Contrition
I spent the evening of my 36th birthday at a bar in Chelsea. The location is only significant because of who I was there with – my husband, my sister, and her best friend, Lindsey.
Lindsey had lucked into a job at Ogilvy (for which she was grossly under qualified), and lived a few blocks from away from Columbia. Her roommate was in the touring production of Wicked, and therefore never home, so my sister decided to go stay with Lindsey for the summer and work on her writing. (This is neither here nor there in regards to this story, just a fun fact, but the old roommate ended up playing Glinda in the Broadway production).
Lindsey was, still is, as far as I know, a giant mess, bouncing from state to state, from one thing to the next. Her biggest claim to fame is that she set 2,000 acres of a national park on fire and narrowly avoided serving time in federal prison. She’s beautiful – god, so beautiful. 5’11”, long blonde hair, blue eyes, dimples. Whip-smart. And fun, but the kind of ‘fun’ that actually means ‘trouble’. My sister gravitates towards these types, people who are adventurous and spontaneous, but will invariably screw her over in the long run.
My sister and I didn’t intentionally coordinate our travel plans but just happened to be in the city at the same time, and arranged to meet up with Lindsey after she got off of work. I can handle Lindsey in small doses and figured it would be fine for an evening if the trade off was spending time with my sister. We ended up drinking for hours at the same bar, racking up a large tab. The bartender was great, extremely attentive, no doubt due to the two pretty, single ladies in our party. All was well until we went to leave, at which point the bartender said something fairly ugly to Cory. Cory has never been one to make a fuss about those sorts of things, so he shrugged it off and we left.
I however have always, always been the kind of person to take those kinds of things to heart; to let things fester and rankle that should have otherwise been let go. We were in a cab halfway to Lindsey’s apartment before I realized why the bartender had been ugly - Cory had miscalculated our bill and left the bartender with only a ten-dollar tip. Granted, it was unprofessional for the bartender to react the way he did, but he really had provided us with excellent service the entire evening. Lindsey was a regular there, so I gave her some cash that she promised to pass on, but knowing Lindsey he never saw that money.
I woke up this morning, seven years later, still feeling guilty about it. The kind of guilt that sits heavy in the pit of my stomach. Why?
Meanwhile, Lindsey is the type that gives little-to-no thought about how her actions impact other people. She once ran off on a week-long bender, leaving my sister a stranded in a strange man’s apartment. She’s run off with a groomsman right after her own wedding. Twice.
I just wonder how it is the Lindseys of the world go around creating chaos with so little care while I’m still feeling guilty about ridiculous shit like under-tipping someone back in 2015 or a text I sent my mom 10 years ago.
As though thinking about these things over and over is some kind of penitence for benign mistakes and things outside of my control.
11:56 a.m. - 2023-08-03