Cheers to Strangers Saving The Day (or not, but whatever)

It is 12:30 on a Saturday night and I’m sitting alone at a karaoke bar in New Bern, North Carolina. I’m sober driving for my best bud, Barry, who is drunker than fourteen dollars and smoking his twentieth cigarette in the parking lot, while inside a man in sweatpants takes a seat on the stage to holler out his cover of Clarence Carter’s Strokin’.  A couple is seated at the other end of the bar, the woman and I make eye contact and smile, but everyone’s attention is soon diverted to sweatpants guy on stage:                            

I stroke it to the east

And I stroke it to the west

And I stroke it to the woman that I love the best

I be strokin'

Barry returns from his cigarette to catch the majority of the performance, and  the crowd has started cheering and dancing. This is what I love about dive-bar karaoke: nobody gives a single shit. I’ve been to karaoke nights where it seems like everyone is trying desperately to live out their long dormant fantasies of Broadway stardom while simultaneously trying to one-up or act shitty to the other performers . . . like people were going to get paid at the end of the night; like it's American Effing Idol. Better are the karaoke nights in small bars, patronized mostly by locals of all ages, where you can hear Salt-n-Peppa’s Shoop and then Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy, followed by Luck Be a Lady. The skill level varies from quite impressive (a matronly-looking lady rocked the shit out of When You’re Good to Mama) to so dreadful it loops around and boomerangs back to awesome somehow. When two tone deaf gals fumble through Don’t Stop Believin’ with unabashed bravado, you can’t help but root for them. Everyone is just there to have fun.

Barry sits next to me, quotes something from Strangers With Candy, tells me about some idea he has for a YouTube channel. I try to listen to what he’s saying, but a twenty-something kid in a bow tie is on stage belting out Hungry Eyes, and I really want to sing along, and I’m having trouble keeping up with both forms of entertainment. This is when I notice the couple at the end of the bar again, each separately peeking over their shoulders at me.

I drink another water, Barry orders another beer, someone sings Margaritaville.

“Does that couple at the end of the bar keep looking back at us?” Barry asks.

“Yes, I thought I was being paranoid, but they are,” I tell him.

Then the woman looks back again, turns toward us and approaches. She comes in close and I’m worried I should know her and know that I do not.

“Hey do you want to come do a shot?”

I tell her no, I’m not drinking, but thank her.

“Do you wanna come do a shot of water then?”

I think this is the weirdest request ever, but maybe this is a thing. Maybe people do shots of not-alcohol and I just didn’t know about it. I can hardly refuse, because to say no at this point would be just stand-offish and I don’t have enough friends in North Carolina to afford being a big B to anyone.

So I agree to the water shot, tell Barry to watch my purse, and walk down the length of the bar with this blonde woman I’ve never seen before. As we approach her husband, she leans in and asks me: 

“Hey are you ok? You looked like you needed to be rescued from that guy.”

Now the water shot makes sense, their concerned looks make sense. They first noticed me when I was sitting alone at the bar, and they saw Barry come in after a cigarette. They assumed he had just arrived and was now putting the moves on me. I was probably making confused and unpleasant faces because Barry’s drunk-talking and the karaoke music were both drowning one another out and this couple saw a woman, alone, who’s accidentally snagged an admirer who couldn’t stop talking her ear off.

I laugh and tell her the real story. Barry is my best friend in North Carolina, Barry is my neighbor and a friend of my husband, and Barry is very, very gay. His name is Barry Gay.  Despite my feminine wiles, I am definitely not Barry’s type. We have a chuckle over their misinterpretation and they buy Barry a Fireball shot.

As we’re leaving, once we exit the bar and start walking toward Barry’s Lincoln, I finally have the opportunity to explain the mishap.

“Those MOTHER FUCKERS!” Surprisingly enough, to me anyway, the assumption by the couple that Barry was creepin’ on some chick infuriates him.

I feel exactly the opposite. A little shred of my faith in humanity was restored by that couple’s decision to say something when a situation looked weird. They couldn’t know that Barry was Barry and not some rapey creepazoid. If more people behaved that way, if more people took the time to be observant, to not be afraid to interfere or risk offending someone, then maybe at least some actual scary, creepy, rapey situations could be avoided.

“Barry, doesn’t it make you feel comforted in knowing that there are people out there who, if I were actually in that situation, would come to my rescue?”

“No, actually it doesn’t make me feel better. They had me tried and convicted before they even met me.”

I told him that at least their intentions were good, that he might be taking it personally. He pouted the whole way home.

I want to say thank you, strange couple at the bar, that had no vested interest in my well-being other than I looked like a gal in an uncomfortable situation. I wish everyone was like you.

And for guys who might be reading this . . . I imagine it has to be difficult for men to toe the line between meeting girls and coming across like a Creepy McGee. It sucks that there has to be an active awareness of potential dangers to women’s safety. It sucks that even a gay guy can look like he’s ready to slip a roofie into a gal’s drink. It sucks for men, but to be fair, that environment exists because of men. The most noble way, I think, of someone doing their part to rectify a sense of human decency is looking out for strangers. When men, like the husband of the couple, choose to intervene, even though it’s none of their business, even though he could be so wrong, it does a little bit to diminish the rape culture that permeates American society. It tells a stranger that there are good people, good men out there. It makes a woman who has spent a lot of time thinking about patriarchy feel hope for humankind.

Thank you, again, Mara and Justin Something-or-Other. I appreciate you.

Barry, however, is still pissed.