The owner of the Irish Pub presses her bought breasts hard against me in the tightest hug I’ve had in for as long as I can remember. I haven’t seen her in years and, for sure, she doesn’t remember me by name, but for who I was in her bar. Her Irish accent lingers as she throws kisses and darlings to the drinkers around.

It’s a place I’ve spent a lot of time, in another life, being another me. In this familiar environment, just like the bare-legged bar owner with red lipstick, I too am reminded of who I was in this place. A part of me miss not so much the situation I was in, but whom it made me. Everyone I met here was left there, in a different time. But perhaps I took the me they meet there, with me to this moment, as I am here once again.

Reenacting activities of who I am today, I send a cute message to Johnny Bravo not quite to distract myself from the memories of the past, nor to build hopes for the future, but to remind myself of the transcendence of the present. Yet as I enter the inside of the bar, for the briefest of bittersweet moments, I let my fingers run along the furniture I sat on a million times, with other people, with other feelings.