Smoke dims the lights as you follow a sauntering friend in wingtip boots. You sink into the bar, and the bartender glides your way. She has short black hair that frames a round face and blue eyes that command the attention of the room.

Maybe she’s the main character. She takes your order and twirls around to the register behind her. The other bartender stands at the other register, his brawny build, strong features, and shaven head mirroring her. They yell playfully across the bar, and the plot of the room revolves around it.

Or maybe it’s the scrawny teenager in the darkest corner of the room, hunched over a sketchbook under a hard-rock haze. His nose grazes his pen, and his attention digs below the surface of the meaningless conversation that surrounds him.

He really does like the people around him, but he doesn’t feel a strong connection with them. Their conversation is supplementary, just a vehicle for the plot. They exist only to be tuned out, as he occasionally looks up to gaze far beyond them. Next to him is another friend, but between them is a void, backlit by crimson seat cushions. The void has been there for a while, and it pulls at them. It tugs at their bodies and the ends of their clothes, but neither are willing to give in. Instead they just sit, her hands in her lap and his nose to his paper, plugging on through a single world they tell themselves is separate.

Or maybe the main character is the tall red head who walks into the room. Dressed up to his backpack in black, his eyes scan the room over high cheekbones. His style and attitude step out of a Harold Ramis film – a brash, comical ease and social flexibility molding itself into the network of the room. He struts with a casual formality through space, searching for trouble toS weed out or aggravate. He wades into a crowd and the plot is obscured. We’re not in the shot anymore. Whatever we do doesn’t matter, as long as we’re quiet on set. Then the plot whips by again as he marches, unsatisfied, out the door, taking the story somewhere else.

Or maybe it’s you, the blue haze sinking down on your shoulders and Keith Richards expanding through your ear. You, thinking endlessly in circles that spiral about the room. You, trying to figure out where the story really is.