Friends Part I

My friend Joe was like a brother to me. We met at one of those humongous hardware warehouse stores: I worked in the Paint department, and I believe he was over at Electrical. We were casual acquaintances --very much of the "Hello, Goodbye" variety -- and didn't really talk much. But, after one day coming up to me and apologizing for being so dismissive over a warning I gave him a few weeks earlier about a certain coworker who was a back-stabbing bastard, our friendship was galvanized. For you see, Joe was a fiercely loyal fellow, and took offense that I would dare to say bad things about someone he thought he knew so well. So, after being burned by the aforementioned bastard, he came up to me and apologized, and invited me to hang out with him and a couple of his friends (who later became very good friends of mine, as well), as those who are often burned do.

"Is there drinking involved?" I asked him.

"Yes. Beer," he responded.

"Okay."

Joe and I became thick as thieves: I would be the calming force and the one who challenged him intellectually, the godfather to his daughter, the only one he ever really trusted and loved as a brother. I was more Spock to his fiery Bones, with both of us having the slick intensity of Kirk-- which, of course, led to many battles, threats, haranguing, snarling, and the severing of our friendship countless times. But, after a while, one of us would ring up the other, and all was well. Until the next confrontation. Like I said: brothers.

The Foothills of Southern California, 1996.

Winter.

For the last few months, or more specifically, since he started dating The Harpy, every time we'd enter my friend Jeff's vintage Jaguar, he'd always say the same thing: I can't afford this thing anymore. To which I'd respond with something like, Why in Hades did you buy it?

My friend Jeff: A world-class boozer, fluent in Blarney, but a little too worried about how he was perceived. He started leasing the Jaguar to give him a green-colored chariot of respectability as he parked his car on the parking lots of prospective customers. He was a pharmaceutical supply salesman whose career was now on shaky ground; he talked a good game, but lately hasn't been able to seal the deal, and he figured that the car would grease the wheels of wealth. But his car-tactic was a failure— his debts were suddenly starting to grow like hyperactive-mold on rotten fruit, and now his girlfriend, The Harpy, was demanding he buy Christmas gifts for her two kids because their dad was a deadbeat.

Now, this particular night was to be our Pre-Christmas Drinking Night, consisting of Chivas Regal on the rocks, beer chasers, and Elvis Presley Christmas cassette tapes, but now we had to shop for, and then drop off, the oodles and oodles of gifts for The Harpy, her kids, and, to cover all the angles, her mother.