SEPTEMBER 2019 15
means I’ve listened to strangers tell me
things their best friends and closest family
didn’t know. Ambitions. Predilections.
Personal failings.
A hotel bar is also an opportunity to be
anyone you want for a few hours. If you’re
usually loud, maybe now you’re quiet.
If you’re usually reserved, maybe now
you’re lively. Maybe you’re not someone
worried about a big project at work or an
argument at home or what’s in the bank.
Maybe, just for a moment when it doesn’t
matter, you’re the best, funniest version of
yourself. Maybe, among strangers, you’re
someone who’s already accomplished
some of the things the real you wants to
do in life.
At least one time, I did that and it came
true. I was 24, an aspiring but mostly
unpublished magazine writer, sitting in
the bar at the Worthington Renaissance
Hotel in Fort Worth. The granite bar and
wood paneling and perfume-scented air
made me feel like I’d somehow stum-
bled into a private club. I remember a
bartender telling people that a certain
Indiana Jones star came in there often,
something about parking his plane some-
where close.
Conversation among the four or fi ve
strangers brewed in the way it almost
always does in a hotel bar, and soon there
were short introductions and explanations
of why we were all there. One young man
said he was an offi cer in the Air Force, in
town for a meeting. One woman said she
was in Fort Worth on vacation with her
family and needed a few minutes away.
I was there because it was my birth-
day and my then-girlfriend splurged on
a discounted room and subsequently fell
asleep before 10 p.m. For some reason
though, I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I
said I was there because I’d won a writing
award. Which wasn’t true at all. When the
vacationing mom asked what I’d written
about, I mumbled something cringewor-
thy about “documenting the downtrod-
den.” A few people congratulated me.
I might have forgotten about that night,
and that strange lie, except a year later
I was in a different hotel bar, and I had
just won an award (and a check!) for