Read Part I here.
But back on that night I’d visited Boston, Jerry was on good behavior. Or at least offering the appearance of it. He was loud and loaded early, but I could tell he was staying in check, maintaining a surface composure. And the reason for that came quickly – walked into the bar about an hour after I’d arrived.
Let’s call her Brynn to make it easy. Not because her name was Brynn. Just because the name seems to fit. She was pleasant, attractive and personable. All of it, however, was formal, involved but disconnected – Waspy most would say. I’d say downright icy. Nothing absurd, of course. Not like Winthorpe’s terminally constipated fiance in Trading Places, or Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, but carrying that same detached air – a collection of contrived smiles hiding judgmental frowns.
“I thought you two were broken up.” I whispered in Jerry’s ear.
“We are.” He hugged her hello and turned back to introduce me. “But we mess around a bit. You know. It’s easy.”
It’s easy. Of course I understood that. Everyone understands that. The hard part of fucking is the first – screwing somebody new. It’s always the biggest risk. Will the other person be good? Will this thing turn into a relationship? What if they’re terrible in bed and refuse to leave my place? Force me to take them to breakfast and regale with me tedious stories, the whole time compelled to remember, choking down eggs benedict, just how awful they were… how fast and mechanical or lazy and selfish they’d been? Do I want to assume this risk?
If you’re a man and you’re going to her place, the answer’s always yes. You can leave whenever you want, pull the cord and run when you’re done. But whatever sex you are, if you’re going back to your apartment, you have to assess the downsides. And let’s face it – that’s rarely a man’s issue. You always go to her place, and this leaves the woman to consider, “Do I really want to have this guy over? Seems attractive and funny right now… but I’m seriously fucking loaded. Will he fart all night in his sleep? Snore like a chainsaw, be hung like a Chihuahua or too damned drunk to fuck? Is he a possible closet pervert? The kind who’ll try to assfuck or fist me? Is this a potential Marv Albert?” The list goes on and on, which is why women rarely screw sober, at least the first time around.
And that’s also why exes keep screwing, long after the love part’s dead – long after they’ve reached the conclusion there’s as much dislike between them as there ever was affection, and no prayer in hell of a future where they’d grow old as a couple. It’s easy. People want a simple fuck, and the only way to get that for certain is to fuck what you’ve fucked before. Might not be great or even good, but if you’ve screwed someone they know how you like it. They’ll scratch that nagging itch.
You’ve just got to always remember – keep the interaction light. Don’t be a robot, of course, or act in a transactional fashion. Friendly and nothing else. There was once more than fucking between you, and too much or too little emotion can throw the whole thing off kilter – turn what should have been a simple “session” into an ugly dissection of the past, or a painfully awkward brunch you’d both rather run from than finish. It’s a tightrope walk in high wind, but as those of who’ve fucked exes know, in a dry spell the option’s a lifesaver. Always keep it open.
Archive for the ‘The PhilaLawyer Stories’ Category
L’esprit de l’escalier, Part II
September 7th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerOlde English Advocacy (Nuggets, Vol. XV)
August 2nd, 2009 by PhilaLawyerA 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.
L’esprit de l’escalier
July 27th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerWe’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.
- Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
What was said? Nothing, for at least a moment too long. And I knew I was done right there, that the apprehension was fatal and I should have just turned and left. But I had to go for the save – grasp at the prayer of a chance I might just salvage the mess.
I fucked that up even worse.
‘I knew I should have brought other shoes’? What the fuck kind of line is that?
Of course it made no sense. Of course it was half-stuttered, and no, the tongue-tied, doe-eyed act, however real in that instant, was nowhere near endearing. I’d only sounded stupid. Fumbling and imbecilic, as loaded and clueless as Jerry, teetering in the street, sucking furiously on a half-lit Marlboro red as the snowflakes coated the street around him.
“Hey, are we supposed to get an ack–” He hacked in the background. “An acc-cumulation?”
“Your town, not mine.”
“I don’t watch the weath–”
“Does it matter?”
No response, thank God. He was sober enough to catch the message in my deadpan inflection: Shut the fuck up. You’re screwing me over here. Again. In truth, though, Jerry was no longer an issue. I’d already missed my opening, the instant where it’s do or die. Where I should have taken the wheel and instead had looked like a fool. Or possibly far too drunk. Either way I was learning the lesson – the one that’s not supposed to hold true. The one that goes against everything they teach us as kids about being careful, acting deliberately, cautiously – that little’s ever lost in impulsiveness, and often much gained. That the meanest regrets in life are all born of hesitation. Of thinking when you should have been acting.
That and when she’s insanely, ridiculously hot, and luck hands you at a chance at a score, it might be the smarter bet to order your whiskey with water. Limit yourself to five, rather than seven or eight. And choose your wingman wisely. Where one drunk shoots himself in the foot with amazing regularity, two aren’t prone to do better.
