So, Who's Got All the Tat?

On Saturday night, Toasty and I drove up north to attend the birthday party of his daughter. It was at a martini bar in a hotel -- good food, great cake, excellent company -- and a good time was had by all. We got there at 8 pm (on time; a fact that did not go unnoticed or unremarked) and left around 10 or 10.30, according to Toasty.

The bar wasn't particularly full when we got there, but as the evening progressed, it started to fill up with young people ordering the kind of martinis that would have James Bond projectile vomiting off the side of his yacht. I'm sure they tasted wonderful -- especially the one with the gummy bears on the toothpick where the onion or olives would normally hang out -- but let's just say that these are not your boozy uncle's kind of martini. I generally really dislike gender stereotyping, but these martinis were downright girly. They came in lots of pastel pinks and blues and light yellows and greens, and so many had bits of candy floating in them, I was starting to wonder if perhaps someone had leftover Halloween treats lying around and decided to plunk a handful in with some Malibu and "SoCo" and call it a martini.

The birthday girl chose the place because she used to hang out there when she lived in the area, and the tables were big enough to put a party around, and the food and drink and service were definitely above par. But it was without question the sort of place that would attract a certain kind of sorority girl in droves: "viewing booth" type seating where one could arrange oneself for maximum displayage (not that they needed help, but more on that in a moment), and drinks so pretty they'd look just as colorful and feminine on the way back up as they did in the glass.

And where one finds young, preening girls, one often as not finds young, gawping boys.

So at some point later in the evening, I looked around and noticed that there was an awful lot of ... there's no polite way to say this. But there is a French way: decolletage. In good old, Anglo-Saxon: boobs. They were everywhere. Shirts were cut so low and involved so little material that they were more swatches than actual clothing. At one point someone made mention of the "girl in the red blouse." Toasty turned to look at her and said, "I see some red around the edges. Is that the girl you mean?" Yes, shirts operated as little more than parentheses that night.

And of course, the boys at the bar were being happily pulled in by the sheer gravitational weight of all that abundance. Every time a woman reached down to pick up her purse or retreive a napkin that had fallen on the floor, the swivelling of male heads actually produced a breeze sufficient to blow out the candles on C's birthday cake. Those boys were kids in a mammary shop, trying to figure out how to spend their allowance.

Just behind our table were two of the viewing booths (I swear that the booth backrests actually leaned backward for unnecessary emphasis). One booth was entirely populated by women, each one sporting the kind of rack that gets a moose shot. The other booth was entirely populated by men who must have had blinding headaches the next day from the strain of sneaking peeks and then pretending not to -- all without moving their heads. A line of small clouds was forming at the front where the testosterone and estrogen met.

A friend later said that such display was to be expected at a college bar, but really, this place was less about college and more about collagen. I was in college once, and I really don't remember the sheer volume of cleavage. That's not to say it wasn't there, but I think perhaps it wasn't as gleefully on show.

All I can say is, if it truly is an even exchange of tit for tat, then somewhere in the world there's a bar with enormous piles of tat.