A Month Ago We Were Strangers

I am back to studying and last month, I met my classmates.

We were strangers then. We had a ‘Welcome to Nomad-hood’ party at a bar that used to be a brothel, it isn’t one anymore, but it kept some parts of it.

It’s a wonder how a pole can reveal so much about people’s dancing skills.

Bappy’s usually silent in class, but that night, he owned it. We quickly realised that he wasn’t silent, he just liked to listen.

I bumped into Fan and Anna at the station and we rode to the place together. That was the beginning of a series of fortunate events.

I told David and Anja to pretend that I wasn’t there and to just keep talking — weeks later, I would realise that it is impossible to think that I wasn’t there because, I was.

And then he started taking our photos to try to explain to me how difficult it was to ‘pretend that the camera isn’t there’.

I heard a lot of conversations that night. One was between Nico and Liana. Nico arrived that day. It’s a pity, I hardly ever remember what I hear, I only ever remember the things that I feel.

On the way out, I saw the DJ who played the songs we were dancing to. I took this photograph so I could tell my brother about it. Back home, he can get people to dance too, but of course I forgot to tell him. This night seemed so long ago, but it was really just a month ago.