Barney and Juliet

“So, you’re a friend of Beth’s?” I say, leaning on the bar like I’m not terrified of small talk with women.

“It’s just Beth, actually.”

What’s she talking about?

“You don’t need to say ‘of Beth’s.’ The ‘of’ already attributes possession, so the possessive ‘s’ in ‘Beth’s’ is redundant. Or perhaps a tautology, even.”

She’s a maniac. Beth has sent me on a blind date with a grammar-obsessed maniac.

“You’re clearly a keen language student.”

“Sorry, it’s just a nervous habit. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

We’re ninety seconds into our relationship and already it’s getting awkward. Time for a salvage mission.

Enter humor.

“I wouldn’t say rude. Grammatically speaking, I prefer ‘impolite.’” I follow this mood-lifting gag with a mood-lifting smile that lets her know she’s forgiven.

She looks at me like she’s eternally condemned.

We both check our drinks glasses, longing for a diversion from what is fast turning into an embarrassing story at her next dinner party. They’re both as full as they were before the Grammar Incident, so I take action. Hopefully, she appreciates a man of action. Which, in this case, is me chugging my gin and tonic. Which gives us a legitimate excuse to stand in silence while I flag down the barman.

“Same again?” he says.

“Please.” I turn to my date. “Katie?”

“I’m good.” It’s pretty clear from the abject horror in her eyes that she’s not, in fact, good. Beth has set her up with an illiterate boozehound who can’t control himself around a simple G & T.

Truth be told, I hate gin and tonic, both for its taste and its effeminate overtones. But I thought it might help me exude a diplomatic corps, lazing by the Zambezi River in a Panama hat kind of feel. Exotic and intriguing, like I just stepped off the set of The Gods Must Be Crazy.

“Beth tells me you work for the government,” Katie says.

Why do you hate me, crazy gods?!

It’s tough to be exotic and intriguing when people know you’re a public servant. My best defense now is humility, followed by the classic attention-reversal technique of putting Katie in the spotlight. This will give me the opportunity to demonstrate that I’m an attentive and fascinated listener; qualities I learned from Antonio Banderas in Take the Lead.

“Yeah, I’ve done a few years for the government. But that’s completely uninteresting. You know what they say: only hacks and has-beens work in the public service!”

Now I go all Banderas, raising my glass, taking a sip of G & T, trying not to grimace. Time for the I’m devastatingly intrigued by you line: “What do you do?”

“I’m a public servant.”

The tonic catches somewhere between my epiglottis and trachea, while the gin executes a scorched-earth policy on the inner wall of my lungs. I cough directly into Katie’s face and drop my glass at her feet. Tears well in my eyes; partly due to the act of choking to death, and partly due to the act of dying of humiliation.

Katie shields herself like she’s Helen Hunt in Twister.

“Sorry,” I gasp, wondering if this word that sums up my life will also be my last. Will it be my epitaph as well? Barney Conroy: Sorry.

Perishing this early on in the night would reflect poorly on Beth, though, so I find the will to survive. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to almost die on our first date!” And then I sense an opportunity for romantic discourse. “But if I had died, I would have been happy to take your face into the afterlife with me.”

It’s probably fair to say I’ve still got a bit of work to do to win Katie over. But the combination of intense socializing and heavy drinking has begun to exert irresistible pressure on my bladder. Time for more action. “I’m going to the bathroom. You finish that drink and I’ll buy you another one when I get back.”

She looks like she wants to perish.

When I return to the bar, Katie appears to have taken a short leave of absence herself. Her drink stands untouched, so I finish mine and wait for her to come back. I call the barman over.

“Did the lady say where she was going?”

“She gone, bro.”

Lucky she wasn’t here to suffer that grammatical atrocity.

Although this is disappointing news, at least I can now order something a little less embarrassing than a gin and tonic. “All right, then, mate. I’ll have a Cosmopolitan. And I think you’ll find it’s ‘she’s gone.’”

“Get out.”