. . .
The corkscrew drop into Logan drives your balls into your throat. One minute you’re at 20,000 feet, the next staring at the tarmac. I’ve never asked why the airport has such an approach, but it seems to prepare you for the rest of the city. Everything in Boston feels tight. Every turn on every cramped street negotiated on a dime. Every narrow alleyway squeezed by red brick buildings and office towers. Where Philly’s nothing but sprawl, spreading across the southeastern edge of Pennsylvania like a patch of rust, Boston’s dense, like San Francisco. Only minus the hills and vistas, and trapped under the iciest tunnels of the Jet Stream.
“Fuck, this is brutal.” The cold cut through my jacket as I jumped out of the cab and ran into the bar to meet Jerry. Had to be at least fifteen degrees colder than Philadelphia. I’ve never worn a topcoat with a suit. Seems like a “basket case” concept. If one jacket’s not enough, you need to get your circulation checked. But then, I never lived in Boston. Here, I could understand the practice.
Sleepwalking Through Work (Nuggets, Vol. XIV)
June 22nd, 2009 by PhilaLawyerThis 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.”
A Little of This, A Little of That (Conclusion)
March 15th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerAll men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
- H.L. Mencken
It took a few phone calls, but eventually Martin and I tracked down the rest of the group and met up with them at another bar across town.
“This sucks.” Erin was running a wet napkin over Victoria near the front door of the place.
“Did you get egged, too?”
“Egged?” She looked confused, understandably so. I turned to ask Martin to explain, but he’d already spotted Samantha across the bar and broken loose in her direction.
“Henry bumped into Victoria in his ‘getaway’ and left a streak of sour cream all over the back of my dress.” Erin wiped at the stain furiously. “I have to wear this tomorrow.”
“She’s wearing your dress?”
“Victoria forgot her evening clothes in her car at the train station.”
Of course she did.
“We’re the same size.” Victoria slugged back a glass of wine. “So it fits.”
Funny how those concepts tend to mesh.
“What happened to you?” My Flock of Seagulls hairstyle and soaking wet shirt caught Victoria’s eye.
“I wasn’t fucking around. I got egged.”
“Like, with ‘egg’ eggs?” Her boyfriend appeared on the scene.
“Faberge.”
“Ha ha. Nice. Like those are those real expensive ones sheiks buy, right?” Victoria’s boyfriend appeared at my left. “I saw one once… at this museum. I think it was in Europe. It had, like, all these rubies–or, no… emeralds. Which ones are orange?”
“Hold that question.” I spotted Bennett across the bar.
“You chickenshit.”
“What?” He stared at the jukebox, knowing I was there, but refusing to acknowledge my presence. “I waited for you outside. You cut right. I was on the left.”
“They’re never going to let you back in that bar.”
“This should upset me?”
“I thought it was your favorite place.”
“I just said that. Somebody told me it had good nachos.”
“Nachos?”
“What?” The music slammed out of the machine, a deafening wall of noise – a half dozen bone-crunching, low register riffs buttressed with crashing cymbals.
“Nachos!?”
“You know what’s fucked?! What’s really, really fucked?” As he shouted, the opening notes faded for a moment and an immediately recognizable bass-line kicked in the rest of the song. “You can get anything here, anytime you want it, right?!”
“Right!”
“Can’t find decent guacamole! Anywhere!”
Dorm Moles (Nuggets, Vol. XIII)
March 9th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerAuthor’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.
Anger Management (Nuggets, Vol. XII)
March 6th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerAuthor’s Note: “A Little of This, A Little of That’s” conclusion will be up next week.
Too many associates wear depression on their sleeves. They walk around with their shoulders slumped, frowning, staring at the carpet – the telltale signs of a problem down the road. A problem worth abusing, exploiting… terminating. Lawyers operate like school yard bullies. They only pick on the weak. Look like you’re beaten, act like your beaten and, well, you’ll get beaten. The only way to succeed in a job you loath is to make a sport of hating it – to turn your work into performance art.
That’s vague, I know. Let me explain.
Most people internalize their frustration. They sit at their desks, stoic and polite, believing quiet resilience or “professionalism” will inevitably earn the brass ring. In a different time, yeah, I guess that worked. Not today. Not anymore. And sure as hell not in a law firm. If you’re not self-promoting, you might as well stay home. Even in the “United States of States of Amnesia,” where nobody remembers anything before their last text message, the average lawyer’s lack of attention span is amazing.1 These people run from project to project like rats from one dumpster to another. Most don’t have the time, interest or inclination to separate the advertisers from the producers. To a mind that rarely considers anything beyond the satisfaction of its owner’s Id for more than thirty seconds, the appearance of dedication and actually giving a fuck are indistinguishable. “Angry” and “animated” are easily confused with “intense” and “relentlessly driven.”
