Best Seat in the House

When is one more time, one time too many?

 

So, I'm on vacation on the California coast in October when the weather there is perfect. A big secret all the locals tell me. When I return home I'll arrive to a snow storm so, let's hear it for California.

 

I'm there with my millennial daughter who is an executive with a tech job, an elegant style, a good heart and a tendency toward stubbornness that she inherited from her father.

 

As for the rest, I make no claim.

 

We were mostly enjoying Carmel moving between it, points south and Monterey as the mood and a rental Volvo took us.

 

Is there a place near where you live that attracts the richest among us? The well-heeled. Well-to-do. Those with lots of disposable income to dispose?

 

Jackson Hole, Wyoming is that place closest to me. A town with a spectacular view. Where the bars are historic, the cowboys are fake and everything costs ten times what it should.

 

Carmel is like Jackson Hole with an ocean.

 

But, the weather was perfect. The food was good and thanks to a recent change in fortune, we had money to burn.

 

And so we did.

 

Who knew that such a thing as a cashmere bathrobe existed?

 

Not me.

 

But I do now.

 

So between spending money like drunken sailors and out-waiting digestive insults caused by an encounter with raw oysters, we climbed the rocks and stared into the sea at Point Lobos, now proclaimed to be California’s premier state park.

 

 

When I was 19 and a photography student at a college south of there, I would go to Point Lobos to stand with the ghosts of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, holding my camera and all of life ahead of me.

 

 

Do you have a place like that? A place where you can occupy the same space you stood as a teenager and be there years later and feel the time between?

 

Or consider it?

 

I suppose that’s the gift age gives us, contemplation.

 

Along with the inability to eat raw vegetables, fading eyesight and the things that used to be perky and in the front now hanging slightly to the side. 

 

FYI, if you want to visit Point Lobos plan to get there before eight AM because by ten o’clock the parking lots are full and they close the gate.

 

 

I asked a park ranger what caused this. They can’t all be photographers, I said. He replied social media. Influencers on whatever.

 

We did see groups of young people walking the trail. Not stopping to look at anything. Just scurrying along, making the loop and moving on.

 

Be there. Be seen. Be gone.

 

What a world.

 

I can stand in the same spot Weston stood and stare down at China Cove, same as him, but he and I and everything else except the rocks and the sea are immutably different.

 

 

So, with contemplation and a good bra I accept it’s better than the alternative which I’m told is pushing up daisies.

 

And then, we reached the last night of our coastal vacation.

 

My daughter had made a reservation at a restaurant in an elegant hotel. Four stories of balconied rooms overlooking Monterey Bay. Lovely.

 

We arrived early and were told to wait in the bar. They would text daughter’s phone at the appropriate time.

 

We went into the bar and sat at an empty table by the window in a space with at least eight other empty tables.

 

I was contemplating an adult beverage with a sea air chaser and a view of the sunset over the ocean.

 

Daughter was contemplating a plate of crab legs.

 

A waiter arrived and told us these tables were for dinner reservations. We’d have to wait at the bar.

 

Daughter apologized and we moved and sat at the bar which is where I first detected something awry.

 

The bartender slammed down our drinks and turned away.

 

Daughter had bartended her way through grad school so she nonchalantly corrected the bartender’s lack of manners, tucking napkins under our drinks while continuing to cheerfully chat with others waiting nearby.

 

Ten minutes after our assigned reservation time I suggested she go check. She did.

 

A couple of minutes later a chic young woman in a tux, no less, led us to a six chair table in the traffic path four feet from the entrance and said, “Here you are, ladies.”

 

Have you ever been addressed as ‘lady’ in a tone you know didn’t offer compliment?

 

Lay-dees.

 

And I looked at the smug young shit in the elegant female tux and said, no.

 

No. We are not sitting here.

 

Surprised, she said she’d check. Went out to the entrance, came right back and led us to the table where we had originally sat down before being sent to the bar.

 

I was not amused.

 

In fact, I felt a cold silent rage rise like the tide coming in. I didn’t sit down.

 

A waiter arrived, slapped down two one sheet bar menus and a couple of glasses of water. Said, “I’ll give you a minute” and left.

 

Fish and chips. Hamburger. No crab.

 

I said, we’re leaving. Daughter looked up from the menu.

 

They’re not treating us right. We’re leaving.

 

The waiter returned. Ready to order?

 

Daughter apologized -- oh we wanted crab tonight.

 

Waiter made some inane remark I don’t remember because I was thinking,

 

When is one more time, one time too many?

 

Old women become invisible. Did you know that?

 

It’s true. I’ve often wondered if it was that first gray hair or those last ten pounds?

 

Now, I confess I still dress like I did in college. Old hippie. Comfort over fashion which I never understood anyway.

 

But my daughter is an executive with style, so I’m not sure what caused us to be perceived as not up to the mark for the rarified air of that establishment.

 

She continued to apologize as the waiter saw us off with a smirk.

 

Walking out through the marble-floored hallway, down the wide staircase with the oak banister, she kept it up.

 

Maybe it was this. Maybe it was that. And I said,

 

fuck’em.

 

She shushed me. And I said,

 

You don’t have to be polite to someone who is treating you with disrespect. Seriously.

 

fuck’em.

 

We went about a mile farther down the waterfront onto the Monterey pier and approaching a restaurant called Delmonico’s, we were greeted by the male host, also in a tux, who asked --

 

“Ladies, are you joining us for dinner? Let me show you to the best table in the house.”

 

As he was pulling out a chair for me, I said to my girl,

 

See the difference?

 

Now, I know this host’s patter was part marketing, part manners and a little bit of bologna. But what’s wrong with a little bologna once in a while.

 

Daughter had crab legs with veggies. I had crab-stuffed shrimp with a nice Pinot.

 

 

I tipped the waiter 20% because he made us laugh.

 

So, women, sisters, ... ladies.

 

What is the answer? The solution. A proper response.

 

We can’t continue to snarl fuck’em at miscreant men and our unsupportive sisters can we?

 

That might get old. Although I’ll tell you, cold silent rage felt better than I ever imagined.

 

Maybe, draw a line. Make a boundary. This stops here. Now.

 

I’m not having it. I won’t have it. Not this time.

 

And walk away.

 

Walk away.

 

And keep walking until someone greets you with a smile and a little bologna.

 

Because the best seat in the house is the one you find yourself.