Brown People

In New York, I spent most of my time with Heather and Ted, both friends from Pitzer, though their paths have rarely crossed in the past. And yet they have so much in common: they work close to one another, they both wrestle hobos, and they enjoy the art of finger painting. Furthermore, both are bad with directions. Heather "knew a place" and took us on a wild goose chase of Manhattan looking for a specific bar. Eventually we gave up and decided to find some other place. Mexican? Sure thing! In California, Mexican foot is omnipresent and, with exceptions, generally reasonably priced. This place was pricy, however: two pitchers of margaritas, each smaller than what you would find at Margarita Mondays for less than a third of the price, wound up costing us $56. It's a good thing the drinks left me reasonably giddy after such a steep cost. While we sat down to eat, Briel, a friend of high school who now lives and works in the city, called and we discussed possibly meeting up. As chance would have it, she was on the same street we accidentally wound up on, proving that getting lost can have its benefits.

As an added perk, Briel brought along two of her nice "brown friends." As Briel recounted for all of us, a few years ago before Briel moved to NYC, Briel said she was making a trip to the city because she had a lot of "brown friends there" in an Instant Messenger chat I had with her. It took me by surprise: even though our hometown is overwhelmingly white, I didn't know her to be an Ingra. Several minutes passed as I contemplated how to respond to the racist statement. I went so far as rationalizing that she probably didn't think it could be construed as racist since, you know, she's friends with brown people. Suddenly, it occurred to me what I was failing to grasp: Briel attended Brown University, which would make her friends "Brown friends." So I finally broke the awkward silence by confessing my confusion and we had a good laugh. I don't know why I fell prey to that misunderstanding in the first place -- of course Briel wouldn't have any dark-skinned friends, or at least none that she'd take the time to visit anyway.

So the six of us decided to grab a drink - or additional drinks for the margarita lovers in the group. But where? Ted immediately spotted a bar a door away, but Briel and friends looked a bit concerned by the place. I must admit, for such an expensive area of Manhattan, I am impressed that Ted so effortlessly found a somewhat questionable dive bar. I would be willing to guess that it is the only establishment of its sort in a seven block radius. Mind you, it didn't look dangerous or anything, but if you didn't typically frequent dive bars (when did my life come to this?), I can see why it would be disconcerting. Apprehensive, Briel and friends entered the place and we made pleasant chitchat. After her friends got drinks, they commented that they were concerned the bartender was so old "he might die." I assumed that since they are all involved in theater, they were just being dramatic and exaggerating the situation. When I went to buy a round myself, however, I found their description to be true and then some. He could be retired twice over. Picture Anna Nicole Smith's old fogey dead husband back when he was barely alive or perhaps even shortly after he was dead. As he struggled to pour the drinks, I was tempted to call an ambulance as a precautionary measure.

After hooting, hollering, and consuming enough alcohol that it would be unwise to stand near an open flame, we parted ways with our friends, both new and old (and really, really fucking old for that matter), white and "brown," severely intoxicated and those too intimidated to get a real buzz on. I was still drunk when I boarded the train about eight hours later. Thanks for the nice trip, y'all.

** This post was edited to fix the point that I was in Manhattan, not Brooklyn, as Heather pointed out. Who was lost? Sorry.