The temporary paper license

Hand a temporary paper license to a bartender after dark and watch the flashlight appear before an explanation is offered. The paper does not photograph well under fluorescent light, and it photographs worse under the blue LED that some bars have adopted specifically to make paper look suspicious. Two fold creases run across it where it was matched to a wallet three sizes too small, and a perforated edge along one side still carries a few uncooperative flecks of the sheet it was torn from. It expires in thirty, sixty, or ninety days depending on which office printed it, a window during which its holder is legally entitled to drive, occasionally to fly, and almost never to be believed on sight. Clerks stamp it, initial it, and staple a receipt to a corner that will not survive a wash cycle. Bouncers hold it at arm's length, tilt it, sometimes press a thumbnail into the perforation to see if it gives, as though authenticity were a texture that could be tested by touch. It is, in fact, the more official of the two documents in a wallet during its brief tenure, outranking the plastic card it will eventually be traded for, a fact almost no one enforcing a door policy at midnight is inclined to accept. That contradiction resolves itself when the real card arrives by mail, at which point the paper gets folded once more, filed in a drawer, and rarely looked at again.

Beatrice Womack