Maybe you’re like me. You get so irritated by the toil you have to stop and breathe every few minutes, take your pulse and get your head under control… Hold yourself from smashing your phone receiver, throwing binders of exhibits into the hallway or flinging your monitor through the window. You think it’s the stress, but it’s not. You’re bored – incurably, desperately so. All those years of sitting at that fucking desk, researching, writing, going to court and bleating all those tedious, niggling arguments. You know it’s a horrid life existence, if you can even call it that. But how else do you keep up the cash flow? How do you pay for all the extravagances that help you escape it? And what else would you do? Really, what’s the escape? Every weekend you swear you’ll start looking for a new career, but you only wind up polluting yourself instead. Anything to free the mind, whatever it takes to Forget. Your attitude starts degrading, rotting from cynical to malignant, from annoyed to infuriated.
A Little of This, A Little of That, Part III
February 26th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerUp on the roof, in my car/
Up all night, I’m pulling through signs like Dolomite/
The mack, I’m the Egg Man/
Taxi Driver, I’m the Egg Man
- “Eggman,” Paul’s Boutique (1989)
“Get over here! Stop! Now!” The words cut through the chatter all around me, through the noise of a crush of friends by the bar, laughing, passing rounds of Beam shots through the group. I was feeling that early numbness, the initial full-body novocaine sensation of the liquor, but even in a sedative state, the voice was deeply alarming. “Now! Stop right now!” It was foreign – Turkish, Moroccan… perhaps Lebanese. And it was Bent – angry and looking for blood, and headed in our direction, louder as the syllables kept coming. “Now! I’m calling the police!”
I didn’t need to guess at the cause.
“Hot stuff.” “Whoa.” “Coming through.” “‘Scuse met there, ladies.” “Pardon me.” “Sorry about that.” Henry was cutting and slashing through the lines of people near the bar, holding a plate over his head with one hand and shoveling what looked like a quesadilla into his face with the other, bobbing, twisting like Barry Sanders in heavy traffic, firing the engines and gunning ahead in the occasional empty spaces.
Turn your back. There is no way this is good. I saw what looked a line cook or manager five or six feet behind him, screaming and waiving his arms. Don’t look at him. Don’t let them connect you to the crime. After a few years in the company of people like Henry (well, in fairness, like me… like most of the people I knew), you understand the informal “joint and several” form of liability management applies to the group of friends, or as they see it, enablers, who come along with these miscreants. Whatever they destroy, steal, or soil in a fashion that renders the thing useless under state health regulations, You Now Own. That’s right. Though they’ve no legal right to do so, if your buddy vomits onto the pizza display or cheese steak griddle at the late night place you took him to after a margarita marathon, management looks to you to pay for the lost inventory or cleanup expenses. Or get beaten in the alley next door by a couple of line cooks or bouncers. Poor man’s indemnification – you make the establishment whole in the moment, then collect it all back from your asshole friend in the morning.
I turned, tipped my head down and waved at the bartender. “Another round of bourbon shots, please. Yes, Beam.” Don’t you know by now, goddamnit? Jack Daniels is not a bourbon. It’s a sour mash whiskey, made in Tennessee.
A Little of This, A Little of That, Part II
February 11th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerWhen a man has joined a party, he is likely to stay in it. If he changes his opinion – his feeling, I mean, his sentiment – he is likely to stay, anyway; his friends are of that party, and he will keep his altered sentiment to himself, and talk the privately discarded one. On those terms he can exercise his American privilege of free speech, but not on any others. These unfortunates are in both parties, but in what proportions we cannot guess.
- The Privilege of the Grave, Mark Twain
Bennett, of course, ignored my request. His tiny apartment was filled with ten or so of our college friends, passing around two fifths of Beam and attacking a single case of Dos Equis – woefully inadequate provisions.
“What the fuck? I asked you to grab at least another bottle.”
“That’s right, you asked.”
“That’ll never be enough. We’ll get like, four, five shots out of that with all these people.” The aim with downing bottles of Beam was drinking the whiskey fast. The rule was the person who cracked the seal had to “pull” from it, preferably down to the label. Then he passed it along with a shot-glass, every person in the chain pouring a shot for the next person in line until the thing was empty. And to ensure the speed of the process, the bottle was never allowed to rest on any surface. You took your poison, poured for the person next door and moved “the works” along immediately. In a crowd of ten or so veterans, two bottles wouldn’t last twenty minutes, and nobody’d have enough. To get a quick, starter blast from a bottle of eighty proof liquor you needed to hit it hard – eight shots in a half an hour, ten if you wanted to be certain. Then you wait a little while, until it hits you like a haymaker twenty minutes later.
“You should get a faster car.”
“I had to pick up Hen–”
“A convertible… BMW. You’d look good in that. Tanned, wearing your Vaurnets. You could blast Crash at stoplights, score mad betties.”
