A sad and intense day at work

It was a sad, strange day all around me yesterday. I have a good friend who rides with me all the time. Her boyfriend went to jail yesterday morning, after a few reprieves and delays and so on. He was supposed to go last week, but at the last minute was told to show up after the holiday weekend. So of course my friend was all sad.

Then I was called in to Porters for a rare Monday shift, (Thursday is my usual day) because the mother of one of the girls had died. Porters is a kind of small-town bar in a medium-sized city, where everybody knows everybody else, and many of the people knew this particular girl and her mother going back 2o years or more. It turns out that this girl's mother died of the same thing the wife of one of our regulars died of, a couple of months ago. Sadness sort of permeated the whole atmosphere. After I commiserated with the regulars who knew the dancer and her mother and the customer and his wife, I moved down the bar. The next person I met was a widower who, because he is focusing on his two teenage sons, has not been looking for a new lady friend. He seemed to think I might be the one, but of course I'm not. When I danced for him, he held on to me like I was his last hope.

Later I saw an old friend who also buys dances from me. He told me about how, while I was on vacation, his wife had died swiftly and unexpectedly of a heart condition nobody knew she had. To make matters worse, he decided last week to read her journal, and found out some awful surprises. If you are reading this, my friend, know that my heart goes out to you.

I was only at Porters for 2 1/2 hours, but I felt like I had been bathed in sadness by the time I left.

(At this point, I feel like I am obligated to write some dumb moralistic comment about the value om my work as an entertainer/temporary therapist/surrogate something-or-other. But look, there is nothing to say. People were sad yesterday. A lot of them. I was there with them, and I listened to their stories, and I helped share the load. Isn't that just basic human decency? )