Stool For One

When I was younger I had a definite vision of how my life would go. Especially how I'd meet my husband. First, let's backtrack. I love friends. I love having friends and socially engaging with others. Yet for as long as I can remember, and I'm talking well through high school and even freshman year of college, the adult life I envisioned for myself was very lonely. And I was totally okay with that. I never thought of it as lonely or depressing, but I was convinced I'd live alone and enjoy a lot of chicken noodle soup in a strange city where I didn't know anyone, and that I'd go to bars by myself. Yeeeeep, what I used to envision as a typical Friday night was heading home after a rough day of work then walking out of my apartment in Mystery City (Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, any place but New York really), heading to the local bar and kicking back with a beer on a stool at the bar. By myself. Not in an "I'm bff with the bartender and such a regular that this is expected behavior" kind of way. Just a "sittin here by my lonesome enjoying winding down while making myself available to the many men around me" kind of way. I had absolutely no inkling that this would be considered weird behavior. I assumed everyone went to bars by themselves and sat there just thinking, or perhaps reading a book. A lovely man would buy me a drink, sidle up next to me for cozy conversation, and he'd be The One and we'd wed. When I told my mom how I used to imagine this scenario constantly, she raised an eyebrow and said, "So when you were younger you thought you'd be a hooker when you grew up?" Sigh. Why can't women go into bars by themselves at 5pm and just think and sit there waiting to meet husbands?
Well, fortunately/unfortunately that's not how my story goes/went. ("How'd I meet Joe, strange person asking me on the street out of nowhere? Well we were buds freshman year then one time he invited me up to his room with a couple people to drink some beers and watch Animal House and somehow we ended up alone and kissed for 2.5 seconds then we both remembered he had a girlfriend so I left and didn't really care because he was just my bud Joe and his lips were really dry and then the next morning he knocked on my door at 7:30am to tell me we made a big mistake and he loves his girlfriend and it could never happen again and I hid under my covers and wouldn't let him see me because my face was smeared with crusty white pimple cream and so he thought I was a crying wreck and then three years later we fell in love for real and stuff.")
But is it wrong that I sort of have a fantasy of sitting at a bar alone, nursing a Stella, when another one rolls my way courtesy of the strapping lad in a dirty Poochies shirt who then comes to talk to me and it's Joe and we fall in love that way?