Being a hotel bartender is like be able to hide out in the open. I can talk and smile to strangers, just as strangers can talk and smile to me. We can lie to each other. Even if we see each other again, we won't care what was said. They get drunk and forget what was said, if I did my job properly. I'm a non-person and basically just don't give a fuck. I've been at the job long enough that I've seen many travelers come in and out. I know when they've cheated on their husbands or wives, gotten too drunk, puked, passed out...hookers, drugs...you name it. And when they come back, all they remember is my face and that I served them a drink. Maybe they're lying and we're both upholding the understanding, I know I do my part...keep my mouth shut. Of course, sometimes I have to remind a motherfucker of a bad decision or two that he or she made, just so that they don't do it again, not in my bar.
I can see it on their faces when they recognize me. Nights of bad decisions that either began or ended at my bar flood back in and the stink of letting a memory-fart enters the air. "You were here last time," they say, those that perpetrated a pass-out in the lobby, an elevator vomit session or cigarette dick swinging with a homeless man in the bathroom before it was locked up.
At the end of the night, I walk away and they just are away and I won't see them again for a long time, if ever again...