Again I found myself sitting in the bar on Christopher Street, playing that game again. There is wild stuff that goes on in the bar, but mostly there are just groups of dykes drinking vodka like it was water at the tables, or butch girls with their femme lovers at the end in shadow, or loners who haven't seen pussy in thirty years, and it shows. Sometimes, I can spot the newbies, and they're the easiest to prey on. Come up on them sideways, snatch a stool and smile, and they never see it coming.

The smoke is everywhere. It's embedded in the walls, comes from everyone. Fags smoking fags, polluting their own air and bodies. Legal suicide. I always join in, and while using matches might look retro, it doesn't work outside, when the wind blows. Better to smoke indoors, where the light is always dim and the people smell like fear. The alcohol just makes it worse. It's sickly sweet, tingling, burning, and bitter. Most of it tastes like shit, but it makes the pain go away for about five minutes. Which is never enough, but it's all we can get.

The bartender is always different, each night. They don't have regular shifts, and that's why I've always liked the bar. Like the city, I can blend in there. That night, there was a blonde serving drinks who looked like she was screwed up too tight and had the physical maturity of a ten year old. I pitied her. But she let me sit at the bar without a drink, and for that I was grateful. Probably assumed I was waiting for someone, which was true, in a sense. I just didn't know who yet.

Some people, they come into the bar trying to find their soul mates, lovers who will stick with them. I'm not interested in that, of course. I hunt. I prey upon the lost souls who wander in there. And it makes me grin when I catch someone.

I saw her, and knew that she'd never been there before. Oh, she'd been to bars. But not many, and not this one. Well, maybe a few times. But she was there to get drunk, not to meet someone. I always did love a challenge.

I sneaked up, and with a twist of my body, I was beside her, saying "Is this seat free?" but already sitting down. She smiled politely, but then looked back at her drink. Just a vodka, no flavor, no mix. Simple. I liked simple.

"I'm Carey," I said, sticking a hand out.

She looked at me, suspicious. Oh, and she should be. But she took my hand and shook it.

"Anne," she said briefly. And then, after a pause, "Can I get you a drink?"

That was fast, I thought. And she knew I was too young. Saw that I could only have been eighteen, twenty at most. I grinned. She was falling. "Actually, that'd be great. I'd love an STP."

She looked at me a little incredulously. Like she couldn't believe I was ordering that, or she didn't know what it was. Or maybe she did know what it was, and thought it was some sort of innuendo. Which it was. But she called the blond over and asked her for the drink, and the blond didn't even blink, just mixed it up quickly and served it. That's why they hired her, I realized, smiling and thanking her as she set the shot glass down in front of me. Anne watched me with a strange expression on her face. It could have been fear, pain, worry, confusion, or even amusement. Women are not usually so hard to read. That's how I knew she was different.

"Are you here a lot?" I asked her, trying to start a conversation, wrapping my hand around the shot glass but not drinking it yet.

"No," Anne said simply, watching me carefully with her watery, pale brown eyes. Like a mother deer watching over a child. She seemed young in her apparent naivety, but I could tell she was older, even in the dim light. "What about you?" she asked me, just reciprocating out of politeness. Or maybe she was actually curious.

I shook my head. "Not really," I said, trying to sound as forlorn as possible. "I just needed to get out. See the state of humanity."

I brief flash of disbelief on Anne's unreadable face, eyes narrowing for a split second, lip curled into a tiny sneer. That was something. She saw through me, but she didn't care. Not something that was new to me, but it was strange all the same. It didn't seem to fit her. I could also see hunger and desperation in those eyes. That was a good sign, because it also meant she didn't care. She probably came around occasionally, looking for someone, maybe looking for love. She wouldn't find it with me, and some part of her knew that, but she just didn't care. If only, maybe, someday... It was enough to break my heart, if only I hadn't been so desperate too.

"Guess it's the same story with me," she said after some time.

I could tell she wouldn't go in for my usual crap. I decided to try honesty.

