What I missed about the bars were the unexpected faces I would see whenever I walked in. The women would sit on their stools with their large purses on the counter. The men would grip their glasses as if they were pulling the clutch of their automobiles. The bartender would polish the glasses and hold them up to the lights to see if they had wiped off every blemish.

“What’re you having?” they would ask me.

Those were the new bartenders. I always felt discouraged when facing the new ones because the old ones knew what I wanted. They wouldn’t have to ask. As soon as I entered the bar, the familiar bartender would begin to make my vodka soda, and I would sit on my usual stool after work. From then on, it was happy drinking until I blacked out. Yes, those were times that were simpler, I suppose.

What I miss are the karaoke bars. There was one on Sepulveda–it’s still around, but I forgot its name–where people sang every night. I would sit in the back patio near a fish tank, chain-smoking with my vodka, listening to other people’s conversations since I would sit there alone. Weird me would type their words in my notepad on my iPhone for later if I had any use for them. Shit, I might’ve. A blues band played in that bar every weekend. They were loud, but they never bothered me.

What I miss is the bar on Cahuenga and Wilcox, I think, which was owned by the same people who owned my favorite watering hole. It had a fireplace in the back smoking lounge, where I would stare at the flames and contemplate what to do with myself. This was me in my early thirties. I was high all the time when I went there, and then I would get drunk. The bartender was lovely. I forgot her name, too, but she was an older lady with purple hair who always loved to see me. She knew what I drank. I downed whiskey there for some reason, not vodka. It was self-medicating. Why lie? I was all alone with no friends, reminiscing about the times when I did have them around.

What I miss is the bar-hopping from one bar to the next in Hollywood. We would always start out west on Sunset at a western bar with a mechanical bull which drunk people would ride and fall off of. And then we would work our way eastbound, closer to where we lived, to bars that were less packed. I remember we would drink at Chateau Marmont, a place where some famous people had died because of an overdose.

What I miss are the afterparties at my friend’s apartment. He would always let me crash there on his couch. I didn’t need to take a taxi home. This was before Uber and Lyft. I would wake up on Saturday and Sunday with a gargantuan hangover. My car would be parked somewhere on his street, which was permit parking only, and I would stagger to it in the morning like it was the walk of shame without the sex with a strange woman. Sometimes I would get a ticket, or sometimes I was lucky. I always had to hurry before the parking enforcer would show up.

Speaking of women, what I miss are the one-night stands in my late twenties/early thirties. Those will never come back again. We all went through them before we settled down. And we always had stories to tell to our closest friends–good or bad.

But what I miss the most are my earliest days of drinking: the first shot I ever took in that small town with the woman I was dating. Or the short time later, when my cousin drove me to Vegas, and we drank and drank and drank and hardly did any gambling. We’d come there to drink because I’d just turned twenty-one. Those days will never ever come back. Now I’m surrounded by death on the same street as I’m walking. People close to me will begin to die when I wake up sober each morning. It’s a sober life from here on out, a bittersweet beginning and ending. There hasn’t been a lot to miss. Except it feels better not to wake up hungover. I drink my coffee and still smoke cigarettes, but I’ve given up drugs and alcohol and the times I’ve had with them. There’s no hiding from the fact that I miss those younger days. But what will I do? Go back to where I was? No. It’s too late. If I go back, there would be no coming back. That’s what I worry about the most. I miss it too much.