There were a few problems with this. To start, an ellipse and exclamation mark is, to say the least, a bold punctuation combination. More worrying was that my name wasn’t Joan ...! But I did know a Joan. She was my height, with a more dewy complexion. Joan was flirty and elusive. An easy breezy cool girl that would leave before she is left.

I replied, “Hey stranger, 9.30 too late for a tequila and soda?” Joan drank tequila.

To my surprise, Joan had had the foresight to include a last name in Mick’s phone contact. A quick google and I was already fantasizing about our drink.

A cattle farmer by trade, Mick’s was the quintessential success story of small town country boy goes global. He’d made the leap from outback stockman to jet setting cattle company CEO, a feat undoubtedly helped by sturdy family backing, but a feat nonetheless. His well-lit LinkedIn picture peaked in me a hint of recognition. Mick had a kind smile with a nose just crooked enough to make his attractiveness authentic. Joan it seemed hadn’t led me too far astray.

I quickly disseminated screenshots of Mick’s text to all key group chats. Including, for good order and richer story value, links to some recent news articles about his company.

“Hahahahaha Joan?!?!? Mate, you need a new fake name.”

My sister Emma wasn’t wrong. I didn’t know anyone born after 1930 called Joan. But as Joan, I had the air of a person born in a simpler time. When life was sepia filtered and easy. Joan had no insecurities. She wouldn’t pick a bar because its dim lighting obscured the pimple on her cheek. Joan didn’t believe in blemishes — to her perfection lay in imperfection.

I arrived fifteen minutes early. And I was nervous. I’d caught those sort of butterflies where talking too much and too loud is inevitable. When Joan and Mick first met he’d been wearing a work suit. Coiffed in his jacket and with something to prove, her whimsy had unbalanced him. She didn’t care for his big stories and name dropping. It was nothing more than a play to her. Act 2, Scene 3: Cool girl enchants boy.

Mick had replaced the suit with a simple t-shirt and jeans. His shirt’s light khaki tone would have easily shown sweat patches. He didn’t have any. He was older than Joan had said. A young old. Still not weighed down by responsibility for anyone other than himself. But it was his jeans that were the giveaway. No one born north of the nineties would wear a bootcut style so pronounced.

“Heyyy.” My aye dragged a moment longer than it should have. I’d hoped it would blend seamlessly into the kiss I placed on Mick’s cheek, but I feared my nasal tone would now be ringing in his ear.

The reunion was awkward. We fussed over where to sit, ultimately settling for the high set stools Mick had picked to start. I wobbled my way up to my perch, holding the straight backed posture of someone who’d been a ballerina when they were young. Joan was still a ballerina.

“I thought you’d have my tequila waiting.” Too obnoxious? I was trying to be like Joan. What would Joan do? She certainly wasn’t meek nor mild. But how can a woman be firm and self assured without “b#%ch” comparisons niggling? Joan tiptoed effortlessly on that fine line between confidence and b#%ch, while I was club-footed with a chattering monkey brain, questioning every word I said.

Women do that. We question. It’s why when prospective employers demand skills of critical analysis we rise to the top. But this was no job interview, so why was I describing my essence, my aura, like it was a CV. What made me me? To articulate an answer insulted my self worth.

My alias was my armor. I needed Joan to bolster my allure. As an actress, a performer, a pretender I was superior. It wasn’t as if Joan’s stories deviated too greatly from the script of my own life. But her’s were peppered with a charisma and positivity that obscured the imperfections.

In Joan’s recount of my time spent living in Tokyo she focused on the buzz of a Blade Runner city, where warmed toilet seats and automatically opening taxi doors are reminiscent of a 1980s dystopia not the world’s third largest economy. Joan made no mention of the crippling homesickness and culture shock and how her craving for the familiar was so debilitating she’d very nearly hugged a fellow gaijin (foreigner) on the streets of Shinagawa.

Mick seemed impressed. He knew I was young, but the age gap was obscured by the laundry list of life experiences I was proffering. He had stories too, but in my rush to create a character who’d run marathons, swum across shipping channels and was intimidatingly well travelled, I barely opened my ears. My need to be remarkable, to be Joan, had tunneled my vision. I was so focused on my own monologue of what I thought I should be that I’d lost sight of the person sitting across from me.

The inevitable ensued. And in the absence of any real alcohol fueled haze that could perhaps provide the pre-tense of passion, the whole routine felt almost perfunctory. In my head I was reading Joan’s script and in the margin beside “(gasp softly)” she’d annotated in red pen “don’t show too much insecurity”. An ambitious ask for such an intimate act. And in this ask I failed. I was too wanting of affection.

Rolling to his side Mick explained he had an “early meeting” in the morning. I was disappointed, not at the prospect of his “early meeting” and my impending departure, but that I hadn’t mentioned my own “early meeting” first. The game of who raises their early meeting first was one I never liked to lose. I compared it to not having a bus buddy for a school excursion. Although there was no searing public humiliation, losing a bedroom power play still isn’t great for one’s ego.

I slipped back into my stockings, covering up the smooth legs I now wished I hadn’t bothered to shave. Why had I pretended? Annabelle wasn’t altogether unappealing. Sure, she lacked the boldness of Joan, but her stores of humility were certainly endearing. What had been my armor was quickly weighing me down. I’d used Joan to protect me, some perverted means of self preservation. But now I was ashamed at my need for her. Was I that weak?

I had planned this to be nothing more than an amusing anecdote to relay when I next caught up with my girlfriends, rather than the existential crisis it was becoming. In the idealised version of this story I’d have mysteriously revealed my true name as I left, and so too would my confusion with my identity be calmed. Alas, in real life, Mick still knows me as Joan. I couldn’t see the point. He didn’t really know me as Joan or as Annabelle. My worry wasn’t about him at all. It was about rationalizing why I felt better as someone else and that my “feeling better” disgusted me.

Sometimes I still pretend to be Joan. I think it’s funny. My friends will quietly giggle beside me when I introduce myself with my fake name. And I enjoy clowning as Annabelle. I can’t deny that in character I’m more confident as someone else. But whether I’m comfortable with the comfort this lack of authenticity provides I’m less sure. Maybe one day I won’t want to play Joan anymore, but for now I’ll enjoy having two selves.**