The Queen, My Lord, Is Dead

Please allow me to be among the first to tell you:

Nanny O'Brien's is pretty much done.

Just about everyone in Washington has lost a night or two in this venerable Cleveland Park hell-hole. And I have to say, I'm going to be sad to see it go. I'll be more than sad; I'll be crestfallen.

Now, to be honest, Nanny's was never a great bar. The place always kind of sucked. Too small. Too dark. Too smokey. Too gaddamned expensive for a lousy pint of Guinness.

But I had a lot of great times there. In fact, during my early 20's it was consistently one of my very favorite D.C. hangouts.

Maybe it was the ever-present Irish brouges heard from both the clientele and the barbacks.

Maybe it was the half-cute/half no-nonsense-yankee-knock-your-feckin-teeth-out Irish waitresses.

Maybe it was the way the cigarette smoke would gradually overcome the nauseating scent of vomit that permeated the establishment during daylight hours.

Maybe it was the overabundance of alcoholic AU students, combined with the constant flow of bawdy, wide-hipped, large-buttoxed, raven-haired Irish-American chicks knocking back drinks at a rate I could only pray to asipre to.

Maybe it was the charming way that over the last four years or so, the urinal in the men's room never once flushed for me. Despite the incalcuable number of times I urinated there....Archimedes would have something say about that.

In reality, those things only added to its charm. I mean, seriously, fuck the Four P's. Fuck their menu with their pansy-ass chicken fingers. Fuck that fuckhead in the corner singing the fucking unicorn song. Fuck ALL of that plastic Paddy bullshit. Nanny O'Brien's was the real deal. The only true Irish dive in D.C.

At the end of the day there are two reasons I love Nanny's in spite of itself:

1. It was the only place I could sneak my little brother and future-alcoholic cousin in when they were under-age (which made me feel a tad cooler than I actually was).

2. For right or for wrong, the memory of a drunken Brian Gaffney dueting "fairtail of new york" with a bairmaid is one of the very greatest Christmas-season memories that I have. For years and years...even when I was living in Twinbrook, I'd hop the red line and return to Nanny's each December, hoping to hear Brian sing "it was Christmas eve, babe....." And it never happened again.

For those reasons (plus the memory of the time I scared off two hottie german exchange students by singing drunken Bob Dylan songs to them, only to be outdone by my buddy puking Guinness all over the interior of a taxicab cruising up 16th street, resulting in a $40 fare and a footchase through downtown Silver Spring by a very dissatsifed cabbie and various members of the Montgomery County Police Department, only to be outdone by said buddy puking more Guinness all over the front door of a -- get this -- professional body builder who lived downstairs from me back when I lived in S.S.) I will terribly miss Nanny's.

Nanny's please don't go.

I know it's late.......

In fact it's too late to be writing this post. But I'm just gonna go and go and go tonight, and get everything out of my system, then I'm going to post this without proofing it. That's the kind of night it's been. And no one reads this blog anyway, so whatever.

I really outdid myself this week. I totally fucked up.

See, I've got this problem...I happen to be really kind of good at a job I dislike. A job/career that makes me unhappy. I've been searching for ways out of it, but somehow every time I job hop (basically every 2-3 years), I end up in the same kind of miserable environment that I came from. This has been going on for eleven years.

Now I'm not going to go into a lot more detail because we all know what happens when bloggers bitch about work

(And I should point out that even if I ended up miserable on every stop, I've worked at a handful of good companies, and only one or two actaully bad places. One of the best, in fact, is under some public scrutiny at the moment. Bummer for them; I enjoyed my time there and make some lifelong friends.

But yeah, this job makes me unhappy, even when i do it well, and even when i do it at a good company. Which I currently do.

It's one of the really sad things about life in D.C. It's a career-based culture. Walking around Capitol Hill on a summer day, you can get lost in it -- the young men in their suits, the young women in their summer work-dresses. The sense of purpose on K street, even at lunch time.

Sure, you can try to ignore that; there are a lot of folks who do the bohemian thing really convincingly in this town. Adams Morgan rastas, Logan fashionistas, Shaw hipsters. But I don't buy it. Even the non-profit-save-the-world-types (a community I wish I had the wherewithall to join) approach their craft in an oddly political, calculating way that screams of careerism.

So, yeah, for the past few months things have been bad at work. So bad, that when a friend at a competing company offered me the chance to interview I jumped.

The position was a big one -- a little over my head, and would require some late nights and a healthy dose of committment and confidence that at this moment in time I just can't summon. Terrified at the prospect of working another few weeks at my current employer's, though, I gave it a shot and made it through four hours worth of interviews.

A few days later I got a call, inviting me back for another four hours worth of interviews.

Still not excited about this prospect, but still afriad of what would happen if I stayed in my current job, I gave it a shot.

And lo and behold I got the job.

Having done my research about salary negotiations, I took a few days and managed to talk the salary up, finally accepting the position last week.

I accepted the position and resigned on Thursday.

On Friday morning, my company called in the cavalry. My employer begged me to stay. I got calls from everyone, including the top brass, asking me to reconsider. They matched my generous salary offer, they gave me different responsibilities. They told me I was valued.

And I caved. I fuching caved.

The problem was that I had already accepted the offer. This, my friends, was very foolish. Because today I had to call the other company and back out of the job I'd accepted.

Remember when Juwan Howard screwed over two teams in two weeks? That's kind of how I feel. Except I'm not making $100 million. (But I am getting booed across town right now).

Yeah, This is not cool.

I also had to call my friend and tell him I was basically screwing him over, costing him a needed employee, making him look dumb for referring me, and -- oh, yes -- destroying his sizable referral bonus.

He's a little pissed at me right now. I'm not even sure if we're still friends.

I have no idea how to explain what I did without sounding like some Holden Caufied pussified piece of shit. But I was afraid of taking that job. Afraid of success? Maybe. But I think I was just afriad to work in the same kind of environment I've been promising myself I'd eventually get out of for the past five years or more.

And, fuck, I was afriad that they'd all find out I'm kind of a fraud and bullshitted my way through eight hours of interviews. Don't get me wrong, it's a talent. But there's a reason snake oil salesmen sell out of their cars.

I feel like I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about making impulsive decisions when I'm in a bad place.

I really made a mess.....