This is the first of a new series of essays. We have invited some of our contributors to share a story, an episode, an experience that took place at a particular bar–a place that they hold in their memory for one reason or another. We hope you will enjoy reading these essays as they appear each Monday.
by Laura Vanderkam
Boxers was my second stop of the night.
I’d been out for dinner with friends on a cold February Saturday in 2003 when a friend from college called. She was at this Irish bar in the West Village with a man she’d recently started dating and roughly two dozen of his colleagues. Feeling outnumbered, she wanted moral support. So I went. The walls of the crowded space were covered with pictures of Irish writers. Some (Brendan Behan) were obscure. Others less so; as I was ordering a drink, a man asked me, “Now James Joyce – what did he write?”
The literature lover in me got flustered. “Um, Ulysses?” The man smiled, and as I started talking to him, it soon became clear he knew who James Joyce was. He knew a lot of things – more specifically, how to get a woman to start chatting about something substantial in a bar. He was tall, and I’d always gone for tall sorts. He was also handsome and eager to hear about my writing projects. He turned out to work at the same company as my friend’s new boyfriend (though not with him), so there was no awkward exchange of numbers as I soon ducked out of the bar to head home. He worked his channels and emailed me soon after. And for many, many days after that as we started talking, dating, getting engaged one year to the day after meeting in Boxers, getting married, becoming the parents of two little boys, and so forth.
Looking at my children now, I’ve often pondered the magnitude of a seemingly small decision. I could have not picked up the phone. I was having fun at that first restaurant; I could have told my friend we would make plans some other night. But bars are always, in some sense, about possibilities. Sometimes, in life, you are open to trying the second bar. You are open to talking with someone new, even if you can’t yet hear, in his laugh, the echo of your babies giggling years hence.
All you can do is trust that when you are, in general, open to such divine gifts, that is when wonderful things start to happen. Even in a bar. Why not? Jesus turned water into wine, not the other way around. Wherever people are talking and celebrating together is a good place for a little touch of some force larger than ourselves to join the party as well. It swoops down, changes everything, and then like Boxers the bar itself (now closed) is gone.
Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based writer, is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (Portfolio, May 27, 2010)
