BEER AND CONVERSATION

LOOKING BACK

I drained the last drops of beer straight down my throat and went to the fridge to get another one. Then I slogged back to the white sofa and dropped myself into it. It was so plush and comfortable that I could see why my fiancée had to have it. I felt like the beer wasn’t clearing my head enough. I wanted to forget everything—losing my job, losing my fiancée and the day at the temp job. The beer needed some help so I reached into my pocket for one of the little yellow pills that my psychiatrist so thankfully and easily provided me with. I held the tiny precious pill up in front of my face. “Thank you,” I whispered to it and stared at it as if it would make conversation me. Then I popped it in my mouth and chased it with mouthful of cold beer. Then I stretched out and leaned back again to let the beer and the yellow pill work their magic. Before my mind had been speeding, jumping from one bad aspect of my life to another, now it began to slow down and it came to a gentle pause on her. I wondered if my fiancée would ever be back. Maybe she would come back for some of the furniture since we bought it together. Then I could make her dinner and buy her flowers and get down on my knees and tell her that I was so, so very sorry about what I had done. She worked in a high stress environment where she was required to work long hours too, just like me. Maybe she would reconsider and then we could plan to make special time to be together so that I would be tempted to have sex with anyone else. Right there in my booze and drug induced haze it sounded like a done deal. I’d arrange for this meeting to happen and we’d work things out. My body still laying limp on the sofa, spread out crucifixion style, I smiled to myself, first softly and then widely. I would get her back and our plans for the future would be on track again.

That problem resolved I wondered when my relationship with the little pills had begun. Oh, I know. I was my last year of law school and I was at the top of everything. I was in the top ten percent of my class, I was the editor of law review, I was the class president and I was sought after by the top law firms in town. All of that added to my cache on campus. Everyone hated me and wanted to be me at the same time. The competition was so stiff that you had to watch your back. Getting into a top firm was the one thing that every student at my law school wanted and they would do anything to get it. There was an incident where a second year student, a girl too, threw a guy’s computer away. She tossed it in the dumpster in the back of the law school. By the time the rumor made the rounds it was too late. He searched everywhere for the computer. He searched the entire law school, his apartment, every coffee house, and store or anywhere he had been at the time that the lap top disappeared. By the time he caught wind of the rumor that it had been thrown in the dumpster it was the next morning. The trash had been collected and the laptop was crushed along with tons of trash in the back of a garbage truck. He could never prove who did it so there was nothing he could do. The offending girl’s clique wasn’t talking because they would benefit from his violent bump several rungs down the law school ladder of competition just as well as she would.

Well I was taking a bus from my small apartment to the law school to finish up an article and then prepare for an interview with a firm that I was scheduled for the next day. Halfway there for no apparent reason I began to feel hot. I started sweating profusely and I struggled to breathe. Suddenly it felt like every cell in my body jumped to life and I instinctively reach for the man sitting next to me. He glared at me and pulled back. My heart was beating so hard that he could hear it. I knew it because even though he had slid as far away from me as he could, he stared down at my chest with a look of puzzlement. My palms were sweating profusely and I continued to struggle to breathe. I felt like the walls of the bus were closing in on me and my vision was dimming. Lacking adequate oxygen I began feeling light heading. I tried to calm myself by telling my self this wasn’t happening; it was nothing; it would pass, put it didn’t. It just intensified. I still had just enough consciousness to press the bell for the bus to stop. I got up and worked my way to the nearest exit. It felt like the bus would never stop. I just kept thinking if this bus doesn’t stop now I’m pushing the doors open and jumping off. I was going crazy. I just knew that it was all over. My brilliant career as an accomplished attorney was slipping away for a reason I couldn’t even understand. Finally the bus stopped and I jumped off. I bent over and pressed my palms against my knees, gasping for air. I didn’t even care who saw me. It was a matter of survival. I was disoriented and although I was very familiar with that part of the city I felt lost. I didn’t know where to start, how to get home. I know that I couldn’t be inside. That was the only thing that I knew. With the few neurons that were still firing in my brain I was able to make a plan. I walked home and called a psychiatrist. I was never one to believe in psychiatry. I thought it was just a bunch of mumbo jumbo where people made money off of weak cry babies. At that moment I had to get past that and get some help. Everything was on the line. The first number I came to was my Middle-Eastern; cold, wrinkled psychiatrist with no personality who I thought could just as easily be sitting across the table from me getting psychiatric care as I did with him every four weeks. I’ve been seeing him since then.

BEER AND CONVERSATION

My bout of reminiscence was interrupted by the phone ringing. I answered. It was the doorman letting me know that Ben was downstairs and whether he could come up. I said yes and went to the door to wait for Ben. Then I thought better, drained my beer and went back to the kitchen for my third and one for Ben. The more I drank the more I wanted. When I got back to the foyer, the door bell was ringing. I opened the door and flung my arms around him. Ben seemed surprised but he was obviously trying to hide it. “Hi man. I am so glad that you came here tonight. I’m telling you. I really wanted some company tonight.” Ben stepped into the condo and closed the door. He could tell that I was hopped up on something and as was his nature, he was evaluating the situation. “Come on in, man. Make yourself comfortable. Mi casa es tu casa.” I threw that old one out there. “Here, this is for you. It’s nice and cold. Don’t nurse it, now, go for it. I’ve had a couple already myself. You know, just like old times. You know, you…you remember.” I stopped because I could hear myself stammering and slurring my words. I was bordering between drunk but functional and spilling over the edge into total inebriation. I knew that Ben wouldn’t take me too seriously. He sat down on the white sofa and I sat next to him, not too close.He took a sip of his beer and looked at the label. “Hey, this is my favorite too.” “Yeah, man. Did you think I forgot? We had good times back then. You’re my guy man. You’re a guy that I can trust you know.” “Yeah, man. Of course.” I told him about how my fiancee left me and then about my day and he listened silently as if he was back in International Political Relations class in college with that great professor who wrapped us in enthralling stories that painted the perfect picture of the subject and lead us like mice under the spell of the pied piper straight to A’s in the course. On that last day when the grades came out we high fived each other in front of the grade board. Everyone knew what that meant. The jocks on campus had done it again. That meant there would be a party at our place that nice. Those were the good days. The innocent day when we still believed that only greatness, prosperity, success and joy lay on the road ahead. You know what it reminds me of?” “What”? He said, knowing it was just a rhetorical question. He too a suck on his beer and then looked back at me. It reminds me of the time after passing the bar when we had to take that mandatory course about, about um, ah,” I stumbled over my words and snapped my fingers. “Oh yeah, professional responsibility. At the end of the day there was a speech from an ‘experienced attorney in the community’ they called him. Ben stared, wondering where my meandering speech was leading. The man looked about 55. He was dressed in all of the best name brand casual clothing and the evidence of old money dripped off of him. It was the simple things like the monogrammed French cuff short with gold cuff links with what looked like a family emblem matched with a pair of khaki pants and well-made loafers to make the top half of his outfit look casual. Still you know that this man had money. And what did he tell the room of eager, attentive, newly admitted lawyers? “Don’t waste your time spending too much time in the office. One thing that I regret is not having spent enough time with my children when they were growing up. Don’t make that mistake. Take time out for yourself and your family and don’t take the profession of law too seriously.” I sat there, smiling a plastic smile while thinking to myself, “you bastard. Now that you’ve made it to the top, a partner of some prestigious, wealthy firm, and you now come here to try to discourage us from taking the same steps that you took. You filthy bastard!” I thought while smiling politely pretending to take his advice to heart.