7
Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's, 9 p.m.: the ancient Ukrainian bartender makes my change and hands it back to the guy sitting next to me. Breaking: Obama won Ohio! There are eight of us in the bar, and a shorn and bespectacled young man shouts, "He won Ohio!" to the peanut gallery sitting in the back. Scattered applause.
Now it's 115 McCain, 195 Obama.
"I'm so impressed. Finally, we're doing something right," says a shaggy dude in a denim shirt.
"But do you think he'll take Long Island?" an earnest Asian boy asks.
"God, just say something," someone else moans at the TV punditry. "'So, Bob, what did you have for lunch?'" he mocks.
"I wish we had a—what do you call that thing that shows the hot girls taking off their panties—oh, a webcam of Rush Limbaugh, right at the moment where Obama wins. I just want to see his eyes pop out of his head," says the outspoken shaggy dude.
Now we're at Blarney Cove, 10 p.m.: the "mid-day gentleman's bar" in the twilight zone on 14th between A and B is usually more crowded at ten in the morning. No matter:
"Who do you think'll win?" I ask the oldster next to me. He smiles: his reply is a long one, and utterly incomprehensible. He removes himself to wrangle with the jukebox; "Teacher's Pet" comes over the speakers.
"This country does not deserve Obama. America is the Zombie Bride!" exlaims a young man in a grey suit and homberg.
"America is the Zombie Bride!" he shouts. "It's a metaphor."
