“Number twenty-three. Manhattan and Boulevardier. Thirty seconds,” said the guy who was running that night’s game of Differences.
Bars have always hosted dart leagues, trivia nights, poetry slams, and other events to get people in on a slow night. But this bar hosted a game called Viva La Différence on Mondays at eight. Everybody just called it Differences. You got a sheet of paper with twenty-five lines on it to answer what the difference was between two words that were barked out. You had thirty seconds between the words, and a minute at the end to finalize your answers.
The prizes were small—often just a round or two at the bar, but the payout could go all the way up to a pair of movie tickets. You would think that there’s no possible way that a game which took about a half hour or so to play would draw in people, and keep them in the bar afterwards.
But you would think wrong.
Put this game in a bar on McDougal in the Village, and word nerds from all corners of Manhattan fill it up fast. These people have gigantic (some of them would say Brobdingnagian) vocabularies, and need to prove it. After the game was over, they stuck around for hours to argue etymology, origins, and derivations of the words that were used in that night’s game.
“A Boulevardier has Campari in it, along with the whiskey and sweet vermouth. Put it down,” Janice told me.
I dutifully wrote down the answer on the sheet.
“I still think you’re wrong on number three,” I whispered to her so no one else could hear. “A cuspidor is a type of spittoon, not the other way around.”
“It’s right.”
“Number twenty-four,” the emcee called out. “Midwife and doula. Thirty seconds.”
“I know this one,” I said. “A midwife is medically trained, a doula provides non-medical support and doesn’t deliver the baby.”
“Yep, write it down.”
Janice and I were set up by some mutual friends. We hit it off, and got exclusive in less than two weeks. She was getting her PhD in Linguistics at NYU while working for Harper & Row translating books, and I was doing my thing downtown. This was our fifth time at Differences but we never managed to crack the top five, much to her chagrin.
“Number twenty-five. Graveyard and cemetery.”
Groans came from every player, and mumbles abounded that the last set of words should at least provide some challenge.
— | —
“I’m sorry about the cuspidor answer,” Janice said to me outside the bar. It was the third time she apologized to me.
“We won. You should be excited. What’s to be sorry about? We got twenty-four out of twenty-five.”
“But we could have had a perfect score. And,” she emphasized by holding up her index finger, “more importantly, you’re never going to let me forget that you were right, and I was wrong.” She turned her hand toward me and pointed to my jacket pocket. “I saw you keep the answer sheet. You’re going to show our friends.”
She was right.
“I got an idea on how to make it up to you,” she said as she slipped her left hand into my right and tugged me down McDougal.
“It’s not necessary. We won the big prize—coupons for two hot dogs and two fruit drinks at Gray’s Papaya.” I took the vouchers out of my back pocket and fanned them for effect. “These babies must be worth six bucks.”
But Janice was determined to make it up to me, and laid out a plan.
“First, we’ll go to your place for a quickie. Then you can pack a bag for work tomorrow, and come back home with me for the night. Sound like an idea?”
“Will this quickie involve any manual or oral stimulation?”
She tried really hard to suppress a smile. “You do realize that I can always change my mind.”
I held up my arm. “Taxi!”
— | —
We had our own Gift of the Magi that Christmas. I bought Janice an antique delft spittoon, and she got me a hand-hammered copper cuspidor with a stamp that reads Grands Magasins Du Louvre, Paris.
Come April, they’ll be sitting on our mantel for thirty-five years, bookending that night’s framed scorecard, and our unused coupons.