"Hey, you're doing better than I did... " The lie came easily enough, last October was still Kathlynn and things were still more okay than not; sushi rolls at Osaka in Stamford as per tradition. It'd taken her years to convince him he'd like it -- the whole raw fish stigma like anyone else but damn, raw fish was addicting. Maybe that was how people started out being cannibals, it was just getting past that whole human flesh thing. Or maybe not. There was a sushi class they'd joked about taking -- $100 for three hours and a DVD of your efforts; here Noah thought that perhaps he was in the wrong profession. Or the "wong" profession, he'd almost pointed out, but Kathlynn would have rolled her eyes and called him a racist, which he was not.
But more what he was thinking was that this year's birthday would be shit; there were no nieces to paint him rocks -- his brother had thankfully not procreated -- and he doubted his cat, Winky, would have the foresight to procure him a cake. She might walk across one, if one were available to walk across, but she had not yet mastered the art of baking. But this was a lot to explain to a stranger, and would earn him a secure place amongst the more soliloquous patrons of the bar.
"Birthdays are kinda overrated anyway," he ventured into what seemed like a more neutral territory. "I mean... don't get me wrong, they're nice... just everyone expects you to be... unnaturally happy all day. Or something."
"I dunno," he shrugged the train of thought to an end with a little laugh. "Yay, I was born... let's drink copious amounts of Jager."