At Least I've Had a Tetanus Shot Recently

Last night before walking into Piano’s, my friend, who had grown up on the LES, wryly noted that the bar is where her family used to buy pianos. Put plainly, Piano’s on a Friday night blows. You will keep bumping into douchebags, girls in flimsy tops will run into you and spill your glass of wine, and when you are searching for your friends on a faux dance floor you will step on something sharp that you cannot see and still will not know what it was when you wake up the next afternoon to discover blood on your foot.
Piano’s is a great place to go for a reading, like One Story’s excellent monthly series, on a Friday around 6 or 7. Friday around 1 or 2 is different. We would have gone somewhere else, but my friend’s friend from out of town was there. Which seemed to be a trend, out-of-towners at Piano’s. I was waiting for the bathroom downstairs. There was a huge line behind me. There was a bathroom that no one was going in, so I opened the door to see why. The floor was really wet and nasty, not completely flooded, but when you already have blood on your foot, you don’t want it to be wet, too. So I said to the guy behind me, “You can go if you want, I’ll wait for another.” And he said, “What’s the matter?” I explained. “You don’t want to go in because it’s wet?” He chuckled at me. So I waited for another restroom, went in there, and then I heard the douchebag leaving the “wet” bathroom and asking the guy behind him, all sarcastic and shit, “You sure you wanna go in there? It’s wet!” Then they both had a good chuckle. “That’s just par for the course!” one said. “What do you expect in New York?” the other said. The only people who say things like “What do you expect in New York?” are people who do not live in New York and have an image of the city as this drug-infested, crime-ridden, pre-Giuliani cesspool.
Call me crazy, but I don’t expect to be cut with glass and use flooded toilets when I go out. But maybe I’m just a snob.