I'm at a stupid party, the kind where you only know three people, and one of them has left with his girlfriend, one of them has got lucky and is in a dark upstairs bedroom, and the other is asleep in their own puke. The lights are low and the air smells of dope and sweat. There's pumping techno music from a downstairs room and the walls are an unhealthy yellow like the skin of a junkie.
She's with me and we're talking, but then she leaves and I'm alone here. I start talking to another girl, and I'm kind of flirting with her, wondering if I'll kiss her, in a tired, stupid way, unconscious of my life and what I want and what I'm supposed to be doing. The party fades out and suddenly I'm alone on the deck of a ship at night, with stars tiny and hard as sparks of glitter all above me, and the freezing cold rush of the waves.
It's the Dublin-Holyhead ferry, a journey I've made so many times, and sometimes I come here just to hang out and breathe the air, and that strange, lonely, peaceful atmosphere on the decks of ships. Too late, I realize that the ferry has sailed far away from the coast, and I have no way to get back home. I know she'll be worried about me and I don't know what to do.
When we get to the far shore I am just about to call her when she calls me first, and I tell her what happened. We're both puzzled, as if no explanation either of us could come up with can explain how I ended up here after the party. I go back on to the ferry with my return ticket and wait for the journey home, the sky bright and clear and windy this time. I am wondering why this is my life, and not that of another.