Victory?

When Irish was breaking up with me (a term I use loosely, as we were never really together enough for me to be broken up with) I asked him, semi-joking, who was going to get custody of Barney's Beanery. I knew that, as Redskins fans, it was inevitable that we run into each other there - especially because that's how we met in the first place.

He said that it didn't matter, that we should still remain friends (after all, we had so much in common) and that we could both still frequent Barney's. But he definitely wasn't giving it up, since he had nowhere else to go, and I had Big Wangs (my other sports bar).

The first week after our dating fiasco, I went to Wangs. There was no way I was risking running into him.

The next week, the Redskins weren't playing. The following week (last week, after Red's birthday) he was out of town.

Bu this week, he showed up. We were barely into the first quarter when The Sister said, "Crap, here comes Irish."

I don't know if he knew she had spotted him or not (I had my back turned, and there was no way I was going to try to see him), but he didn't come over to the Redskins corner of the bar.

We were there, through the entire game: cheering, jeering, yelling and screaming, and for the times that The Sis could see him, he remained in a back corner - watching the game in isolation.

I felt like this was a small victory. As if - even though he was the one to break it off, to reject me - I won by not being afraid to go to my favorite sports bar. Like I stood up to him, in a way that I couldn't that night that he was telling me that it would never work, and I held my ground. He retreated, and I gained a grim satisfaction from that fact. And I just got my hair cut, so I looked damn good doing it.

Lyrics of the Day

"And you will say that you're making headway, and put it in overdrive. But you're mistaking speed for getting what you need and never even noticing you never do arrive." Aimee Mann Driving Sideways