Brigadoon: The Mean Fiddler (5/27/2009)

In New York City, women vastly outnumber men. It’s a fact that can make life as a single girl in the city a bit like playing musical chairs and hoping you’re not the one without a seat. The silver lining in this tale is that there is one week of the year when the numbers balance out. One week when been a single girl in New York is like standing in line at a buffet. Fleet Week.

Fleet Week is the one week of the year when New York is pumped full of US service men. The streets are littered with Marines in dress blues and Sailors in crisp white uniforms. The official purpose of the influx of testosterone is the celebration of Memorial Day, but I celebrate more like its spring break. The balance is shifted in female favor for these seven short days and none of them can be wasted.

By the year of my fourth Fleet Week in New York City, I had it down to a near science. I gathered the girls together in Hell’s Kitchen and looked for a bar where we could grab a drink and enjoy the scenery. I absentmindedly wandered over to The Mean Fiddler and came to a dead stop when I crossed the threshold. The bar was packed wall to wall, well beyond capacity, and every single patron was in full military regalia. It was the proverbial jackpot, men as far as the eye could see.

Within minutes I was comparing tattoos with a Marine, Summer was dancing with a Sailor and Jade was accepting a drink offer from a member of the Coast Guard. We sat at a table with a crush of men pressing to get our attention. I was drunk with power. This was a new New York, where women ruled and I planned to take advantage.

I went out every night that week, trying to enjoy the sexual shift as long as I could. On the last night of Fleet Week, I again ended up at The Mean Fiddler. The bar was much quieter then our first night there, with only a smattering of uniformed visitors enjoying drinks. Still, it was only moments before a tall Marine was shoved in my direction. He was a sweet, bespectacled Missourian with a body toned from daily military life and a face that seemed far too young to have seen combat. We talked for hours. He had a shyness and uncertainty about him that men in New York are devoid of. As the hours ticked on, he kept one eye on the clock.

For Fleet Week the military has thoughtfully set up a 2 am curfew, so all the service men disappear before dawn like late night uniformed Cinderellas. Such was the case with the Marine, it was after midnight when he leaned in and kissed me. I collapsed into the heat of it. I could feel the starched uniform against my skin and the muscles of his sculpted body underneath. He felt solid, real. But in less than two hours he would vanish onto a ship and back to whatever life had momentarily brought him here.

I’ve always loved Fleet Week. For seven brief days, the city is flooded with men, but its fool’s gold. The men are a short term solution to the year round imbalance. And while it may be like standing in line at a buffet, the food has no sustenance.

Yes, the Marine would disappear before dawn. I already knew how this chapter would end, but as a relaxed into his kisses, I decided to enjoy the last pages.

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