So I'm sitting at the bar, hearing the music in the distance. I got there just before 10, and the back near the band was packed. WTF? Place never starts to fill up until after 11, and I'm gone soon after. Don't like the crowds. But I usually get two sets of music before the annoyance gets the best of me. That was the last show of this fairly popular band with their girl singer, who is leaving for reasons who the fuck knows.

So this time I had to find a stool in the middle of the bar, far from the action. It can be kind of fun to watch the guys flying around filling orders. They make something of a show of it. But I wasn't liking it that much, because I was more by myself in the middle of things. I'm OK by myself down at the end of the bar, because I can turn and focus on the band, and that's why I'm there anyhow. The middle is supposed to be all social & stuff, and I'm there alone. I can chat a little with some people, but these are mostly 30 year olds and we just don't seem to have a lot to say to one another. And the women seem worried that I'll come on to them and they'll have to go to the trouble of smacking me down. Or maybe I'm projecting that onto them. But it's not a comfortable spot for me.

But from where I was,I could see the basketball game on the tv at the other end of the bar, a small benefit. And sitting next to me in that direction was this late 20s woman, black dye job, heavy black plastic glasses, zaftig in a horizontal black and white striped shirt. Think Janeane Garofalo with an extra 20 or 25 pounds. I am careful to demonstrate that I'm looking not at her but past her at the tv, because when my eyes stray her direction, she fidgets and picks at her purse in front of her. That's how I first noticed her there.

So life goes on, I'm watching the show behind the bar and looking around the room. Then I look back at the tv, and the Knicks are barely holding off a charge from Portland. But something is different. That young woman is now wearing a black T-shirt. No she's not. She's become a man. That stool space had transmogrified itself to contain a young man, late 20s, with black sorta spikey hair, heavy black glasses, and probably 20 extra pounds. In other words, he was the boy version of the fidgety girl.

She had disappeared, but she showed up later hanging around this guy. They were friends or dating or something. But at least she hadn't been all wiped out of existence to make room for him. That was a relief.

I spent a good part of the rest of my time there struggling to recall the name of the Virginia Woolf story. I left after the first set, well and the set break. Right as the band was quitting, one of the guys filled my glass for free, so I had to drink some of it to be polite. And outside I saw something I'd never seen before. There was a line of ardent youth outside the door waiting to get into Herb's. Weird.