About a Girl

For several months now I have had a crush on my favorite bartender. She's adorable, little, nice, funny, and in general one of my favorite people. Her style is just the right mix of princess and bad girl, but without the attitude that so many women of either type tend to have. She's hot as hell, and she knows it, but she takes compliments very well and flirts back to everyone.

She's a dream girl for me.

I'm not exactly sure when she and I actually met for the first time. I had gone to a bar with friends one night to celebrate someone's birthday, and I had really liked the place, and it was so close to both where I lived and worked. Soon I was going there once in a while, and several of the bartenders knew me and what I drank. One Friday after a particularly rough night at work I went down to the bar to drink off the bad shift. I bought my first drink and went out to the patio for a smoke since the bartenders were too busy to chit chat. After stewing over the mistakes I'd made at work and emptying my glass of everything but the ice I wandered back inside and discovered that there was a back bar, and there were stools available.

I sat down and waited for the bartender to ask what I was drinking. When she did, and found out that I drank Jack and Coke she screamed in excitement. Apparently she and I are just about the only women there who will drink whiskey. After introducing herself, Mara and I chit chatted between her various customers. And I liked her. She was so personable, the type of person who made friends everywhere she went.

Soon I became a regular at the back bar on Friday nights, and Mara would ask me if I was planning on coming in when she worked next. We have talked a lot about my job, my boss, my roommate, and I flirted with her every time I had a good line or sly comment for her. The deliberate sexy moves and sultry looks she gives me in response make my night every time.

Part of my fascination with Mara is how much she reminds me of my sister while being so different at the same time. Somewhere along the way I told her "I love you", I think it was when she told me to sit with her friend Bob when too many men were hitting on me and many of them weren't taking "I'm gay" as an answer.

Don't freak out about me telling Mara that I love her. Both she and I are the type of people who, when it comes to the people in our lives who matter to us, we make a point of reminding them that we love them on a regular basis. So I did not say it in a romantic sense, but rather out of affection.

Now, the whole point of me writing this post is actually to vent some frustration about my situation with Mara. If you're still reading this at this point, you may have guessed that the reason I haven't asked Mara out is that she is straight. And she is. So, totally, straight. *sigh*

Add this into the equation: Mara's day job, and my new second job are in different areas of the same company, her position in marketing and mine in patient care. She also has an office next to the administrators, and is technically management level. And I am a drone. Yet another barrier to me being anything other than friends with her. Oh, and she's asked that I don't let on to how much of a freak she really is. She has everyone there thinking she is an angel. And for the most part she is, but she has a wild streak a mile wide. She just hides it very, very well. And I can't even really talk about her at either job now. But more about that in a post about work later.

And again, something else, she's in a relationship with a guy, and it appears to have been building for some time. I am very familiar with the tendency of bartenders, especially young females (such as Mara, and several years ago my sister Des) to hide a relationship that they might be in because of the difference in the tips they get. What I don't get is how I have watched these two work together at the bar every Friday night for months and not realized that there was more going on. I was so blinded by my thoughts about Mara.

So, add it all together, and I am working on moving Mara from the column to the Potential Love Interest column to the Might as well be Family column. I made the decision to change how I see Mara on Wednesday after I realized that she actually was his girlfriend. Its really hard to tell how serious they are, but after some careful observation I can tell he cares for her, and she for him.

And I take great comfort in knowing that if he ever hurts Mara, there will be so many people after his ass that I won't have to hurt him myself. It will already be done before I have a chance to get there.