Who are you?

Glasses on my head, book in my hand, I can be found anywhere. I might be in my Mother's house of an evening, the prisoner of Azkaban in full flow, conjuring a spell beyond any number of dementors.
Or maybe you passed prefab 4 during the Great Gatsby? A foolish Nick Carraway living with morals while the Toms and Gatsby types do what they want?
Did you join me on the Metro when I read Catch 22? When I missed my stop to see what happened to Major Major? I laughed out loud and shuddered simultaneously. Remember Slaughterhouse 5? God, I was as flattened as Dresden after it. As flat as a moonscape. Did you join me on a journey through Spain in The Sun Also Rises? Did we have a beer in the square or fish together on the Factory river? Maybe you held the wine bag up as I drank? I honestly can't remember!
Remember reading Nesbo's The Snowman as snow fell outside? Jesus, I triple checked the doors were locked for a week. Did you ever read James Lee Burke? Imagining who you knew was just like Clete Purcell? And we all know someone that thinks they are Serpico, right?
So much of life is in a book. The thirst to beat all thirsts in Ice Cold in Alex. Life's shadows in Hogwarts. Our isolation in the New York trilogy. Sven Hassell's stark, glory-less war. The countless heroes and zeros of print; characters we embrace or run from.
I was Joyce strolling Dublin from the outside. I was Hemingway at the San Isidro bullfights. I may even have been Jeanette Winterson once, when lost in Venice. I've been Tim Krabbe more than I'd have liked and for sure I've been swallowed up by the system like Heller. And now I'm in the middle of the novel. My own. And it's damned hard to ignore the illustrious list above or to channel one of the characters that lit the way for me in the past. 116 pages so far, of steering clear of all the literature in my life imprinted like a tattoo on my soul. Maybe when its all over I'll be free. I won't be them. I'll be me.