Valar Morghulis, Asshole

If it’s true that all men must die it’s also true that all men must be born. But what about Valar Dohaeris? It doesn’t always happen that all men learn to serve.  

The summer of 2017 was the summer of Game of Thrones season 7, and also the summer before Boo Boo was born. Boo Boo and I did a lot of traveling that summer. That season spanned seven weeks, and my viewing experience took me from coast to coast and bar to bar, only occasionally seeing it at home. For the first episode Jer-bear and I squeezed into a sports bar in the East Village. There were ten people per square foot. I stood the entire time, but was a spry four-and-a-half months along so I did not mind. People hum-chanted the theme music, and erupted in cheers when Arya single-handedly eliminated House Frey. It was fun, but seeing GOT in a bar more packed than a chest full of Lannister gold was something I was only willing to do once as a pregnant person.

When I visited my sister, an actress in LA, we saw it an a producer’s mansion (my sister, also a nanny at the time, was house-sitting). When I went to Portland, I saw it on my other sister’s couch. Jer-bear and I saw one episode at home, and also at a bar near the Gowanus Canal. This bar had a TV in the front room and also in backroom down a narrow hallway. These screenings were less densely populated than the one in the East Village, and the first episode we saw there–the one where Viserion turns into an ice dragon–afforded us enough space to find chairs, and since we weren’t scrambling for a sitting arrangement, enough time to order delicious grilled cheese that I quickly scarfed down before the episode.

This cozy scenario was not the case for the screening of the last episode. I had been visiting a friend in Long Island that weekend. I had wanted to take an earlier train to the city to get to our Gowanus bar with enough time to claim a seat and a sandwich. But my friend could not take me to the train station until after six, when I’d be catching the last train to Atlantic Avenue that would get me to the bar on time. I devised a Plan B before I left Long Island. Jer-bear was still in Brooklyn. I urged him to get to the bar 30 minutes before the screening–20 minutes at the latest. Basically the same time I would have dragged him there anyway if I were in town. We went back and forth about the necessity of getting there that early.

“But Boo,” I told him. “This is the finale, and do you remember how many people were at the other bar during that first episode?”

I was much more pregnant this time and my ass was not going to stand if it did not have to. Seeing the last episode required the foresight and planning of a military operation, as if I were preparing for the invasion of the Army of the Dead itself.

I didn’t realize until I was almost at the bar that Jer-bear did not see it that way. I got to Atlantic Avenue at around 8:30. I moved as fast as a six-month pregnant person could. I huffed and puffed my way to the R train and prayed it would not be late. I would only have to take it two stops and estimated I would be at the bar in 15 minutes. I had not heard from Jer-bear for a while–not since transferring at Jamaica. I imagined he was just getting to the bar, trying to the get a decent seat for himself and his pregnant partner. I updated him on my whereabouts and waited to hear back.

When I finally did it was to say he was just leaving Sunset Park but he’d be at the bar soon, lol.

I won’t get into why he was late. It does not matter now. (The next time we went to the bar to see Game of Thrones, almost two years later for Season 8, Episode 3, he was a full 45 minutes early and had time to get me some wine.*) I got to the bar a couple minutes before Jer-bear did. There was a wall of people in the front area, and standing room only in the back, unless you wanted to sit on the floor. I left Jer-bear to stand against the wall while I found a spot in the aisle on the floor in the aisle to, along with another girl. We were pretty close to the front. On either side of us people were sitting in chairs and enjoying food and libations that sat on crates in front of them. In any other kind of situation I would have considered myself lucky to sit on the floor, in the front.

But things are different now that I was pregnant, especially when someone’s beer and fries had a better place to sit than me. I turned to the guy sitting in the chair to my right. He was canoodling with a woman friend. His beer was cradled in his hand and his feet were resting on the crate in front of him, like this was his living room.

