Coffeehouse crowds are better about buying, but I like playing in bars more. Bar people are raucous and fun. They request bizarre songs. They whoop and holler and hold up lighters when you play something they know. Coffeehouse people are too polite. Seas of greying boomers with wire-rimmed glasses and expensive fleece vests, pretending they’re still hippies for as long as my set lasts. It’s all so self-conscious. They laugh in unison at my mid-set musings, a low, rumbling chuckle. They wait a beat before clapping at the end of a song, like they need a moment to absorb the entire experience. It drives me crazy.

It’s not that I don’t love playing music. It’s just that it’s not the freedom it was supposed to be. It comes with its own chains. Leaves me pulled apart and spread too thin. People feel entitled to me. They ask questions they’d never ask another stranger, or even a close friend. They ask how much money I make. Where I sleep. Who my songs are about. What my childhood was like. And they tell me the things they felt when they heard my music. Stories about what they did. How my songs were a soundtrack to their breakup or their sex lives or their morning commute, like that’s the only reason I exist. Like none of my music is about me. They leave me holding their memories, as if I’m supposed to know what to do with them.

It’s not what people imagine when they dream of being a singer. People don’t lay awake at night wistfully envisioning themselves being picked to bones and left in a dark parking lot, trying to coax warmth from a broken car heater. I’ve played with people who can do it and it feeds them. The kinds of people who play for an audience and it’s everything. I’m good, but they’re magic. Even though my hands feel right when I’m playing and my voice makes sense when I’m singing, it’s not the same thing. What I want the most is much more simple. What I want most is a life that’s all mine.

There’s a guy in this audience who doesn’t quite fit. Younger. More brown than grey. He wasn’t here the last time I played. His glasses are retro, black-framed, army issue. He has one of the flyers for the show in his hands. He rolls it tightly and lets it go, over and over through the whole first set.

We are both waiting for the bathroom at the break. There’s only one room with Hommes et Filles painted in gold script on the door. The door is thin and the knob hangs loosely in its hole. We could look in if we wanted to. The person we are waiting for pees and we can hear. It’s uncomfortable.