Old and undignified.
Okay, so let’s just say there’s a woman who’s really closer to 30 than to 20, now. (Not me.) She has been closer to 30 for a year and some change already, but now it can no longer be denied. She has a few grey hairs. Just a few, but there they are. This does not bother said-woman in the day-to-day. She’s looking forward to her thirties, when she imagines life will feel a little more settled.

But sometimes....
Sometimes, she goes out to dance to punk and new wave music with two friends who are much closer to 20 than to 30. Let’s call them Audrey and Marlys. The friends, that is. They are wind-up toys of whirling energy. One particular Friday night, going out with said-friends feels especially right. Nearing-Thirty-Gal has gone through a major break-up several months prior, you see, and being around Audrey and Marlys makes her forget she’s spent the last six years of her life trying to be in grown-up relationships. And on warm spring nights like Friday, when she looks back, all that time has the look of youth wasted.

So they go out and dance and N.T.G drinks cheap Pabst after Pabst but before that, one of the first things she notices upon arrival at divey bar is one very attractive young man there. After a few hours, she finds said young man tends to be standing near wherever she is as she moves throughout the bar, so she strikes up a conversation. They chat for a good little while, although if pressed now, N.T.G. wouldn’t be able to tell you what they actually discussed, since N.T.G. forgot on said-night that: While it tastes like water and quenches sweaty-dancing-thirst like water, Pabst Blue Ribbon is not actually water.

After a while, N.T.G looks around the bar and waxes profound to the striking feller, holding her silver can aloft, perhaps teetering a bit, "Gaaaaawd, I feel so old whenever I come here. I mean, everyone’s like, totally young." And striking feller replies,
"You can’t be that old! How old are you?" N.T.G. feels herself grin because it seems as though they’ve reached that co-conspiratorial, us-against-them point in their conversation. And he actually seems much older than the 20-year old art students scurrying to and fro all around them.
"I’m 27."
A beat. Then he says, "Oh."
"Why? How old are you?"
"I’m 22."
"Oh." Shit. Because as I know and as N.T.G. knows and as I’m certain you know too, dear reader, 22 is the equivalent of 12 in boy-years. But the thing is that N.T.G. quickly brushed this fact aside because 2-something in the a.m. on Friday marked countless hours and minutes since a decent kiss - and 22 wasn’t exactly you know, statutory. Not quite.

However, also just then, at 2-something in the a.m. on Friday night, as we’ve mentioned, N.T.G. was also several cheap beers to the wind and so when "Debaser" came on, she had to go dance sure as birds gotta swim. So she did, and when she got back to where she and striking young man had been talking, he was, yes, gone, so very gone across the bar talking to another gal, where he would remain the rest of the night.

And she thought, "So this is how it begins."