"See, I thought the Cubby Hole was an historical/fictional locale," I insisted to Desi and Crazy Legs as we sidled into the Greenwich Village neighborhood bar. Plastic vines overadorned the ceiling and here and there a lantern or a blowfish broke up the lush faux greenery. "Reminds me of my childhood," Crazy Legs chimed. "You know those suburban pool parties."
"Actually, no I don't know those suburban pool parties," I smirked, knowing I was to provoke the 1,432nd variation on the city vs. the suburbs argument she and I had been having for over nine years.
"All the parents would sit around and get drunk, so they left us kids to run wild," Crazy Legs bragged.
"God bless America," I sniffed. "Great role models. Here's 20 bucks, go get us a round."
Desi and I snuggled into our Warner Bros. themed bar stools. Mine featured the bust of Porky Pig. I think Desi had Bugs heads.
Crazy Legs came stumbling toward us, spilling all three of our drinks as she was two items over her quota for the number of items she can hold while walking - what with the crazy legs and all. Still she grinned the grin of the unaware. "Hey," she cooed. "That Italian guy told me about this great restaurant just down the street. Italian men are great. Not like Jewish men."
Crazy Legs was only trying to provoke me into our 1,432nd dialectic on the theme of growing up Jewish vs. growing up Italian. Neither one of us had any room to discuss this - my Jewish family was so assimiliated my maternal grandmother made a ham every Passover and Crazy Legs' mother is Dutch so who were we to discuss this?
Desi decided to save the day. "Here, Crazy Legs, take this five and play something nice on the juke box." Crazy Legs ran with the money to the jukebox like a kid at the state fair buying elephant ears.
We sat arguing our old tried and truisms when an actual, charming native New Yorker sat down and struck up a conversation with us. Turns out she sews costumes on TV and movie sets. We monopolized her for over an hour, demanding that she tell us that every celebrity she'd encounted whom we secretly hoped was a PLU was indeed an invert. "Betty Buckley!" she assured us.
"No way!" I exclaimed, mouth agape.
"Gee," mumbled Desi. "A woman in her early 50s not married ... "
Then the friendly New York tailor rattled something off about a singer on Sex in the City who's dating an older woman on the show and they're both redheads and one might be named Rebecca, but I don't get cable so I couldn't tell you who she was talking about. Oh, she also said that Sara Jessica Parker is real unpretentious and built like a Barbie doll, but she's not PLU.
Just then Crazy Legs adds some heat to her flirt burner and says to the nice lady, "Okay, so you know fashion and you know how to make a body look good. What could you possibly do for any of us?"
"Well, for one thing, I could take those old clothes off of you tonight," purred the tailor. But she wasn't Crazy Legs' type and being selfish like C.L. can be, we all missed our shot at New York makeovers. The seamstress finally cut and ran. Somewhat chagrined, we sat back silently and scoped the Village lesbians.
"You know," Crazy Legs opined, "no matter where you go, girls are girls." I made no comment, even though she was just trying to embroil me in our 1,432nd argument about East Coast vs. Midwestern girls.