“And you last got laid — Let’s see… Jerry Garcia was still alive?”
“‘All the lit-tle ants are marrrrching…’ Hey ladies, you all headed to the Big Todd show?”
“Big ‘Head’ Todd, ass.”
“My friends call me ‘Hollywood.’”
“‘Hollywood’? Really? Resurrecting that?”
“This is my boy, Chad, here in the passenger seat. People call him ‘Marley.’ Hey, uh, any of you ladies got a Marlboro Light I could bum?”
I gave up trying to reply. Just smiled and sucked back a shot. In the corner of the kitchen I could see Henry filling a tumbler with Bennett’s oldest, most expensive bottle of Bushmills, and promptly soiling it with tonic water. Seemed an adequate karmic brush-back.
That and I’d been here before, and didn’t have a decent response. The crux of Bennett’s joke was the fount of an endless dispute, an argument we’d had since college: Was I more ‘Keith’ or ‘Mick’?
A Little of This, a Little of That
January 25th, 2009 by PhilaLawyerWe have no ideology, no agenda, no catechism, no dialectic, no plan for humanity. We have no “vision thing”… All we have is the belief that people should do what people want to do, unless it causes harm to other people.
- The Liberty Manifesto, P.J. O’Rourke (1993)
Mondays… They’re always so chatty on Mondays. In every office I worked, it was always an ironclad rule. Standing in the doorway, stopping you in the hall… cornering you at the goddamn urinals. “So, how was your weekend?” “Do anything exciting over the weekend?” “Wow. I’m still feeling Saturday! How was yours?”
Amazing. In the past forty eight hours, so much incredible happened. And yet somehow, it all remained just close enough to stasis that here I am again, talking to you in the hall, waiting for elevator to take me to 17, so I can take a shit in peace in that hidden executive washroom nobody ever uses… God, how I love this routine.
They’re not really asking anything, or even waiting for an answer. The questions are nothing but openers, so they can tell you everything they did. In the longest, most agonizing detail.
This is fine, of course – part of the Ritual of Monday, of easing back into the grind. Gives you a point of focus other than the tension all around – that endless punching of keys, the ringing of phone after phone and all that incessant babbling… those vital, urgent discussions and critical negotiations, the sudden death decisions of the litigation game. “We need to ask for a sixty day extension, to make sure the judge will at least give us the thirty we need.” “Brilliant. I’ll have an associate make the edits to the motion and proofread it. Then I’ll proof it again and send it to you for final proofing and approval.” All the bodies in the hallways, marching, pacing, fidgeting – heads pressed to cell phones on their shoulders, scanning papers in their hands. “Paragraph thirty-seven, subheading eleven needs a full colon at the end, not a fucking semi-colon!” And hiding in the quiet moments, that ceaseless droning hum… the low pitch terminal tinnitus from the fluorescent bulbs above.
When I worked in a larger office, in those ancient pre-Bush years, I heard a lot of tales on Mondays. Stories that would normally pain you, like listening to someone’s dreams. (“…[A]nd then, then, like, you were there. But it wasn’t you. I mean, it was you in that it looked like you, but it was also kind of like a dolphin. But sort of like Liam Neeson, too, and you spoke to me in a voice sort of like… like you were barking. You were warning me, ‘Careful with that axe, Claudette.’ That’s all you kept saying and then my cat woke me up. It was really freaky.” “Indeed. You don’t have a pistol I could borrow for a second, do you?”) But at the start of a brand new workweek, and specifically in the morning, they serve an important purpose. They buy you time to adjust, to build that veneer of engagement – the “interested” you of the workplace, cloaking your deeper inner thoughts:
If my office were all mirrors and I fired a laser over the top of my doorway at a sixty degree angle, it’d probably bounce back off the wall behind me, right over… there. Then it’d bounce left, and hit the other wall over there, then bounce back over… here, in that corner, then ricochet back toward the door. How many deviations it would take before the room was one big ball of red laser light? Can you even have that? One big ball of laser light made up of a single beam?
I wonder what Greenland’s like. It seems so… big.
You can smile and listen and laugh, thinking of a way to reply when your boss or co-worker ends the story of his weekend with that inevitable polite hook: “So what did you do? Have any adventures?”
What are you going to say? You have to offer something. And it has to fit your image, the character you present… the archetype the listener expects. Everybody thinks he’s unique, of his own singular mold. We fancy ourselves distinctive, and maybe deep down we believe it. But that isn’t what we project. On the surface we act to a type, a kind every person knows, and thinks he understands. You have to do that in an office. Management likes what’s safe, and “predictable” gets a premium. It’s good to be apparent, overt – with your interests worn on the sleeve. Gives the people who hire a set of easy clues, so they can pick up the loyal soldiers, avoid all the mercenaries.
