Twenty-Something

Michael Arturo

Twenty-Something

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Twenty-Something

A Meta-Fiction

Michael Arturo

Feb 28, 2025

Transcript

The stranger in a wide-brimmed hat seated next to me at the bar hadn’t said a word, but it felt like he was doing most of the talking since I was so drunk I couldn’t tell who said what or what any of what was said meant. And I couldn’t remember if he’d sat down next to me or if I’d sat down next to him, which was common in New York bars. Nevertheless, having a stranger as a neighbor at a bar is convenient when you want to share something you might not share with someone you know.

I might have told him my entire life’s story, precisely what a New Yorker would do to a stranger. Dump everything on them, knowing they’d never see them again. I might have told him about the stories I’d written or intended to write. But I couldn’t recall if I had written them or intended to write them. Not in the state I was in. I couldn’t even recognize the bar I was in. It looked like the old Lions Head, a writer’s bar on Christopher Street, but that place had been closed for years. There was a mirror over the bar and the reflection of another mirror that must have been somewhere over my shoulder, but I was too mesmerized by the first mirror’s reflection of the second to bother to look. Besides, I was stuck on where I was.

Once I realized that I did not recognize the place or that the place reminded me of a place that closed years ago, despair began to set in. And whenever despair sets in, I go to a place I seldom go. And if one lives in New York long enough, one often goes to places one seldom goes. Not the same place, mind you, but places adjacent to the place one seldom goes to. And that’s where I was headed.

To cut myself off at the pass, I maneuvered deftly to engage the stranger in the wide-brimmed hat in conversation.

“You wanna hear something I’ve never told anyone?” I started, slurring my words sloppily. “One of my deepest secrets? If I could go back in time twenty-something years, I’d kill myself. I mean it. I’d save myself from all the misery,” I whined, unsure of where what I said was coming from.

The stranger didn’t react.

Not with a nod, not with a blink.

He simply sat there, a dark silhouette in the mirror’s refracted gaze, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Because maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I had only thought it. Words have a way of collapsing into thoughts when you’ve had enough to drink, and thoughts have a way of unraveling into the past when you’re staring into mirrors.

I tried again.

“You ever think about that? Going back, changing things?”

This time, he turned his head slightly, just enough for me to catch the faintest glimmer of his eye beneath the brim's shadow.

“Regret is memory’s trick. Makes you think there was ever a choice.” His voice was slow, deliberate, like the way an old clock ticks in a quiet house.

I let that sink in. It was the kind of answer I might have given someone once, back when I was younger, sharper, more inclined toward philosophy than self-pity. But tonight, it stung.

“Then what’s the point of regret?” I asked, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular.

The stranger reached for his drink and took a long, careful sip. “Ask yourself that in twenty-something years.”

Something about that sentence made me shudder. Maybe it was the way he said it, or maybe it was the creeping suspicion that he was right. That all the roads I thought I had taken, or not taken, had been illusions of choice, mere footnotes in a story already written. That even sitting here, speaking to him, was just another chapter I was reading, not writing.

“Then what the hell am I doing here?” I muttered, mostly to myself.

For the first time, the stranger smiled. Not a warm smile. Not cruel, either. Just something in between, like an old man watching a younger man make a familiar mistake.

“You tell me,” he said.

And for a moment, I thought I could. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a dry, bitter laugh.

“Truth is,” I began as if I knew the truth, “the only way to prevent the twenty-something years of misery the future held would be to find my younger self and kill him. Kill me as well, but him for sure. Because he’s the one who made all the mistakes that led to my life of misery, I’m partly responsible, don’t get me wrong. And yes, he was innocent, full of hope and all that nonsense. Gullible, taking the wrong people at their word. But killing him would just end it before it began,” I said as I pounded down another drink.

The stranger held his glass up to toast. But in my slap-happy stupor, I saw him hold up two, no, three glasses and kept missing the actual toast target. After four or five attempts, I quit. Besides, my glass was already empty again, and not only was it bad luck to toast with an empty glass, but it was incredibly inconvenient to clink glasses with the room spinning as it was.

“You wanna know how I’d do it?” I burped. “Bare hands! Sneak up from behind and put my bare hands around the base of his neck. Then I’d wrestle him to the ground and strangle the life out of him.” The stranger peered at me again from beneath the brim of his wide-brimmed hat, his expression inscrutable.

I signaled to the bartender for yet another round. As the glass was replenished, I forged ahead. “Time travel. The only way to do it," I continued, my voice tinged with bitterness, "is to travel back in time, and since that’s impossible, why am I considering it?”

“It won’t be impossible in twenty-something years,” the stranger said as he tipped back his wide-brimmed hat.

“What?”

The stranger showed me a pistol he was holding inside his rain vest. “Let’s take a walk.”

“Walk? Where? Who are you?”

Maybe ‘Who are you?’ was the wrong question to ask. The stranger took off his wide-brimmed hat to reveal his face. Lo and behold! He was me, but much older! I knew I had much to drink, but I was beside myself!

