Crazy woman in a bar

So Niklaus and I were up at the Be Loud! Sophie First Monday at the Tiger Room at the Station (where most of you were sorely missed, and which was the best ever).  There we were, sitting at the bar, talking about our kids and the other things discussed by homo suburbanus, when this blonde sits down at the bar near us.  Not altogether unattractive. Yet.  As we shall see.

So she leans over to us and says:  "I'm going to go out on a limb here, are you guys gay?"  And we were like, um, er, well, no not exactly.  And she clarifies:  "It was just because of the checked shirts and khakis and hair product."  And indeed Niklaus had recently gotten his wig tightened at Syd's and it looked good.  So we weren't offended or anything.  Yet.

Anyway, she starts blathering on about how she had met some woman and thought she was cool but then she found out she was in fact rather reactionary.  And she just goes on and on.  Really pretty annoying, honestly.

A few minutes later she asks Niklaus how old he is, and he says 50, because he will be in October, and you might as well round up.  And she doesn't believe it, and she says how much younger he looks than Lucy, whom we had pointed out earlier as his wife.  So now she's starting to veer into offensive territory, insulting Lucy.  Then she says how 50 is so hard to imagine, and I look her over and go "Well of course, given that you've got 18 years before you turn 50." (being polite, guessing way young on her age) To which she allows that she is in fact 40, and I hinted that I was just guessing low to be polite because I was raised well.

Then she starts railing on how people in the South, as well as the MidWest, have these fake manners that drive her crazy, her being from California and all ("this place was just a blip on the map to me before I moved here.").  So I say "Would you prefer that I be direct and frank with you?" "Yes", she says.  So I just say "Well, before you got here, we were talking," and then go back to talking to Niklaus, shutting her out.

She was, in short, and this is a term we don't really use that much for women, but perhaps we should, an asshole.  It reminds me of the danger of going into bars, where you are fair game for sad, lonely people with mixed drinks.