3rd wheeling

(A Christmas vacation vignette) Lisa and I choppered onto Manhattan Island yesterday morning. We’d both felt toasted—so we took naps—and yay! We awoke recharged. Later that evening, Lisa and I were at the ‘Elsie’ Rooftop Bar, in Manhattan, waiting for Lisa’s boyfriend, David. Ok, man-friend? More age appropriate I suppose, he’s 27, but that description doesn’t have the same bf slap. Dave’s a Wall Street M&A guy and they’ve been together for over a year - a future for them seems very real. Slinky, jazz-like versions of secular Christmas favorites were playing somewhere and it’s a groove I slipped into immediately. We had reservations and I’d misbegottenly hoped for a five-star, breathtaking city view, but the indoor tables turned out to have these uncomfortable, high-backed, bench-like seats that face away from the windows—WTF? I made a mental note to check website pix in the future. The place is in need of some serious feng shui-ing. Disappointed, I asked for a side table where there was, at least, a pitiable skyline view and I placed my iPad, volume down, on the table so I could side-watch the Thursday Night football game—hey, I’m not meeting MY boyfriend, ok? As the official third-wheel, I figured I’d need a little entertainment. After a few moments, a waitress came by and she paused to look us over with a cat-like indifference that signaled she was better than me, better than us really. She was just cooler. I was delighted—why am I drawn to people who look down on me? I suppose I need years of psychoanalysis—but who’s got the time? I glanced at Lisa. We know each other at a cellular level. With a milli-second of lash flutterings and eye dilations, I asked “are you getting this?” And she affirmed that she was. Because we’re cyborgs. A couple of cyborgs. Just kidding. We’re not cyborgs, neither of us. We wish we were sometimes—think of the advantages, you could complete college in a blink—wirelessly. Anyway, back to the narrative. The waitress reminded me of when I was starting high school and my mom and I toured colleges, how snooty the Harvard people were, even though I’d been accepted and offered a free-ride scholarship—I mean, shouldn’t we all have been one, big, self-congratulatory snooty-group together? (Of course, I chose Yale because the people were totally friendly). “I better get used to it,” I side-bar’d Lisa, who got the reference to my upcoming, year-long, master's program at Harvard—because we’re cyborgs. I handed ‘Laura’ (our snooty waitress was tagged) my Black American Express card, which got her attention, and said, “start a tab please—someone will join us—run a 40% tip too,” I added with a smile. She practically jogged off to get our drinks and hors d'oeuvres and I turned my attention to the game, you know, to catch up. I love Pro football—it’s not really fall without football—is it? Even though Tom Brady retired. This all goes to say that I’m a pro football junkie. Lisa likes it too, though she’s not totally obsessed. Just after Laura brought us our martinis and ‘poached lobster’ slides, a random, well-dressed man (he was wearing an expensive Brioni, wool linen silk suit), 35-ish, receding mousy-brown hairline, high-ball glass in hand, took the opportunity to stop by and chat. “SO,” he said, in a deep, jolly, ice-breaking salesman’s voice, “You girls like football?” I decided that the suit was too shiny for a Brioni—was it a Zegna?—I idly wondered. “We’ve boyfriends,” Lisa announced, almost apologetically, nodding to include me—in case he missed the plural. Undeterred, he swiveled my way—as if he needed a second opinion—and asked me, “What do you like about football?” He sounded somewhat condescending to me, so I did what I always do with condescending males—I played the ‘ditzy-girl’ card, “The costumes,” I answered. “The uniforms,” he gently, fatherly, corrected—before rocking back a little on his heels and sipping his drink. “And the hats,” I updogged, but before he could digest my reply, David, Lisa’s man-friend, arrived on the scene. “Sorry to be so late,” he said, giving me a little, jiggly, 4-finger wave, shedding his coat and giving Lisa a smooch on the top of her hair. The salesman wordlessly took his leave. It’s a night on the town—let the 3rd-wheeling begin! . . Songs for this: Diamond Dave by The Bird and the Bee You Belong to Me by Vonda Shepard . . And a Christmas Playlist - because the big day is 8 days away! www.daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_24.mp3