to a party the firm was holding for its alumni. Attached to it was a list of people who had accepted the invitation. Having been at the firm for more than seven years, I knew a lot of them. My eyes rested on one name.
Alan and I had dated off and on several years earlier, and we ended it because each time it seemed that neither of us wanted a commitment at the same time. He was from Pennsylvania and we met when he was a first-year, new to New York, and I was a summer associate. He was a great looking former college baseball player with deep green eyes and thick blond hair that he kept short. About three years later, Alan returned to Pennsylvania where he’d been named a partner in a firm based in Pittsburgh. He was very close with his family, loved dark humor, and his brain always moved faster than mine, so I lost our intellectual debates.
Despite not having seen him in years, I emailed Alan to see if he wanted to meet for dinner after the party. He did, so I skipped the party and went straight home to primp and drink.
I put a little extra swing in my walk when I entered the Greenwich Village restaurant where Alan was waiting for me, sitting casually on a barstool. His emerald eyes had the same sparkle that I’d remembered. “It’s really great to see you,” he said as he stood to greet me with a kiss on the cheek and a hand pressed against my arm.
Alan had always liked to try new places in the city. We had spent many nights checking out the latest restaurants written up in the New York Times, and I was pretty sure that when we were together, he drank more than his usual. We often started the night with martinis, split a couple bottles of wine, and then finished with B&B. The mornings after those dates, I barely remembered what I ate.
Alan and I sat down and took a long, smiling look at each other. He looked a little older, but it only made him more handsome. With a mischievous smirk he said, “You look great.”
I wore a pair of tight black pants, a black camisole, and a sheer mesh purple shirt with flowers splayed all over it. It was my favorite outfit.
Our table was available right away, and Alan carried his martini with him. I ordered one as soon as we sat down. Soon afterward we ordered a bottle of wine.
“So, how was that party?” I asked.
He gave me the rundown on the people we both knew, adding enthusiastic, occasionally biting commentary on their current situations. He’d already had a couple of cocktails, which brought out the comedian in him. As always, I was happy to listen to his hilarious takedowns of obscenely successful people. Seeing the dark side of this otherwise squeaky man endeared him to me. And of course it freed me to dish right back without fearing judgment.
We finished the first bottle of wine in record time. As Alan held the bottle and let its last drops fall into my glass, I asked, “Should we order another?”
“Sure, why not?” he said. And the evening breezed by as we told each other our stories in the rhythm and glow of one of those delicious nights—when you’re both at ease, you’re both available, and you both know that you’re going to end up naked.
Three hours later and waiting for the check, we were solidly drunk, so the offer tumbled easily from my lips, “Do you want to stay at my place?”
We climbed all over each other in the cab, sliding around the faux leather back seat. He had me pressed against the wall of the elevator all the way up to my apartment and then we went straight for the bedroom. The booze did a wonderful job of rinsing away all inhibition, but the attraction was real.
Later that night, obsessive thoughts began to rumble around in my mind. What were we doing? What was he thinking? What was I thinking? This wasn’t just a romp, that was clear. Safe. I felt safe and protected when I was with him. It was an enormous change from what I had recently felt on my own.
The next morning, I stood in my bathroom wearing a silky robe and examining the pink puffiness around my half-shut, bloodshot eyes. I kept pressing and pulling at them, as if that would make the swelling go down. Good grief, I didn’t want him to open his eyes and flinch with regret. But when I shuffled out of the bathroom, he was already sitting in my big club chair lacing his dress shoes and smiling.
“I’d like us to see each other again,” he said “You know it would be great if you came out to visit Pittsburgh.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “That would be … um… great.”
That weekend, my friends and I gathered at Jessica and Russell’s giant, ground floor duplex on the Upper East Side. By then, they had a year-old son, Nathaniel, so it was easier for us to gather at their place than for all of us to go out. Jerry, Devon, and our friend David, a partner at a major law firm, were all there. We drank expensive wine out of fancy goblets and nibbled from a spread of cheese, crackers, olives, and pâté.
I blurted it. “I had dinner with Alan the other night and I’m going to go out to Pittsburgh to visit him.” Every head in the room spun in my direction.
“Oh boy, here we go again,” Jerry said, laughing. “I thought you were done recycling men.”
He was right. I had recently sworn off backstepping, but when you spend a significant amount of your time shitfaced, the things you “swear” don’t always add up to much of a covenant in the light of day. Still, I’d spent the previous 24 hours wrestling my way through the facts. Alan had settled down in Pittsburgh, surrounded by married friends with kids. He was one of the only people I knew who owned a house. He was an Irish Catholic Republican and I was a Jewish Democrat. When we were dating, those differences had kept things feisty, but as the years passed, would feisty become fiery and would fiery eventually become vicious? If we got back together at this point in our lives, it would be serious. Suburbs? Marriage? Kids? Did I want all that? And would it help me to stop drinking so much? It would, wouldn’t it?
“We really reconnected,” I told Jerry. “I think we’re both at the same place in our lives for the first time. I wouldn’t get back together with him if I didn’t think he could be the one.”
“Are you serious? The one?” Devon croaked. “I mean, Alan’s great, but are you batshit crazy?” She poured more wine all around. “You can’t move to Pennsylvania. And what the hell, you haven’t mentioned his name in four hundred years, and now after one dinner you’re back together?”
