Everyone’s gone home and I’m left sipping a glass of Lagavulin whiskey in the hotel bar. It’s a pretty sad fucking ending for a pretty sad fucking day, that’s for sure.

I navigate to the contacts on my phone. Even though I know I won’t find a name of anyone left in Joburg that I want to call.

I consider ordering another whiskey. But I know I won’t because my liver can’t afford to go down that road again.

I think about smoking the cigar sealed in the aluminum tube I’ve been carrying with me for almost two years. I always think about smoking it but I can never bring myself to do it.

I remember the excessive dinners, the drunken parties and the exclusive strip clubs of my past. Then I remember Fergie. It is in fact inevitable that I will remember her tonight. I’m in a bar, in heels and a designer frock and feeling reckless.

It is probably a distortion of the truth, to say I ‘remember’ Fergie. You can’t remember someone that you can’t manage to forget.

Let me rephrase then. I remember the excessive dinners, the drunken parties and the exclusive strip clubs of my past. Then I stop trying to so damned hard to forget Fergie, if only for a few minutes. It is in fact inevitable that I will allow myself the luxury to think of her tonight. I’m in a bar, in heels and a designer frock and feeling fragile.

It was on a pretty standard Friday night that we met, one that started like this one, with a drink at a hotel bar, a night that ended in her bed. What was I thinking falling for such a bad girl?