A riff on the difference between narratives and alibis, and a bit of juvenile delinquency, cut from Happy Hour is for Amateurs:
You can’t succeed in law without lying. It’s just a simple fact. But you also can’t make things up. How do you thread the needle? With something we know as the “narrative.”

One of my earliest experiences with narratives was in high school, senior year. After I’d already been accepted to college, and there was little, if any, point in even showing up for classes. I was drinking 40s of malt liquor with buddies in the parking lot and walked into a morning assembly late. The vice principal at the time, a strange, disturbing man, grabbed me at the conclusion and dragged me to his office. All I could think the whole way down the corridor was Where the hell are my breath mints? Did I leave them in the fucking locker? And Whatever the defense is this time, it had better be damned solid. The V.P. was a king crawling creep, and our previous run-ins had been rough. I didn’t like the guy – couldn’t, and wouldn’t, respect him. I’d seen him hanging around gym classes, fawning over a couple wrestlers. Nothing overtly untoward, but his appearances seemed more than coincidence. The timing was near impeccable. That and the look on his face – the way he’d pat kids on the shoulders and stare while we were playing basketball. The guy had these huge black pupils, as if his eyes were permanently dilated. Never showed an expression. Just stood there with his arms across his chest, his thin, flimsy torso hunched inward, planted on a set fat old woman’s hips.

I didn’t know much at that age, but I was certain of this on instinct: A man isn’t supposed to look like that.

He’d nailed me just a few weeks before, on the silliest of minor offenses. I’d shown up late for school, with an explanation that my computer hadn’t been working. Had to stop at my mother’s office to print out a history paper due that day. He wouldn’t accept the excuse, signed by my mother or not. I’d reminded him who paid his salary, that in any logical estimation of the hierarchy at hand, the customer was always right. This didn’t go over well.

I’ll bet if I offered to take off my shirt for you in the boy’s locker room this negotiation would go differently.

Now here I was again. And worse, getting busted for drinking at school, zero tolerance shit. They’d call my folks in for a meeting, make me do charity work for some rehab facility – royal fucking annoyances.
Can’t you just leave me alone? I’ve already been accepted to two colleges better than eighty percent of the kids in this place. You don’t like me, I don’t like you, but who really gives a shit? You go back to your office; I’ll behave through my classes. In a few months’ time, we’ll never see each other again. There’s nothing at all to be gained by laying on the Billy Budd treatment.
Sometimes that pitch has a chance… but not with a man like this. A childlike reverence for “duty,” a mechanized approach to procedure – these things eclipsed his common sense. Or provided a pretext for vindictiveness. I’ll teach you a lesson, you little shit.

I’d been in this spot before – had an odd problem with authority through most of my young adult life. Never bucked it for spite, never went looking for trouble. When it found me, though, and it would, I’d treat it like an irritation. Take their punishment in stride. Chalk it up as a lesson. But they always wanted more – deference, remorse… a concession that they knew best, that my apologies were more than lip service. More than a survival response you offer when you’re under the stick.

All I could offer was attention, and that only because I’d been caught. Who was I to affirm them, and who were they to demand it? And why the fuck even ask? What on Earth is the value of an 18 year old’s validation? An offer of false contrition from the mouth of an adolescent male? “Yes, sir. For a second there, five minutes ago, sandwiched between thinking about where I’m next going to fuck my girlfriend and who’ll be throwing a keg party this weekend, it struck me – just how majestic and infallible your rule book is. Thank you for showing me the light.” How do you “kiss the ring” of someone ridiculous enough to demand that kind of vacant tribute?

The V.P. got behind his desk, adjusted his collar and started the Fifth Degree:

“You came into assembly late.”

“I had car trouble. It’s an old truck.”

“You came in late and went to the men’s room twice. And your eyes are glazed.”

“I have a personal issue. A family matter.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really.”

“What exactly.”

“I’ve been upset.”

“About what?”

“We’ve had a death in the family.” Which was true. An aunt I saw maybe once every two or three years had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a few days before, killed in an accident. I hadn’t known the woman very well, but she was hooking me up huge right here.

“A death in the family?”

“An aunt.”

“I’m–well, uh…” He couldn’t bring himself to “sorry,” even sarcastically.

“It’s just… you know… So shocking. How a person is gone like that.”

This is where I tell you I felt guilty about using that bit. And I guess if I were writing the kind of book that was aimed at the kind of reader who needs that sort of apology, that’s exactly the one I’d be making. But this isn’t that book, you’re not that reader, and if there’d ever been any remorse, these words wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be snickering as I type them. No, the situation here was serious, beyond those provincial concerns. There wouldn’t be mercy for truth, and there was nothing to gain from hedging. The only solution was a call-out. Test the son of a bitch.

He’d have had me dead to rights if he were the kind of man who’d push things. I smelled like a wino and all he had to do was lean in and sniff my breath. That and get beyond the mutually exclusive options – rather than assuming one story true and the other false, considering both might be fact. That yes, there’d been a death in the family, and also, yes, I’d been drinking. He didn’t take either tack. Just sat there looking at his phone, the gears turning in his head. Do I call the kid’s cards? Ring his folks to verify the story? How awkward could this get?

Very.

