Girls, Girls, Girls . . .

. . . why is life so hard, you ask? Friday night, another week and last round for this year at the High Line.  Tracey, our waitress, is not her usual glowing self. Tonight, she is wearing her heart on her sleeve, although we suspect she is wearing it just for us, and it is bleeding ever so slightly.

Where am I going wrong, she wants to know?  Why is that only the unavailable men are interested in me?  What is it with these married men and their children?

Over so many months we have listened to the constant updates of Tracey’s dating life and to think it started out so well, with so much optimism.  On Tracey’s part that is.  The single guy, all the way from New Jersey, early 40’s, never married. . . and he has come all the way to the High Line for his social life???

The fireman, from Brooklyn via hometown Wisconsin, or was that Milwaukee, and of course he has a great sense of humour and keeps Tracey laughing like you wouldn’t believe.  He is in his 30’s. They fell out in a fight when her suggestion of a ménage à trois went awry . . . More on that one later.  Maybe.

But now she has the Italian, who is in his 20’s, as indeed is Tracey and this is her youngest to date.  She says with great surprise. He is another one with the great sense of humour. And a wife and small child. Who happen to live upstate whilst he works very hard as a waiter in a rather swanky, gorgeously Italian restaurant, beloved of Anna Wintour, downtown.  Tracey assures us the relationship is purely platonic.  After all, she is only sleeping with him.  Alas, however, the Italian is fading fast from her life.  He seems a little disinterested,  if not a little too pre-occupied . . .

Where am I going wrong, she wants to know,  begging, pleading, but other customers have their demands and Tracey is a professional. We are left with our drinks to sip and contemplate.  And get on with our quiet conversation.

Youth, so wasted on the young, but what of wisdom being wasted on the old?