The first time I met my metatextual drinking buddy was in Saloon, in Davis Square. It’s right on Elm Street, very easy to find; that said it’s going for a sort of “speakeasy” vibe so you may walk by it unless you see the deliberately miniature sign, a single lamp with the bar’s logo on it. I arrived first and ordered a bourbon I liked to wait. I’ve definitely heard Saloon has gone downhill since the pandemic, though in my opinion that’s not exactly true. The cornerstone of their service has been cut back: it used to be that when you went you’d get a substantial leather-backed menu including their entire voluminous spirits list; I always liked to both try scotches and bourbons I couldn’t get elsewhere but also get classic cocktails mixed with my favorites. The menu had columns running down for different key cocktails; the whiskey section for instance had a column for a pour and then another two for old fashioneds and manhattans, respectively. The giant menu is gone and the featured cocktail list is perhaps only okay, but every time I order, including when I order off menu, I enjoy what I get.

For today I had only had a couple of sips of bourbon when she arrived, wearing a leather jacket and a heavier weight skirt that made sense for fall. Before I could even get up to greet her she sidled up to me in the booth and gave me a tight side hug.

“Hey, Aaron.”

“Hey, Nat,” I said. She smiled and took a quick look at the menu before looking down at herself, appraising briefly.

“I’m thinking twenty two-ish? Maybe twenty-three?” She said. “A few years have past since I last manifested.”

“I mean, kind of,” I said. “You originally appeared in a time loop with your thirty-eight year old self.”

“Sure,” Nat said. “But you didn’t really describe her, did you? The Nat that was Master, for all intents and purposes, was the younger one.”

“…I guess,” I said. I was a bit taken aback, especially given how the setup of the DIE RPG was technically supposed to go, but thinking back to how things came together she wasn’t exactly wrong.

“I’m not trying to accuse you of anything,” Nat said. “I mean, after all you spent more time with teenage Donnie too, and Scott never appeared on the page any older than 22, despite even your writing process being seventeen years old at this point.”

“Ouch!” I said. “Look, it’s not like I’m actually a novelist. I have both less time and less wherewithal to write than I want or would need.”
“Which is exactly why you’re writing an interstitial about drinking with your last DIE character,” Nat said, grinning.

“Now you’re just being slightly a bitch,” I said.

“You only get what you ask for,” Nat said. “Heh. Could I call you daddy, or would that be weird?”

“That would be incredibly weird,” I said. “Beyond the obvious sexual implications I’m having enough trouble as it is thinking through the dialogue with someone I created.”

“I know, I know,” Nat said. “Okay, give me a second to order. Do you imagine me as sophisticated beyond my years, a naif, or somewhere in between?”

“If you started drinking straight bourbon with me then I know I’d just be projecting,” I said. “But I think beyond that you probably know the vibe.” Nat looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“You gaming types always want to offload the thinking to someone else at the table,” she said, half-laughing. “Fine, I think I know how to split the difference.” A waitress came by and Nat ordered a Tom Collins; it was an off-menu drink but a fairly easy one.

“I’m sure my palette will evolve as we keep drinking together,” Nat said. “On the other hand if that  does happen I think I’d have some questions for you. Not to say I don’t anyway, I absolutely do.”

“Questions for me?” I asked. “Shoot, I guess.”

“All right,” Nat said. “I guess the first question is, why me?”

“What do you mean?” I asked back.

“Not as in, ‘why do I exist’ or anything like that. But, simply stated, you’ve had a solid handful of pretty autobiographical characters over the years. Scott is obvious, and Lance by proxy. They and their repartee have been bouncing in your head for far past a decade. Donnie got the same shot in the arm that I did from going through DIE, but then there’s also Simon, Gil, Julia, even arguably Church and Keystone. Why are you drinking with me?” I paused, inhaling fairly overtly before taking a sip of my bourbon. Nat raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything else just yet. I must have extended the silence too long, because she jumped with another question before I opened my mouth.

“So we weren’t ready to cut to the chase, I guess,” she said. “That’s fine. This version you’re writing of me is like eighteen years younger than you, so I guess impulsive fits into that. Let me ask an easier question. Why are we here?”

“Here as in, this bar?” I said.

“Exactly,” Nat said. “Why is Saloon an anchor point for you?” As I was about to respond, the waitress came over with Nat’s Tom Collins. She took a deep sip and grinned.

“This is fantastic,” she said. “And I can taste the booze still so I know I’m going to get both talkative and touchy.” I apparently let a bit of a grimace out.

“I know you’re thinking about it, because I know what you have been and are writing,” Nat said. “So I guess hold that last question, and answer me this. What do you see me as?”

“See you as?” I asked. I took another sip of my bourbon, in part to bolster against the continued personal inquiries (or at least to lubricate them).

