Shaken,
by Rebecca Ford — Age 22 — Los Angeles, CA
I have only been able to drink legally for one year now. Plenty of people, mostly men, have sat across the bar from me and mumbled, “You don’t look old enough to drink. You must be barely eighteen.”
Actually, I am 22. I am a 22-year-old part-time bartender in Beverly Hills. I spend my days in graduate school. I spend my late nights to early mornings pouring, shaking, and mixing. This is not what I will do forever, but it is what I do for now.
Bartending is easy money. But it’s all a lie. I am a lie. I am a bad bartender. I drop glasses, I break bottles, and I am not fast. I am only a good bartender because of one very important, and often ignored gift: I can listen to people. I can really hear people.
About a year ago, I realized that almost every person who sits down at my bar is looking for one thing: a friendly ear. We spend all day fighting to be heard, fighting to mean something to a world that is moving all too fast. And all we want is a little validation.
One night, a woman dressed in a beautiful coat, an expensive scarf, and sparkling diamond earrings sat down at the bar. She ordered a martini, just as I would have expected. At first, she barely spoke a word, but ten minutes later, she pointed at the television, and asked who was playing. She told me she was going to the Super Bowl in a few weeks, but had no idea who was playing. I asked why she was going, and she said her husband has a business trip that required going to the game. She half-smiled, saying she was sure it would be fun, although she would spend the whole game pretending to be interested in something she had no interest in. I will never be sure if she was talking about the game or her husband.
I have met people of all walks of life at my job. From the lonely, forgotten, out-of work director of ancient television shows, to groups of young, screaming girls ready for a night out on the town. Everyone has a story to tell, and my job is simply to hear them.
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