…forcing yourself to go out solo on a Friday night because your partner is with one of her other partners and it’s been at or below freezing for over six months, and you just want to see people wearing anything other than winter coats, and see some new people for once, or a few dozen new people, or a few hundred new people, and the security guy doesn’t even glance at your ID, and the perfunctory patdown misses the pocket knife and other goodies, and all the 19-year-olds inside stare at you – old enough to be their father – like you’re a “How do you do, fellow kids?”-type narc, though granted, wearing a blazer over a Fallout T-shirt probably wasn’t the best fashion choice, and they still stare, and if you wonder if you remind them of a cop, or a professor, or their parent, and you buy an overpriced beer to fit in, and bop your head up and down with the rhythm of surprisingly old-timey songs from your own college years, and suddenly, you realize you can’t recall the name of the young classmate whose death you’ve played a small role in almost a year ago, and how long has it been since you last thought of her? – and you make laps through the large basement dancefloor, part of the crowd and yet not part of it, living vicariously through the young as they hop and make faces and hold onto each other’s hair to make it through the crowd without getting lost, and Ronel, Ronel, her name was Ronel – it comes to you, suddenly, when you have all but given up, and you realize the DJ looks like a middle-aged Benjamin Franklin with laser-shooting gloves, and the bearded man standing to him is either a Babylonian or a damn fine approximation, and the musician upstairs starts singing Wonderwall, followed by Country Roads, in a Quebecois accent, and the veil between realities seems to be thinner than usual, and finally – finally – you get outside, and get some fresh air, and get home, and wonder if maybe you should go out more often.