She was right. But neither she nor my other friends knew how miserable I was, drinking alone every night, looking down the road and seeing nothing but long hours in an office followed by long hours of drinking followed by long hours of headaches and nausea in an office. That was my future. But a fresh start with a great guy, leaving my current life far behind in the cloud of dust my Range Rover would kick up as I rumbled up the gravel driveway of my country house. What was wrong with that picture?
“No!” David said. “You can’t do that! You’re the New Yorkest person I know!” David was from a small town in Maryland, and to him New York was still the city of daydreams and magic. He was doing great at the firm, and when he wasn’t working his tail off he actually did the things that most New Yorkers only say they’re going to do, like watch improv in forty-seat theaters and spend afternoons walking around Battery Park instead of dashing straight through it.
“And what about us? And your family?” Jessica added. She bounced Nat on her knee and he giggled. Would my kid giggle like that? What if my kid turned out to be the same kind of nervous wreck I’d been? Could I be a mother? Wasn’t having kids the next grown-up thing to do? I must want kids, right? I bet I’ll want kids when I get my drinking under control.
Russell walked into the kitchen to open another bottle of wine. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. The bass in his voice signaled that this crazy conversation was over.
I went outside to smoke. The duplex had an outside garden space with a picnic table, and after Jessica became pregnant the garden became our smoking section. Devon and Jerry got up, grabbed their drinks, and followed me out. We sat down on the benches and our three lighters lit up the outside space as we inhaled and then exhaled simultaneously, smoke streaming over our heads. It looked like a choreographed move, and all three of us laughed at the synchronization of it. Then we laughed even harder about the synchronized laughs. Deep, head-back laughter that died down with a smiling sigh. And then they both looked at me with so much love in their eyes that I had to look away.
Six weeks later, Alan and I decided that we would live together in Pittsburgh. On a visit to New Jersey a short time later I told my family about our plans. Boyfriends came and went in my life, so they hadn’t given my recent trips to Pennsylvania much thought. Neither my dad nor my brother seemed upset when I brought up the move. They both expressed some version of, “If it’s what you want, I’m happy.” They’d both always been like airtight PR agents to the stars: never uttering a word about my private life unless the topic had been approved. My professional life, however, was a free zone.
“You’re leaving a lot behind with that job,” Dad said.
“It’s OK, Dad. I can work at Alan’s firm. He showed the Managing Partner my résumé, and the guy said I’d be a fit in their marketing department. So, I’ve already got a job. It’s a fantastic firm.”
My dad laughed. “See? All the time you were unhappy at work? Now that job is letting you write your own ticket. That’s great.”
As always, my mother had more to say on the subject. “I really don’t like that you’re going to be in Pennsylvania. We barely see you as it is.” We were sitting in the kitchen, just as we had done for serious talks when I was a kid. But now I kept my hands underneath the table so she wouldn’t see them shake. She was wearing one of her track suits, the kind that adorned countless older women in Atlantic City casinos, and she accessorized with a full face of makeup and gold bracelets that swung from her wrist. She had just come from her weekly manicure and hair appointment.
“Mom, think of it this way,” I said, “People just don’t work as hard out there. That means I can come home a lot. And when I do, I can stay for a few days or even a week instead of having to race back to Manhattan.”
“Don’t try to lawyer me out of this. It’s too far. And what about kids? Alan’s Catholic and he takes it seriously. You’re going to raise Catholic kids?” she asked.
“I told you already, we’re going to raise them with both religions. We’ll celebrate both sets of holidays. Lots of people do it.” I tried to give a casual shrug, but I felt my lip twitch.
“So tell me this,” she said, “when you have a boy, are you going to have a christening or a bris? Thought about that one?”
Sweat began to dampen the back of my neck. What time was it? Four o’clock. Absolutely close enough to five, especially
on a Saturday. There was no navigating that conversation without alcohol.
“Do you want some wine?” I asked as I pulled one of their white wine glasses out of the cabinet. I knew how she’d answer, but offering tempered the creepiness of drinking “alone,” right next to my mother.
“No, not yet,” she said. “I want to know what it will be—a christening or a bris.”
I opened the refrigerator and poured a very full glass of cold, white wine, taking a long drink while my back was still turned to her. What I felt like saying was, “Mom, I’m a goddamned alcoholic! I’m drowning in a fucked-up life! I’m drowning in cheap cabernet. I’m drowning in tequila. I’m drowning in vodka. When people aren’t looking, I take an extra swig. I drink the second I get home from work. I drink in the bathtub. I drink after the party’s over. Mother, I’m drowning and Alan is throwing me a line!”
But what I said was, “I don’t know, Mom. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
“Well, I’m not happy with that,” she said.
“I know you’re not.”
When she went upstairs to change, I poured another full glass of wine. My parents kept their cases of wine in the basement, so I scrambled down there and pulled out two more bottles to chill in the refrigerator. My parents didn’t pay attention to their wine inventory until it got low, and that had always worked to my advantage.
The wedding weekend arrived in June 2000, less than two years after Alan and I had reconnected, and guests from all over the country descended on New York City. Many of them stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel, just across the park from The National Arts Club where my parents had been longtime members. It was always assumed that I would be married there.
One of the things that connected Alan and me was that we both preferred casual events. We planned a rehearsal dinner at John’s Pizza in Times Square on the Friday night before the wedding. No formalities, no speeches—just a big buffet of pizza, garlic knots, salads, and fried calamari. And of course, an open bar.
Girl Walks Out of a Bar Page 10