In the context of an either/or scenario, I was holding an ace, and he was as slow and predictable as any other lifelong rule custodian, but hardly an outright fool. It didn’t take a trainload of brains to gauge how this thing would cut. Door Number One? I’m crazy. Crazy and drunk and the mere suggestion of a call to my family breaks me – gets me whiny and apologetic. But he was holding his hand near the phone, trying to goad me into cracking and I wasn’t saying a word. Not because that was my “play.” Just because I didn’t want to speak. I wasn’t sure how bad I smelled, but I knew Olde English 800. Its scent stuck on your breath like garlic. Sweet, with a hint of rotting fruit, like the stink of Thunderbird on the drunks who bought us the stuff.*
Door Number Two? I’m serious. He calls my folks and confirms the story and then he’s stuck looking weak – stuttering like the principal apologizing to “George Peterson” in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I sit there across the desk, watching his hand get called, and trumped. Then I joke about the incident with friends, and in addition to dearth of respect the guy already has among students – being a slope shouldered, middle-aged virgin in a thankless, payless position – he’s got to sit in his office knowing a pack of rotten shits is laughing as they imagine him blubbering. “Oh, well… I’m sorry for your loss then. It’s just that your son– He seemed… Well, nevermi– Please accept my condolences.”

In either case, he wasn’t going to win. I had a bulletproof “narrative” – the only thing better in the dock than a detailed alibi. Some people don’t see the difference, and that’s strange because they’re nothing alike. An alibi’s a set of facts, tactile and easy to test. You can prove one or two didn’t happen, or at least put their veracity in question. And from there, true or not, the rest of the story is suspect. Narrative’s lying via spin – sticking to the actual events, fabricating their impact. And in a situation like mine, where the only witness to the crime was the accused, all that can ever matter is what comes from the advocate’s mouth.

And so we sat for a moment or two, him looking at me, me looking at him, both of us knowing what had happened, and why it’d never be admitted. Prove what I’m saying’s untrue. That these glassy eyes are from booze, and not from the pain of loss.

“Get back to class and understand… I’m watching you.” He waved me out of his office.
Of course you are.
______________________________
* The 8 Ball gets you every time.

This is an outtake from the initial draft of Happy Hour is for Amateurs addressing a subject with which most of us who work in offices for any length of time are quite familiar – daydreaming through your job. Most think it’s a simple reaction to boredom. I agree, but I also think it’s a defense mechanism, a healthy sign you’re normal.
I’ve worked in an office most of my adult life, but never really, fully been there. Anything I see or hear can take me from the moment, set me thinking about something entirely disconnected from everything I’m doing. Any image or sound I come across – the slightest stimulus providing a hint of a basis to start my imagination racing away from Where I’m Stuck. An advertisement for cheap plane tickets on a passing city bus will have me running a reel on what it might be like in Prague that time of year through the balance of most of the morning. A disc jockey’s joke about George Bush crackling out of a radio in the bodega where I pick up the newspaper leaves me musing on what the administration’s plan was – what the end game might have been in that seemingly mindless war, and why we can’t seem to get the oil spigots flowing. Perhaps a conspiracy’s afoot – some nasty plan between the administration and oil companies. But how would the delay help? What would their aim be?

Sometimes it’s just that random image or sound repeating over and over like some warped form of meditation – focusing the mind on an odd, innocuous distraction. And once it’s locked in my head, it’ll often stay for hours, jammed on a rerun loop. I’ll find myself humming and half-singing “Panama” under my breath in the line at the Starbucks on Market Street, unaware as to why – forgetting I’d just heard the song blasting from a car at a stoplight. And the playback’s always vivid. I’ll be standing there, salivating over the first caffeine fix of the day, moving in sync with the line, pulling the dollars out of my pocket and readying myself to pay, in every outward manifestation totally enveloped in the act of preparing for a day at the office. But in my head it’s a different story. The spoken word “solo” near the end of the song is rolling.
I reach down, between my legs… and ease the seat back… The video of the song plays in the background, as immediate and electric as it was when I was thirteen on my parents’ couch, watching it on MTV. She’s blinding, I’m flying… Right behind the rear-view mirror now… David Lee Roth’s sailing over the stage on a suspension pulley above Eddie Van Halen and Michael Anthony, and for a second I’m wondering what it was like in the dressing room after one of their shows – just how many groupies were involved in the orgies. Piston’s popping… Ain’t no stopping now…

“Sir, what size?”
“What?”
“What size?”
“Oh… Venti.”

(more…)

Author’s Note: Describing the typical “cut throat” or uber-law student was one of the hardest challenges in the book. We chose to go with something called an “Angry Insignificant,” but there were many other descriptions. Here’s one anybody who’s been in the delivery business, or a waiter, will probably recognize.
It’s said a legal education breaks down people’s minds – dismantles the way they think, scorches any arrogance or confidence they have in their native powers of analysis and persuasion and rebuilds their brain circuitry in the classic lawyer framework. I don’t know about that. I think you actually have to attend law school on a regular basis, rather than merely enroll and occasionally wander through the library for that malady to take full effect. But I will tell you this: The first moments of law school can absolutely murder your self esteem. For a shocking, horrific instant, you realize what you’re seeing is something you’re part of now – on at least some minor level a mirror of what you’ll become. Or a frightening reminder of just how impossibly drunk and stoned you really were through college.

I took a test and applied for this? Was I sniffing fucking solvents?
As I stood in line in lobby, absorbing the conversations around me and watching the bodies shuffling about, I realized I’d seen this all before. Not in a déjà vu manner, but a real, tactile sense, like I was watching an exhibit of species I’d viewed in another zoo. Something about the hunched spine and straw hair of the kid in the Megadeth t-shirt in front of me and the snorting, nasally exhortations of the lumpy men in short sleeve oxfords to my right dredged up memories of another place. But where? What? It wasn’t memorable enough to come back instantly, just enough to recognize. Something about the scene rendered it so familiar, so home, but also so foreboding. The nervous, forced laughter and jerky body language. The beady eyes shifting away the instant you met them. The thud, thud, thud of the flatfooted library jockeys pushing bifocals up on their noses, sweating and wheezing from the walk up the stairs. I knew these types well, dealt with their breed before. Been a victim of some of their kind, and not so long ago.

(more…)