2004-05-09 - 12:57 p.m.

here are three words i never thought i'd use in the same sentence: "irish bar" and "karaoke". i guess that's because i'd never been to queens.

i'm sitting in a filthy wooden booth next to m. her friend t is telling us about her strategy for picking up the trash at the bar. i suggest she could do better. she explains that she just wants to f*ck someone for tonight. i decide she is a woman after my own heart. i tell her i still think she can do better than the drunken asshole currently slobbering on her. i ask if she owns a vibrator.

t has spectacular acrylic nails, and a marlboro 100 menthol clenched between her teeth. i didn't think anyone smoked those, let alone would pay the nyc price of $7 per pack for them. i sort through the crushed packs and crumpled napkins on the table for m's camels, but come up only with c's parliaments, which i think taste like wet newspaper. crap, i am a cigarette snob. i know i should not be smoking (i used to have a pack-a-day habit), but rationalize that since i am in queens, i'm clearly in a 'when in rome' situation.

c (no, not that c) flops his skinny ass in the seat across from me like a moody fish. he complains loudly about the drunken biker shouting a john fogerty song into the microphone. c had earlier performed a spot-on rendition of 'total eclipse of the heart' with another girl. its one of my favorite songs and it endeared him to me instantly. he is from new orleans, an actor. he assures me within moments of speaking that he is single and not gay.

t is one of the best karaoke performers in the place. her 'you oughta know' by alanis morrisette brings down the house. m and i jump on the tiny dance floor periodically to shake ass. a tiny white girl does a very dry, matter-of-fact performance of sir mix-a-lot's 'baby got back'. we get nearly every girl in the place to shake it with us, including the adorable clutch of schoolteachers at the front table. m also does a bracing performance of a song with which i'm not familiar. this irritating white girl from cincinnati, calling herself 'princess banana hammock', periodically gets onstage to ramble through aretha franklin's back catalog. she is way more janis joplin than aretha, and an okay singer, but somehow she still annoys everyone.

i have never karaoked before. is this a shocking admission? when the DJ introduces me he tells everyone i've never sung in public, which is not really true. i chose justin timberlake's 'cry me a river'. i cannot hear myself sing, since princess banana hammock went before me with 'respect' and cranked the sound system. after my lackluster performance, my fan base assures me i sounded great, but i have no reason to believe them or care. the next guy up sings 'wanted dead or alive' by jon bon jovi with a devastating level of sincerity and it nearly brings me to tears.

by the end of the evening the sound system is so loud i resort to reading lips. c clearly thinks i am looking at him so intensely because i want to pick him up. i can't say it hasn't crossed my mind, he is pretty cute. but earlier in the evening i made m promise to drive me home to brooklyn. and i'm really trying to stick to my 'no actors' policy. if i did pick him up, i'd just have to put him back down again. m and c and i close the place, and she drives me home in the rain at about 4a.