A glass belongs to a lovely evening, and I won't pretend otherwise. A glass on arrival loosens things up, lifts the weight from the first minute and tastes better shared anyway. But what the ladies keep telling me is something else: the gentleman who is already standing at the door with a head start.
Then the beginning is missing. That small, quiet moment when two people feel each other out, listen, and find their shared tone. One of them is already three steps ahead, expectations sit crooked, and the tone is a touch too casual, too direct, too fast. Harmony is hard to build when only one of you is at the starting line.
From the ladies' accounts I know four faces an evening can show when the pace gets too high. This is my observation, not a statistic.
The Funny One. Everything is a joke, even what isn't. Contagious at first, exhausting after an hour, because no conversation ever gets any depth.
The Irritable One. Small things grow large, the tone sharpens, and one word turns into a duel of words. A gentleman you would not have expected.
The Stranger. A man you would barely recognise sober. Different voice, different sentences, different eyes. The next day he often cannot recall what was said or what happened.
The Tender One. Suddenly stories come out that nobody else hears. That can be moving, but it is rarely the man he wants to be the next morning.
The Stranger concerns me most. An evening that one person lives and the other cannot remember is no longer a shared evening. And the one who paid for it still ends up with the least: the gentleman himself.
I would never forbid anyone a glass. Enjoyment is welcome here. Speed is not. Whoever arrives as he is, sober enough to take in every moment, gets the whole evening and not just its second half.
The vote is anonymous. I will share the result in one of the next entries.
Discreetly yours,
Lena