Once upon a time I would spend a lot of time in one bar I know. Some weeks, I would show there every evening. Others, once or twice. There would be weeks when I couldn’t make it to the bar once. But I never stayed away for long.
In that bar, I would meet a stranger. And a stranger they would be, always, no matter how many times I had met them before.
There was no knowing how the night would go. On some nights, we would make each other laugh, or try to outwit each other in cheesy banter. On some nights, we would stare into each other’s eyes – in confusion, in understanding, in anger when the understanding went too far, revealing things we were not prepared to know about the other and ourselves.
On some nights, we could dance like a perfectly choreographed musical troupe; on others, we stepped on each other’s toes, slipped, tripped, laughed in amusement, groaned in frustration, left in a huff. Some nights, we would be all over each other for hours; on some, a five-minute talk would make it clear that neither was in the mood.
Ultimately, I didn’t mind how the night would go. I would just be glad to be there. To have shown up, be it for five minutes or five hours, be it for a dance, a chat, a kiss, or a fight.
Then, one day, the stranger wasn’t there.
