This Used To Be My Playground

Friday nights throughout high school were spent in an alley lined with crappy bars in various states of dilapidation. In the darkness and in your drunken state, you could not see the rats or the cockroaches but if you wore a skirt you'd feel them scurry past. Over endless jugs of frozen Kamikaze, we managed to solve all the world's problems week after week. We debated foreign policy and explored what the hell it meant to be a socialist, a feminist, a nationalist; to be an outsider in every city you've ever lived. We were loud and often misinformed but we had opinions, damn it, whether you asked for them or not!

Here in this dark bar at the end of an alley full of vice, we endlessly quoted T. S. Eliot and Arundhati Roy, ripping apart literature as if we'd written the Booker of Bookers. Here, we fell in love and got broken-hearted. Here, we acted a fool. Here, we grew up. We were united by our jug of icy blue intoxicant.

Now we are older. We are tired of our opinions and weary of debate. We have new haircuts, new partners, new homes, new degrees, new ideas. New Lives. Today the alley is different, with garish flourescent lights in technicolour, renovated urban design with bouncers at the entrance and lady-boys who are offended by my cleavage. But the Kamikaze jug stills waits, just as before. And the conversation slowly flows.