"Sometimes, I hate it, coming here," I said bitterly, but quiet, in resignation. My own intensity scared me a little. But what else can you do? I wondered silently.

"Tell me about yourself, Carey," Anne said suddenly, her eyes brightening a little. Not so dull from the alcohol after all.

I laughed a little, nervously. My honesty had left me open, vulnerable, legs spread wide. I tried to recover with humor. Take it like a man. "I'm not very open about the skeletons in my closet," I said, smiling painfully.

"What...?" she asked politely, trailing off.

"My secrets," I explained. "They're kind of... personal. I guess."

"Oh," she said resignedly, going back to staring at her glass.

I was faltering and she was slipping. I waited in agonizing silence for her to say something. When there was nothing, I quickly tried humor again.

"My skeletons, see, they're all raging homos, they just don't know it yet," I said, smiling, hoping she at least thought that me trying to by funny was amusing. At my lame attempt at a joke, she cracked a sad smile and looked back up at me from her drink.

"It's okay," she said, her eyes finally dulling, "we don't have to say anything."

I wanted to give her my lecture on how, without speech and subtlety, we are barbarians, and how words, conversation, banter, bring us out of the animal state and into our humanity... even if we're only elevating ourselves to get a good fuck in. But instead of this lecture, I remained silent and downed my drink. She swallowed the rest of her vodka, too, and as she lowered the glass to the bar, I saw something I hadn't noticed before. Two other shot glasses, empty, in front of her. After a few more minutes of silence and a vodka drink on my empty stomach, I was feeling much better about the entire situation.

"My place?" I suggested, but she shook her head.

"Mine. I have a car, come on." She probably shouldn't drive. I let her pay and lead me out of the bar, and we walked to where her car was parked.

The night was cool and starry, strange for New York. The sky was its usual pale orange, and the buildings around us glowed with life. We got into the car, and I glanced back and saw that the back seat was filled with papers stacked almost to the roof.

"That's a lot of paper," I commented, adjusting my seat belt.

"I'm a sociology teacher," she said, as if that explained everything.

I nodded, like I understood, and glanced around me. I hadn't been inside a car in about a year, not counting the occasional cab ride. She turned on the car, pulled out of the space, and started down the street. I noticed that her hands were shaking on the wheel.

"Are you okay?" I asked, concerned. I watched her face tense and change in the dim light, flashing into clarity when we passed a street light, and then dimming in a strange rhythm to accompany the roar of the pavement below us. Her head shifted a little so that she could gauge my expression, but then she turned back to the road.

"Where do you live?" she asked suddenly, her voice shaking. I watched her face and noticed that lines, at the corners of her eyes, mouth, under her cheeks. She had a round face, but it looked hollow and wrinkled, probably from years of smoking. Even if she was younger than she looked, she must have been at least twice my age. And she was scared. I'd never seen a grown woman get so terrified over a hookup.

"North on this street a few blocks," I said slowly, and then I got to the point. "Look, what's wrong?"

She sniffed once, and I saw tears in her eyes. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and formed a painful grin, nervously laughing a little. "It's n-nothing," she said, shaking her head.

Maybe she's insane, I thought, cringing inside. Then she spoke.

"I met my lover of fifteen years at that bar," Anne said, the tears finished, her voice steady again. "For a second, I thought... you were her." She turned to me briefly, and then back to the road. "I'm sorry," she nearly whispered.

I didn't know what to say. A stranger had just confided a deep secret to me, about me. She pulled over. I glanced out the window and saw that we were near my apartment.

"Where is it from here?" she asked quietly.

"Not far, I'll walk," I said quickly, opening the car door. "Thanks for the ride."

"Yeah," she said, watching me. I slammed the door behind me and didn't look back. Besides the burning drive I still had inside me to fuck a woman that night, I also felt a bizarre sense of accomplishment. I shrugged of the elation like an unfamiliar touch, plunged my hands deep into my pockets, and walked home alone.