Three Amigos

I miss the triumvirate. About seven years ago two of my musician buddies, Michael and Brad, invited me out for Mexican food on a Sunday evening. We had such a good time, talking about the music business, and our lives in general, that we decided to make it a weekly thing. This was nice. One of the downsides to being a musician is that if you are working regularly, you never get a chance to listen to other musicians. You normally have a gig when they have a gig. Occasionally you’ll be on a double bill, and can hang out after the show, but more often than not you pack up your equipment at the end of the night and wind down any way you can.

For the next several months, we gathered at a little Mexican restaurant on Sunday evenings at around 6:30. The restaurant closed at eight, so we’d pay our bill and head over to another place that had a bar and stayed open until midnight. At the restaurant the three of us would talk about music, at the bar Brad and I would try to keep the conversation going while Michael would flirt with Tanya, the pretty young bartender. She wasn’t interested in any of us, but if anyone had a shot it was probably Brad, as he was a little closer to her age than Michael or I.

One night Michael’s advances were a little more aggressive than usual, and Tanya, while being a little trooper about it, was obviously starting to get a bit tired of the attention. At this point we’d been coming here for about three months, and through a few stray comments here and there, I had an idea that she was barely twenty-one, the oldest of her siblings, and had young parents. In a sudden flash of insight I asked,

“Tanya, how old is your dad?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Ohhhh, Michael! You’re three years older than her dad!”

Guys give each other grief all the time. That’s all I was doing then, giving my buddy a hard time and maybe giving Tanya a little relief as well. While Tanya certainly appreciated the result of my observation, I’m afraid my remark to Michael hit too close to home. In fact, he had a look on his face like I’d just punched him in the stomach. I still feel bad about that.

Michael got over the remark and the three of us continued on for several more months before I caved in and accepted a regular Sunday night gig at a sports bar a few miles down the road.