The stranger in the wide-brimmed hat was me, from the future, here, in the present, to kill me, just as I imagined myself returning to the past to kill the younger me.

Wow, they have time travel in the future, was my first thought. I guess that’s something to look forward to. My second thought was if I make it that far.

“Wait, we can talk about this, can’t we? I have stories to write.”

“Too late, I’ve already written them.”

“Oh really? How did they turn out?”

“Never mind.”

“You’re not going to tell me how my own stories turn out? I feel somewhat betrayed.” I suppose I’d already know how my stories would turn out if I hadn’t put off writing them, with all the time I’ve wasted in bars searching for inspiration by engaging strangers in circular conversations.

“Besides, it’s not “ME” you’re after —it’s the younger ME! He’s the one who started this!” I implored, trying a different tact.

“Get moving,” he said.

He was succinct. I liked that about the older me. He was in good shape for an old guy; he could almost pass for a better version of the present me. I wonder if he’s aware that if he kills me, he’ll cease to exist as well.

“Why don’t we just have another drink and forget about this?”

“You talk too much. Let’s go.”

I could usually get out of any situation just by sounding like I knew what I was talking about, but not when I’m pitted against someone who does that themselves and has had twenty-something years more experience at it than I have! I was at the end of my rope. Whether by my own hand or that of my future self, the outcome will be the same — a life of regret erased before it had the chance to become even more regretful.

With my older self’s pistol from inside his rain vest trained on me, we marched out of the bar. “What happened to the plan to strangle me from behind?” I asked. It must have evolved over the last twenty-something years. Or the next twenty-something, as it were.

Once we got out in the street, I turned and asked, “Have you thought this through? You’ll die too, while our younger self gets to screw up our life and live at least as long as I did!”

“Do you ever listen to yourself?”

“No. Well, not until tonight, as it were.”

“Over the years, I had to eliminate so much of your nonsense to make your stories make sense,” my older self said with disdain before raising the pistol and aiming it at me.

Done in by my own nonsense. I knew I had that coming. I should have stuck to the trite sentimentality and canned laughter I was spoon-fed as a twenty-something.

Just then, out of the shadows, a figure emerged, a much older man with a long white beard whose face was concealed by the dark of night. He moved like an octogenarian super-human, lunging at the stranger and placing his bare hands on the base of his neck, wrestling him to the ground. Oh my God, just in the nick of time! Who is this old, old guy?

Wait a minute. Old, old guy? Could it be that an even older version of my older self had come to rescue me? Do I have nothing better to do with my future life but time travel back to the past?

I took an immediate liking to the Grand-Dad version of me. First of all, he reverted to my original style of murder—bare hands.

“Shall I kill him?” Grand-Dad asked, holding my older self down on the ground.

“Well, we might need him to publish our stories.”

“No, I already took care of that.”

“Okay, how did that turn out?”

“Never mind.”

“Not you, too!”

“Too much nonsense.”

“Still? Well, that’s good news, I suppose. I’ve always said that nonsense is the glue! All right then, kill him! I still have a drink on the bar.”

I no sooner turned to go when I realized that if both the older me and the old-old me perish, no one would be left to write my stories. Or, at the very least, no one left to go light on the nonsense. Then I realized that the chore was left to me and me alone. With this insight, I saw the path for the next twenty-something years laid out before me. I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and stop procrastinating. But first things first, let’s not forget the drink I left at the bar.

I hurried back to the bar, but upon my return, I found an unattended baby carriage at the entrance. Now, who could have possibly left a baby carriage unattended at this hour of the night? My curiosity got the better of me. I took a quick peek inside and found an infant no more than twenty-something weeks old. I looked closely at the infant and discovered an uncanny family resemblance.

“Well, I’ll be! This child is me!”

Immediately, I began putting the pieces together—an infant, an older ME, an old-old ME—who’s missing?

I’d better scan the bar for a twenty-something. He might be gunning for me. We need to end this cycle. We need to come to terms. I know—I’ll reason with him. I’ll just cut him some slack. I’ll impart wisdom upon him. Yes, that’s it!

I’ll say: “Look! Where’s this going to get us but dead? We have stories to write. Unless you’ve already written them.”

Then what? What if he’s already written them? Far better than I could ever imagine? I could be dealing with a twenty-something boy-genius psychopath. What if he murders me and claims all the fame and glory for himself?

What fame and glory am I talking about? He’s more of an idiot than I am. Besides, what if he’s not even here? What if he’s out there—who knows where? What if he doesn’t even care? What if he’s procrastinating just like I’ve done my entire life?

I’m so confused. And yet, I’ve never seen things more clearly. I suppose I’ll have to tread carefully, then. Balance things. Stay focused. Look over my shoulder when I see a reflection. Don’t get stuck on where I am. Plow forward; it’s worth the effort. Or I’ll have nothing but these thoughts haunt me for the next twenty-something years.