what's your name?

She sits down next to me at the bar, looking rough--like she's just been running her hands through her hair and doing everything short of screaming or crying. She's looking at me sidelong, so I say "Hey," noncommittal.

"Hi there," she says, and asks me my name.

I tell her "Uh, Mason," because I'm never sure how to answer that question, and she says her name--I've forgotten it by now--and says I have an interesting name. She wants to know if there's a story behind it. I tell her. It's rote by now. It's just my last name, I say. I explain when I started getting called that. The nuances behind it. Who still calls me by my first name. How it's made a resurgence in time. How I'm never quite sure what to tell people my name is. I don't say how I sometimes wonder if I even know what it is.

Then I think, Jesus, it takes me a lengthy several minutes of extrapolation and backstory to tell someone my name. I tell a light joke and smile, and she stops zoning out long enough to say "That's interesting," even though it isn't.