Here we are again, dear readers, rummaging through the small catastrophes of being human. This time, no broken hearts or spilled whiskey: only three women, an ordinary night, and the secrets that somehow survive even music turned too loud.
Some conversations need silence.
And then there are those that can exist only in the middle of chaos.
Music turned too loud, half-finished glasses, lights low enough to make everyone a little more beautiful and cruel enough to keep you from knowing whether the person before you is laughing or merely trying not to cry.
In one corner of the bar were three women.
They were not posing.
They were not looking at the camera.
They were too busy doing that mysterious thing women seem to do much better than men: actually talking to one another.
One held a phone, barely lighting their faces. Perhaps she was showing them a photograph. A message. The profile of a man who had just said something incredibly stupid while believing himself irresistible.
Which, statistically, is fairly likely.
The others leaned closer.
One bent toward the screen, the other hanging slightly back with the posture of someone who had already understood everything but still wanted to hear the rest of the story.
The world kept moving around them.
The music.
The people.
The bartender pouring further doses of liquid courage.
Someone trying to get laid.
Someone else trying to forget that they had succeeded.
But there, inside that small circle of shadows, there seemed to be a private room no wall had built.
That is how complicity works.
It needs no closed doors.
Only the certainty that the people beside you already know enough not to make you explain everything from the beginning.
Perhaps they were talking about love.
Almost whenever someone lowers their voice in a bar, love is involved—or some disaster similar enough to be mistaken for it.
A man who does not reply.
One who replies too much.
One who swears he is different from the others and then takes less than a week to prove he is exactly the same model in slightly updated packaging.
Perhaps one of them was saying she wanted to quit her job.
That she wanted to leave.
That she was afraid.
That she had fallen for the wrong person with the punctuality of someone who keeps missing the same train and then blames the timetable.
Or perhaps they were discussing nothing important.
Maybe they were commenting on a photograph, making fun of someone, planning the rest of the night.
That too would have been enough.
Not every confession has to change a life.
Some simply make it more bearable until morning.
We men generally deal with things differently.
We sit together, order drinks, and talk about cars, sports, work, women, and other matters of vital importance so we can carefully avoid any subject that might reveal the existence of a soul.
Then one of our friends disappears for weeks, returns looking as though he has been emotionally run over by a bus, and we ask whether he saw the game.
It is our delicate way of saying: I have noticed you are falling apart, but no one here has the tools required to deal with this shit.
Women, on the other hand, seem capable of building shelters out of words.
They tell each other details we would carry to the grave for fear someone might discover that beneath the beard, the jokes, and that bargain-bin confidence, there is still a human being.
They say who hurt them.
Whom they want.
Whom they cannot forget.
They fix each other’s lipstick and self-respect.
They tell cruel truths with a tenderness that makes them almost bearable.
And when necessary, they lie.
But they do it well.
They say: You did not deserve that.
They say: You are beautiful.
They say: Everything will be all right.
Perhaps it is not true.
But sometimes a lie spoken by the right person is only a truth that needs a little more time to come true.
That night, I could not hear what they were saying.
And that was better.
Secrets lose something when they are explained.
They become a report.
Gossip.
Material to be used in the next argument.
Left inside an image, however, they remain what they should be: possibilities.
They can be hopes.
Confessions.
Sins.
Escape plans.
The name of someone who should no longer have the power to make them smile and who, naturally, still does.
I pressed the shutter because for one second everything looked authentic.
Not perfect.
Not constructed.
Authentic.
Three figures immersed in darkness, gathered around the light of a screen as though it were a small modern fire. Outside that circle were the night, the bar, the expectations, the roles to perform.
Inside, there was only them.
And perhaps that is what we are really looking for when we go out at night.
Not the drink.
Not the music.
Not the photograph posted the next day to prove our life still has a pulse.
We are looking for someone in whose presence we can lower our voice.
Someone who already knows the worst and still feels no need to leave.
Someone with whom to share the part of the story we would never tell beneath decent lighting.
Because the fun ends.
Bars close.
Phones run out of power.
The wrong men remain astonishingly available.
But certain friendships stay.
They remain in messages sent at three in the morning.
In calls that begin with “Do not judge me” and are immediately followed by something deserving at least a minor trial.
They remain in nightclub bathrooms, kitchens, parking lots, apartments lit by a lamp left on too late.
They remain when the makeup has gone, the music has ended, and the elegant version of the night has already taken off its shoes.
Perhaps I will never know what they said that night.
But I know that for a few minutes, the rest of the world remained outside.
And in times like these, finding two people to trust with your secrets without first signing a release form is already a kind of miracle.
A real one.
Without saints.
Without prayers.
And preferably with another round for the table.