I looked at him from my spot on the floor, and then looked at my belly. Did I look pregnant enough? I did. It would take an incredible imagination for anyone to convince themselves otherwise. I didn’t expect him to see me though. The lights had been dimmed and his focus was on his boo, but surely he’d let me sit on his food crate, if I asked nicely, and especially since, as I would explain to him, I would sit off to the side where I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. I mean, if you’re watching GOT at a bar, you’re doing it for the communal experience, amirite? And in the magnanimity of the moment you’d be happy to share your food crate (which isn’t yours and you shouldn’t put your feet on it anyway) to anyone–but especially to a pregnant woman, right? It’s what Jon Snow would have done, right? Valar Dohaeris and all?

The guy noticed me when I stood up

“Hey!” I said, in a friendly I-believe-in-humanity tone, and made sure to smile and him and his boo. “I’m soooo sorry,” I continued in an I-know-my-existence-inconveniences-you tone, “But I was wondering if it was okay for me to sit on your crate, like, off to the side–” I was rubbing my belly, looking at his reclining feet and using my best I-know-you’re-a-good-person tone, but I found myself unexpectedly cut off.

“No, you can’t.”

Surely he did not understand. Maybe he didn’t get that I wasn’t asking to sit on his feet, or in front of him, or on his seat or on his lap. “I’m sorry?”

“No, you can’t. I’ve been here for five hours.”

It was at that moment that the room became dark. The clips from previous episodes started playing. Soon the opening music would start. This asshole’s ass was saved by the credits.

I went to where Jer-bear was standing off to the side, and told him about the fucker in the front. I pointed in their general direction, which was not far. The Lady Friend’s chair was closer to me now. I hovered near her and rubbed my belly. He leaned toward her said said something while glancing in my direction. He had every look of someone trying to be sanctioned.

“Am I an asshole?” He must have been asking. She leaned closer to him, smiled and grabbed his arm. Was it her fault her boo was a douche? No. Was she being totally complicit? Yes! Was it their fault I was standing, or pregnant, or wanting to see Game of Thrones? No, but it was their fault they were not nice.

Not nice like the other guy who did see me and offer his seat. I said no thanks, but that I’d be happy to sit on his crate!

I watched the episode on the crate, and had forgotten about the sad asshole who did not give me his crate until I saw him and his girlfriend make their way to the exit, which was right in front of me. I stood up and tapped on his arm as he was about to slide through the door. I was gonna go full-on Mother of Dragons on his ass. Jer-bear stayed to the side, either because he had no idea what I was about to do, or because he had no idea what to do, or because he didn’t want to steal my thunder.

The guy turned around. He was not unattractive, which made me want to rail at him even more. His girlfriend was still holding onto his arm. Good. She would see how ugly he was inside.

“I just want you to know that you’re an asshole.” I said it the same way you’d let someone know that it’s noon, or that it’s raining outside, or that the bar is closing.

“What?!”

“You’re an asshole.”

“And you’re entitled!” He was full-on unattractive now.

“Entitled? For wanting to sit on a crate? I’m six-months pregnant.”

“You’re entitled.” His eyes started darting at the other people clustering around the exit. He had places to be, and fighting with a pregnant woman was not a good look. His girlfriend was not trying to smile anymore.

“Ha! I wish I was entitled!” I had to get more words in before the door swallowed him whole. “Apparently your feet are more entitled than I am!”

And he was gone. I don’t usually wish bad things upon people. It never makes me feel better, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t allow myself to hope for the worst for this guy for at least five minutes. If he and his girlfriend wanted kids, I hoped they’d be doomed with infertility. If they broke up and he never saw her again, I hoped he would die slowly, after a life full of meaninglessness and unhappiness. Or maybe he’d get hit by a train that would scramble his organs but not his central nervous system and then…

And then I stopped. That he dies is inevitable. It’s learning to serve that is not. I should have just hoped that he learned to do that.

*Yes, the first time we paid a babysitter was so we could watch GOT at a bar. Jer-bear went ahead of me to the bar so I could put Boo Boo to sleep.