“I’m sitting with you in this bar. What am I to you, besides ‘creation’?”

“If I’m understanding this question correctly,” I said. “Then you, to me, are somewhere between a clone and a daughter.” Nat took another long sip of her Tom Collins.

“I see,” Nat said. “And that’s why some of this has been uncomfortable. I’m sorry. Though the whole country has gotten real weird on the ‘daddy’ stuff.”

“…please don’t remind me,” I said. Nat laughed.

“So you’re really poorly positioned to write smut, then,” Nat said.

“No!” I said, more defensively than I intended. Nat gave me a look. I course corrected.

“Let’s just say, if I’m writing smut you’re probably not going to be in it,” I said.

“Fair enough,” Nat said. “But I’ve seen some of those sex scenes you’ve written, and you really need to punch things up. Stop being such a prude.”

“Seriously?” I said. “I think I toe a pretty decent line between being interesting and being gratuitous.”

“Sure you do,” Nat said. “But I’m going to defer any notes on your personal discomfort and go back to my previous question. Why are we drinking in Saloon?” She accented the question with a deep sip from her Tom Collins; the drink was now nearly two thirds gone.

“Well, I guess there are two reasons,” I said. “First, it’s generally a quiet place with big, inviting booths in the back. That makes it an easy place to instantiate someone without attracting too much attention or suspension of disbelief. Second, I had a lot of good times here, including some early dates.”

“What was the first date you remember here?” Nat asked.

“Back in 2011,” I said. “I think it was actually the first time I went here. Her name was Sarah, and I think it was our third date. We spent the day at the MFA and then came to Saloon for a friend’s birthday party. Friend of hers, I didn’t know anyone. I remember one of her friends trying to get the bartender to put drinks in flasks, even though the punch special which came in a flask was already out. She got drunk enough that I had to drive her home in her own car.” Nat looked at me with knitted eyebrows and pursed lips.

“That’s, uh, the special first here?” she asked.

“There’s plenty of other good times!” I said. “With friends, and my brother, and Emily, and others. But yeah. I had a trashfire of a date and I still remembered it took place in a neat bar. So that’s something.”

“I suppose,” Nat said. “I hope you take me to other places. But since we’re here, I’m going to go back to my first question. Why me?” I flagged down the waitress and ordered another round. To stall just a little bit longer, I finished my bourbon.

“I think, if I’m honest, that you’re the most proactive of my protagonists,” I said. “Scott’s passivity is one of the establishing elements of the story, and Donnie’s entire arc is about fear and fear of going for what you really want. You actually go for it.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Nat said. “You have written your share of passive characters, you know.”

“It’s what I fear about myself,” I said.

“And let me guess,” Nat said. “You also fear how you’ve chosen how to define success. Because you wrote me, who failed creatively but succeeded financially. That’s how you see yourself.” The waitress arrived with the second bourbon, and I immediately took a pull at it.

“I guess that makes sense,” I said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Nat said. “You haven’t failed creatively because you haven’t finished anything.”

“I’m still not where I want to be creatively,” I said. “And as much as I’m pushing, and I suppose I’m making progress, I’ve gone too far in my career and in supporting other decisions I’ve made than would allow me to take financial risks.” Nat looked at me, something clearly processing in her brain. She sucked thoughtfully at the last of her Tom Collins.

“I think I get it,” Nat said. “I am your writer. You are processing whether or not you can accept personally that you won’t get published, and if you do you won’t be able to sustain yourself financially on writing.”

“I think so,” I said.

“So you’re trying to push through failing at the dream so you can get back to writing,” Nat said.

“Maybe?” I said.

“You’re writing something right now,” Nat said. “Clearly you want to keep building fiction. Clearly you want to be here. It’s just that writing as a hobby takes energy that you don’t have and you’re never going to get more.”

“So I’d rather be-”

“-drinking in a bar with your protagonist, exactly.” I chuckled and sipped my bourbon.

“I’m not lazy, I swear,” I said. “I’m just tired.”

“I know,” Nat responded. She scooched over in the booth and gave me another tight side hug.

“You need to pay your bills first,” she continued. “But you and I both know that you have the energy somewhere. You just need to prioritize.”

“It’s tough,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “If everything was easy you’d probably be working on something right now, instead of hanging out with one of your characters in a metatextual purgatory shaped like one of your favorite bars.”

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” I said.

“I appreciate it,” Nat said. “I’m still a little confused why I’m the one hanging around, but it does seem like you’ve thought about it. I guess I do have some fun details in my stories, though. More questions for next time.”

“Next time?” Before my question was even fully out of my mouth, Nat was gone. I was left with half of my bourbon, an empty Collins glass on the table, and the normal parade of characters marching around in my head.