Bare shoulders on a cold evening

At last night's Writers with Drinks show I sat at the bar, as usual. You can hear fine there, on account of the excellent P.A. system, and it's fun to scope out people in the mirror. Besides, the visuals of writers reading are usually the least important parts.

Last night I was distracted when not one but two women came in, doffed their coats (there's no coat check, so where do the coats disappear to? No idea) and emerged wearing bare-shoulders outfits. One was in what I might call a modified bustier, white -- on a cold night in December, and they don't close the door to that bar. The other wore something that fit tightly around her torso and completely bared her shoulders, and she chose to sit right next to me, or in front of me if we were turned sideways facing the stage. She was very huggly-snuggly with her husband all night, so I only stared surreptitiously at the first woman, who was with a female friend. Tall and lanky, she stood fearlessly in her revealing costume and faced the stage with a hard expression. But the only interaction I had with people was when they would lean over my shoulder and order drinks. By the time I was on my second drink I was pretty buzzed, and I considered turning to some fetching lass who was pressed up against me and saying, "You know, we'll probably never be this close again," but even as I thought about saying it, it sounded stupid.

For the second half I moved up to the side of the stage and stood half-sitting on the edge of the pool table (they let you do that, which in any bar where respectable pool players meet is verboten) much closer to the stage. This was a great WWD evening -- all the funny readers were extremely funny, and it got better and better as the evening went on. So the last reader, Karen Joy Fowler, completely convulsed people. Of course, we were all pretty drunk by this time -- I know I was -- but it was a funny story anyway that she told, and it wasn't easy following a suggestive story about a boy and his unicorn.

Afterwards briefly connected with Liz and MC Charlie, but all they were on their way to another engagement, all their friends wanted to go eat, and I just walked home tippsily. That's one of the things I really like about that gig, it's only about 2/3 of a mile from my house.