A friend of this page named Penny sent this to me yesterday, and I'm still laughing about it.
It also blew my mind.
Because this reminds me of a story I haven't thought about in years. When I was a bartender at Coyote Ugly back in 1993, there was a customer who used to come in and cause all sorts of disruptions. She was an attractive and completely sane-looking businesswoman, who would enter the bar, calmly order a drink…and then order another…and then by the third drink, she would undergo an Exorcist-like transformation to a screaming, spitting, aggressive demon.
Of course, after a few such outbursts, she was given notice that she was forbidden to enter the bar…but the problem was, these two sides of her identity (sane/insane) were so different from each other that she was unrecognizable in each form. Which means that sometimes she would sneak into the bar and calmly order a few drinks before any of us realized it was HER.
So one day I'm working, and she comes in all smiling and elegant, and I completely didn't recognize her, and I served her a few drinks, and she started to transform into her Mr. Hyde version of herself right before my eyes. I managed to catch on right before she started spitting and screaming, so I took her hand gently and said in a low voice, "You know that you can't stay in this bar, right? You know that you have to leave now, right?"
With great dignity (and to my surprise) she stood up to make her exit without protest. But right before she walked out of the place, she turned around to face me. And with a tired expression, and in a completely calm and weary voice, she said, "If I had known how much trouble it was going to cause me to be your guardian angel, I never would've taken the job in the first place."
AND THEN SHE WALKED OUT — never to return!
And I was like: WHAT THE FUCK???!!!!!!! Did I just throw out my guardian angel?!!!
It freaked me out then and it freaks me out still. Those were really tumultuous years in my life (and a lot of the tumult started at that bar) and the airy-fairy superstitious side of me can't help but wonder if she really HAD been sent to protect me — and if she was just trying to cause distractions to keep me from taking certain ill-advised actions. (Because I damn sure took a lot of ill-advised actions in those days.) And I definitely needed a guardian angel back then. Even a drunk one.
Or maybe she was just nuts.
Or maybe I was?
Wild, right?
Any thoughts?
Years later, when I met Richard from Texas, who really did become my guardian angel, I would think, "Of course my protector is a recovering alcoholic and junkie…" Somehow it just made an odd kind of sense, that someone who'd been cracked and broken by life would be so full of just the kind of light and wisdom I needed.
Of course now I have to ask — have you ever met your guardian angel? At a bar, maybe? On a bus? In some odd place, never to be expected?
If not, just enjoy this goofy post.
Love,
LG
