David Sedaris - Barrel Fever and Other Stories

Gill was always full of good ideas. So it shocked me when he changed so suddenly. I never saw it coming. We made plans to meet for dinner at an Indian restaurant that doesn't have a liquor license. You just buy it down the block and carry it in with you it's cheaper that way. So Gill and I were in the liquor store, where I asked him if we should buy two six-packs and a pint of JandB or one six-pack and a fifth. Or we could just go ahead and get the two six-packs and the fifth because, why not? I was weighing the odds when, out of nowhere, Gill started twisting the buttons on his coat and said, "Forget about me you just buy something for yourself, Dolph." Dolph is the name I go by because really, nobody can walk around with the name Adolph. It's poison in a name. Dolph is bad too, but it's just box-office poison.

"You go ahead, Dolph. Don't worry about me."

Later in the restaurant, figuring he'd changed his mind, I offered Gill one of my beers. He grew quiet for a few moments, tapping his fork against the table before lowering his head and telling me in fits and starts that he couldn't have anything to drink. "I am, Jesus, Dolph, I am, you know, I'm. . Well, the thing is that I'm. . I am an. . alcoholic."

"Great," I said. "Have eight beers."

Gill became uncharacteristically dramatic, pushing the hair off his forehead. He leaned toward me and said, "Ican't have a drink, Dolph. Don't you understand anything at all? Ican't."

He said it as though he was the recently paralyzed lead dancer in a made-for-TV movie and I had just commanded him to take the lead in tonight's production ofThe Nutcracker. I responded, acting along in what I considered an appropriate manner. "Youcan do it," I said. "Iknow you can do it. But, oh, you'd rather sit there on that chair and be a quitter. Take the easy way out. That's right you're a loser, a cripple, but when the lights go up on that stage, when all the other dancers are in place, I want you to know the only thing keeping you in that wheelchair is yourself."

Gill's face began to buckle. When he began to sob I realized he wasn't joking. People at the surrounding tables lowered their forks and looked over in our direction. I pointed to our plates and said in a loud whisper, "Whatever you do, don't order the tandoori chicken."

Ever since then things have been different between us. He quit calling me and whenever I called him I got his machine. His old message, the "Broadway doesn't go for pills and booze" line fromValley of the Dolls, had been replaced. I know he is home, screening his calls but I always hang up at the point where the new Gill's voice encourages me to take life one day at a time. What has become of him?

I took a train home and talked it over with my mother, who, at the time, was spending a week in the hospital, recovering from surgery to remove cancerous lymph nodes. The cancer was nothing compared to the punishment she endured from her roommate, a lupus patient named Mrs. Galls. The woman never said a word but watched television constantly and at top volume. Possessing no apparent standards she'd watch anything, expressing no more interest in a golf match than a nature program.

"You got any questions about the grazing habits of the adolescent North American bull moose?" my mother asked, fidgeting with the plastic bracelet on her wrist. "I complained to the nurses about the volume but all they do is point to their ears and whisper that she's got a hearing problem. If she's got such a hearing problem then why are they whispering about her? She can hear the food cart from down the hail. I've seen it with my own eyes. She perks up and rubs her hands together and over what? That foraging moose of hers will sit down to a better meal than anything she's likely to get in this place. I want that woman dead."

I talked for a brief while about my problems with Gill until my mother lost interest. "Did I tell you that your sister Charity called me? I hardly recognized her voice because it's been, what, three years since she's phoned me. It seems she lost her job at the suicide hot line and is looking to borrow some money. I said, 'Hold on just a few seconds, darling. It's a bit difficult to reach my purse with this IV in my arm."

I listened to her stories with the understanding that the moment my back was turned I would likely become the chief character in her next complaint. I fully expected her to turn to her radiologist and say something like, "Isn't that sweet of my only son to travel all this way so he can whine about his pathetic little friend? Maybe if I weren't strapped to my deathbed I could muster up the strength to give a damn."

That's the sort of thing that destroys my sisters but doesn't bother me in the least. I expect it in a person and am constantly amazed to hear someone refer to it wrongly as gossip and get all bent out of shape about it.

An example: until fairly recently I had the misfortune of holding down a job in the offices of Vincent and Skully Giftware, distributors of needlepoint beer cozies, coffee mugs in the shape of golf bags, and more insipid novelty items than you would ever want to know about.

I equate the decline of this nation with the number of citizens willing to spend money on T-shirts reading "I'm with Stupid," "Retired Prostitute," and "I won't go down in history but I will go down on your little sister." The Vincent and Skully employees were, with the exception of me, perfect reflections of the merchandise. The offices were like a national holding center for the trainably banal, occupied by people who decorated their cubicles with quilted, heart-shaped picture frames and those tiny plush bears with the fierce spring grip that cling to lamps and computer terminals, personalized to read "Tern's bear" or "I wuv you very beary much!"

I don't know how it is that people grow to be so stupid but there is an entire nation of them right outside my door. I lost my job a few months ago when Alisha Cottingham went off the deep end and cornered me in the mail room. Alisha is in the marketing division and she tends to use what she considers to be concise, formal speech. Listening to her speak I imagine she must type it up the night before and commit it all to memory, pacing back and forth in her godforsaken apartment and working to place the perfect emphasis on this or that word.

"Mr. Heck," she began, blocking me off at the Xerox machine. "It has come to my attention here at VandS Giftware that you seem to have some problem with my chin. Now, let me tell you a little something, sir. I am not here to live up to your stringent physical qualifications. I am here to work, as are you. If my chin is, for any reason, keeping you from performing your job here at Vincent and Skully then I believe we have a problem."

I was thinking, chin? What chin? I said something about her neck. Alisha's chins are another story.

She continued. "I just want you to know that your deliberate cruelty cannot hurt me, Mr. Heck, because I will not allow it to. As a professional I am paid to rise above the thoughtless, petty remarks of an office boy who takes pleasure in remarking upon the physical characteristics of his coworkers, many of whom have fought valiantly against both personal and social hardships to make this a company we can all be proud of." Eventually she began to sob and I might have felt sorry for her had she not reported me twice for smoking dope during the three o'clock break. So I made some little remark and it got around. So what? Did Alisha Cottingham honestly believe that by sitting beside me and sharing a bag of potato chips our bond would grow so strong I would fail to notice she has a neck like a stack of dimes?

There seemed to be no stopping her. She finished her speech and started it all over again from the top, each delivery louder until the manager arrived, suggesting I might be happier working somewhere else. Happier?