“Did you forget to eat today?”

His question is so weirdly personal, and actually sort of accurate to who I am—and have always been—that I laugh. “Oh—oh, no, I didn’t forget to eat. I didn’t have a chance.”

“What’ve you eaten?”

“I—well, I had a pretzel.” Then, because it’s only fair, “Why, what did you eat?”

“Fuck’s sake. Go sit down, I’ll rustle something up. Here, take this water; you probably forgot to drink that too.”

I am completely bewildered by this. Listen, I was a bartender too. I often felt this annoyed with everyone, no matter how reasonable their requests, but I didn’t show it. At least not like this. Is this what it’s like at bars in Ireland?

“You don’t have to,” I say. “Really, I’ll—”

“Go,” he says, pointing at an empty table.

“Jesus Christ,” I say to myself as he disappears into the kitchen. I go sit down where he told me to.

Unfortunately, his bossy, gruff manner has made him all the more attractive. On a surface level. Of course, I’d never want to be with a bossy, domineering man, if that’s what he is. But I meet so many himbos in LA that it’s nice to meet a guy. And kind of nice not to be sucked up to.

I take my first sip of the beer and actually groan out loud with how delicious it is. I’ve always heard the beers are better over here, but I didn’t think they could be this different. This makes the beer back home taste like carbonated, penny-filled gutter water. That might be a bit extreme, but at least in this moment of relief, that’s how I feel.

A man comes by, laughing at something his friend said, and pats me on the back.

“’Night, doll.” Then he keeps walking, without waiting for a response from me.

I’m still relatively new to the whole getting recognized thing. In LA it’s usually something like: I’ll glance up from my hand roll at Sugarfish to see that there’s an entire table of people taking turns pretending not to see me. Or I stop by a Pressed Juicery for a lemon cayenne ginger shot, choke on it, and only then realize that I’m surrounded by a sea of rectangles filming me, and that a bunch of shitty kids are going to spend an afternoon making fun of me on the internet.