Three Girls Walk Into A Bar….
Cindy Shin picked the booth on the main floor of the bar, the one just in front of the corner booth, where she’d be visible but not on display. Her clothes matched this tactic: short denim skirt, boots (no heals), and a tight-fitting v-neck t-shirt that might draw the eye to her more-ample-than-your-average-Asian-chick chest. It was still a little early for anyone of much interest to be out yet.
Her companions Krysta and Cali came back with the beers, Krysta taking a second to sip the two light beers— one was her Bud and the other was Cindy’s Stella. Cali’s was always easy to differentiate— Sam Adams, Guinness or whatever other tar colored draft was available. Cindy suspected Cali didn’t actually enjoy these beers (what girl actually likes dark beer?) but drank them to have something in common with the boys she hoped to meet. Though maybe Cindy was just projecting her own neurotic awareness of image onto her friend. Cindy, after all, was the one who drank Stella because it had the highest alcohol content so she could get the most booze per calorie, even though straight liquor would accomplish this better— beer was a better conversational tool. Also, she’d had a smoothie with a protein booster for dinner not because she was anorexic, but because she was moon-faced and hoped that chewing less would reduce the size of her cheeks. She’d been exploring both her body image issues and her resentment of her friends in her hour-long session with her shrink earlier in the day. Dr. Dannis thought the two might be related.
“My shrink thinks I use boys to boost my self-esteem,” announced Krysta, “so for the next month, I’m here just to be with you guys. No boys. You guys in?”
Hell no. That was at least half the point in coming out and drinking beer and wearing a skirt. “Totally,” Cindy affirmed, “It’s way more fun going out if you don’t have a goal in mind.”
“In and in,” thirded Cali. “My shrink thinks I should resolve my anger with my dad before getting involved with anyone anyway. She says I’m really interesting, that she loves hearing me talk sometimes because I’ve got this whole unique perspective on family and gender, but that we still need to work on my relationship with my father.”
Cindy’s shrink had never even hinted that anything she said was remotely interesting or even engaging. Cali was generally pretty self-aggrandizing though, so who knew with her. It’s not like Cindy didn’t have interesting inter-cultural perspective herself. Her shrink probably just didn’t think she needed coddling the way Cali probably did. She filed Cali’s daddy issues in her head to throw in the mix casually later that night, in case Cali opted to pull her usual interference by pretending to have way more in common with any boy that Cindy was talking to than Cindy did.
