The wife's play has opened, and so I continue to enjoy some private time on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. This is ostensibly a good thing--it does one good to spend some time every now and then by oneself. Or so I'm told.

The real truth? I fucking bore myself silly.

It's an odd thing. When I've been spending time alone at home when she's off performing, I've been doing the same things I do when she's here: watching piteously bad police procedurals; watching woeful, dreary horror movies; reading my idiotic comic books; reading dreadful novels. (I just tonight finished up Hannibal Rising. Why? Because I read all the other ones, for Christ's sake, yes, even Harris' spirited "fuck you, nagging fans!" that was the rapturously stupid Hannibal. Anyway, as you can guess, it stinks.)

So I'm not doing anything different while the wife is off being the artiste. So why am I so fucking bored with myself? Why do I sit here with the blood roaring in my temples, staring at yet another "Law & Order" rerun or a copy of Iron Man Vs. Chemoglobin and think, Hey, me? You are fucking boring.

I could call friends. I do have them, and I love them. But I don't call them. Normally, I don't have to. I have my wife! (My friends don't call me, either, and I wouldn't if I were them. After all, fuck me: I never call. I have a cell phone that exists solely for me to be able to say, "I have a cell phone." It literally serves no other purpose.)

The thing is, I like being able to watch terrible visual media or read insulting literary refuse while my wife is with me. I'm not sure why, and I don't mean to sound corny or sappy about it. But it makes a difference. Maybe it's just the simple animal comfort of proximity; maybe it's the knowledge that at any time, I can turn to her and say something like "Iron Man is an irritating choad," and be met with a polite, "Well, all right."; or being able to share giggles over astonishing and confusing entities such as David Caruso and the Seattle Mariners.

(Now I kind of want David Caruso to coach the Mariners. He can stare at Adrian Beltre with those dead-reptile eyes of his and whip off his sunglasses to croak, "Let's see some hustle out there, Adrian," and Beltre will jovially blap, "Sure thing, skip!" right before he strikes out swinging and loses control of his bat and it sails into the stands and kills a mother of three, and then David Caruso stonily arrests him with some pithy quip like, "Sometime, coaching can be murder." YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!)

On Friday night, I had had enough of me. Me, I said, for God's sake, let's just go to the bar. Me and me had a deal, and so I went down to my new favorite bar, which is helpfully a block away from my apartment. It's about a year old, and I love it; I am sad to say that it has replaced my former favorite place, a faceless thing of a place that charmingly refused to do things like wash its walls. The first straw was when they removed the awful Megatouch machines; the second was when I was recently served a martini with tiny winged insects in it and was told, "They must be in the olives." Must they? Say, I think I'll have a beer.

The new place is much more upscale, done in dark wood tones, dim lighting and a somewhat forced Asian feel. It is a scratch bar, which I love ("We have a cranberry moat out back! Let me go stomp you some juice!"), and their drinks are refreshingly creature-free. They also feature wonderful bartenders who are not at all reluctant to tell you entertaining stories about how last night they got ripped up on some horrific Cambodian whiskey that was laced with methamphetamine and then discovered cellphone evidence of a late-night call to a sex line.

They also enjoy coming up with fanciful drinks with names like Bit of Guv'nor's Time?, Teenager's Lament and Ina Garten's Self-Satisfied Chuckle, and these drinks, though typically Baroque in construction, are unfailingly delicious, and usually feature unusual elements such as port, or Chartreuse, or Xylene. It all sounds very fussy and too-much, but it is not, and I adore this place. So I went.

I seated myself at the bar and fiddled momentarily with my cell phone, making sure that it still was in good useless working order: this is the lonely dance of the unaccompanied person at a bar. Fuck with your cellphone, make it look like you're staring at text messages or something, so you don't look so pathetic. Meanwhile, you are doing something pathetic like playing Canal Control. Which I was.

The other thing the unaccompanied person at a bar does: people-watch. After E., my good bartender, brought me my delicious Thicket of Dense Reasoning (gin, muddled dill, cucumber garnish), I began scoping out my companions at the bar. I was seated near two young ladies enjoying a night on the town; whenever E. would inquire if their drinks were okay, did they need another round, etc., they would titter and coo at him shamelessly. "Would you date him?" one asked the other while E. made their drinks. "I'd fuck him," replied the other, and they broke into laughter that rose to the ceiling like flushed, terrified birds. I stared into my drink and then fumbled with my cell phone again, pretending it was doing something of interest.

A few minutes later, the ladies ordered two shots of something that they called "Killer Bees," and I noticed with clinical detachment that they involved Jagermeister and some other hellbrew that I couldn't identify. By this time, I was working on another house drink called One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula (12-year rum, blood orange, flensed whale blubber, bitters), so maybe I can't say anything, but an icy shudder ran down my spine. After these nightmares, they finally called for E. to settle up. As they regarded their bill with fixed concentration, one clawed at her purse and produced a pen.

"I love these pens. They are so inky."
"They are awesomely inky. They're the inkiest."
The first girl then tunelessly sang: "IIIIIIIIIINKYYYYYYYY PEEEEEEEEEEEENS!"

I finished my drink, and settled up with E., tipping him well, of course. (You don't take care of your bartender? You're a fool.) It was time to go. My girl was coming home soon, and I didn't have to be bored any more.