A cynic meets his match

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

– Ezra Pound

So, I’m downtown, standing at the bar at the Standard Lounge talking with my friend, ordering a round of drinks for us. The bartender comes over, eyeing us up, and I’m thinking that this little cutie seems to have a little bit of what is known as a New York Complex: Ironic sneer, walks with over-exaggerated hip movements, responds only to the questions that she can name-drop, generally unhappy, spends two hours making herself look like she just woke up.

Ah, hell, New York Complex is a term I never really liked, since, for the large part, that condition’s a copy with no original. Anyone who has actually been to New York knows most people just do the things they do without a whole lot of pretensions, and nowhere near this amount of effort and ego.

Anyway, her name was something like…oh, I don’t remember, some name you hear everyday, but with a syllable she probably started to accent differently once she got into college. You know, not Monica – Moanica. (This kind of transformation is very chic, even mandatory in some circles.)

By now I owe my friend a martini, so I go back up to the bar. She sees me, but first takes some other customers because I ordered a very unfashionable Bud Light instead of a hip Chivas on the rocks with a twist, or the sophisticated Grey Goose martini.

I finally get her attention, and she swaggers over in these ultra-low-rise, hiphugger bell-bottom Diesel jeans, and shoots me a “Yeah?” with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. Not rude so much as detached, you know, wry.

Yeah, yeah, I’m a little groggy, but I know what she’s thinking, at least from the way she eyed me up: Ughh, this kid’s never even been to SoHo (which I have) and who the hell orders a Bud Light at the Standard Lounge. Nice jeans…I wonder where those are . Gap? Jesus.

Well, I tell this Moanica or whatever her name is what I want – kind of sharply and loud because I feel that sometimes people with a New York Complex need a little incentive, a little reminder that the rest of the world does not move at the cool speed of irony. I was pissed, starting my own detachment.

“Yeah, another Bud Light, please. Oh, and a Grey Goose martini, extra dry,” emphasizing the last order.

And, of course, she pretends not to hear me, shooting me a depressed sigh, slyly saying, “What?”

I repeat myself, and she goes back to the liquor, splashing around like mad, coming back with my half-filled martini and another blank-eyed stare, telling me my outrageous total, to which I immediately want to say something cutting myself.

Some guy standing beside me looked down at my drink, and rolling his eyes in disgust, says, “What a great martini. Yeah, maybe if she lost ten pounds and moved to Greenwich Village,” not to her, but so she can hear.

And I turned to him and saw where rude cynicism can lead you, what I could be like in twenty years.

Maybe ten, if I wasn’t careful: Another victim of a culture that becomes more and more difficult to deal with everyday without a desperate and cynical eye. Unfortunately, cynicism is always fast-acting, and most times difficult to reverse in a culture of fear and war, anger and frustration – a complex web of problems that have far-reaching effects on those engulfed in it.

Me wanting to say something harsh, labeling a bartender I had barely even spoken to. Some guy next to me ripping a girl over a drink in a crowd empty of apologies – apparitions of cynicism and brutal detachment ordering drinks in some plush, backlit downtown bar…

Another couple of grim faces in a subway or a bar, two more angry petals, swept along that wet, black bough.

John Ross is a senior in comparative studies. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].