Twenty-Something

The stranger in a wide-brimmed hat seated next to me at the bar hadn’t said a word, but it felt like he was doing most of the talking since I was so drunk I couldn’t tell who said what or what any of what was said meant. And I couldn’t remember if he’d sat down next to me or if I’d sat down next to him, which was common in New York bars. Nevertheless, having a stranger as a neighbor at a bar is convenient when you want to share something you might not share with someone you know.

I might have told him my entire life’s story, precisely what a New Yorker would do to a stranger. Dump everything on them, knowing they’d never see them again. I might have told him about the stories I’d written or intended to write. But I couldn’t recall if I had written them or intended to write them. Not in the state I was in. I couldn’t even recognize the bar I was in. It looked like the old Lions Head, a writer’s bar on Christopher Street, but that place had been closed for years. There was a mirror over the bar and the reflection of another mirror that must have been somewhere over my shoulder, but I was too mesmerized by the first mirror’s reflection of the second to bother to look. Besides, I was stuck on where I was.

Once I realized that I did not recognize the place or that the place reminded me of a place that closed years ago, despair began to set in. And whenever despair sets in, I go to a place I seldom go. And if one lives in New York long enough, one often goes to places one seldom goes. Not the same place, mind you, but places adjacent to the place one seldom goes to. And that’s where I was headed.

To cut myself off at the pass, I maneuvered deftly to engage the stranger in the wide-brimmed hat in conversation.

“You wanna hear something I’ve never told anyone?” I started, slurring my words sloppily. “One of my deepest secrets? If I could go back in time twenty-something years, I’d kill myself. I mean it. I’d save myself from all the misery,” I whined, unsure of where what I said was coming from.

The stranger didn’t react.

Not with a nod, not with a blink.

He simply sat there, a dark silhouette in the mirror’s refracted gaze, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Because maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I had only thought it. Words have a way of collapsing into thoughts when you’ve had enough to drink, and thoughts have a way of unraveling into the past when you’re staring into mirrors.

I tried again.

“You ever think about that? Going back, changing things?”

This time, he turned his head slightly, just enough for me to catch the faintest glimmer of his eye beneath the brim's shadow.

“Regret is memory’s trick. Makes you think there was ever a choice.” His voice was slow, deliberate, like the way an old clock ticks in a quiet house.

I let that sink in. It was the kind of answer I might have given someone once, back when I was younger, sharper, more inclined toward philosophy than self-pity. But tonight, it stung.

“Then what’s the point of regret?” I asked, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular.

The stranger reached for his drink and took a long, careful sip. “Ask yourself that in twenty-something years.”

Something about that sentence made me shudder. Maybe it was the way he said it, or maybe it was the creeping suspicion that he was right. That all the roads I thought I had taken, or not taken, had been illusions of choice, mere footnotes in a story already written. That even sitting here, speaking to him, was just another chapter I was reading, not writing.

“Then what the hell am I doing here?” I muttered, mostly to myself.

For the first time, the stranger smiled. Not a warm smile. Not cruel, either. Just something in between, like an old man watching a younger man make a familiar m