unprepared
"Dwayne?"
It wasn't really a question. It was that tone that people use when they've already asked you a different question but you never acknowledged them. The speaker questions you a second time with your own name to get your attention. Just hearing that tone in their voice, you know you've missed a direct question. When it happens in front of a group of people, it can be an embarrassing moment. Not for me though. I'd been drinking since 7am that morning.
Actually, I'd been drinking since April. It was now July.
If you get technical about it, drunks are alcoholics, but for want of a better term, I like to make distinctions between the two. Alcoholics and drunks start in the same place. Their drinking escalates them to the level of being a functioning derelict. Alcoholics then go through a series of stages as the "functioning" part of that term begins to deteriorate. They go through stages of denial about their inability to function. They begin to hide their inability to function. As they begin to fail the people and institutions they care about more and more, they attempt rehabilitation for as long as necessary, up to and including the remainder of their lives. The entire process is fueled by a single thing: guilt.
Remove guilt from the equation and you get a drunk. Drunks don't delude themselves about the inability to function and seldom bother to hide this fact unless there's something to gain from it. They're loud, conspicuous, uncoordinated, a little bit shaky, and make no apologies for any of it. From your local wino to the town drunk, this is a universal truth. That was the line I had crossed back in April. Due to an absence of any remorse concerning my proliferating consumption of alcohol, I accepted my new life as an unabashed drunk. The fun part was watching the world around me deal with it.
So, I didn't care when my name was asked as a question that day in the project room, at least, not enough to be embarrassed. It was the late 90s and I was part of a graphic design consulting firm. I knew I'd never be able to keep the job in the long run, but for the meantime, I had been trying to lie low and milk that salary for as long I could before I was shit-canned. I hadn't done an honest day's work at the firm in over two months. I came to work reeking of vodka Bloody Marys and stayed smashed most of the day. I'd sit at my desk and push paper around to look busy. I could fake it for a while.
Eventually, people began to notice that my work wasn't being completed. Then they noticed that I wasn't even starting it. My name was being spoken around the office in hushed conversations. When people walked by my desk they had an obvious look of pity on their faces. On the good days, I would make mock, sad faces back at them and laugh. By the time of this meeting, I was the office joke. Upper management had been compiling their paper trail of inadequacy, failure, and insubordination for my eventual termination. I had maybe a week left, if I was lucky.
As the sound of my name was absorbed by the upholstery and bounced slightly off the hard surfaces in the room, the air did fill with embarrassment. But it wasn't mine, it was theirs. Throats were cleared nervously and eyes looked down at the table or straight ahead at nothing while the project leader attempted to get the attention of the office drunk. I did the only thing any of us can do at a time like this. I looked up at the lead designer and asked a question that was a equally rhetorical.
"Hmmm?"
The leader re-asked their original question, the one I had missed. The answer to it required some depth of preparation and concern on my part, and I had neither by this point. I shuffled some paper on the table in front of me half-heartedly, acting like I was looking for something to help me answer the question. It was a fruitless charade and I abandoned it after a few moments. I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. I raised my hands from the table, turning the palms upward slightly - the universal sign of empty hands - and shook my head sloppily. "I don't know," I said. I dropped my arms, my wrists banging against the tabletop.
It wasn't really a question. It was that tone that people use when they've already asked you a different question but you never acknowledged them. The speaker questions you a second time with your own name to get your attention. Just hearing that tone in their voice, you know you've missed a direct question. When it happens in front of a group of people, it can be an embarrassing moment. Not for me though. I'd been drinking since 7am that morning.
Actually, I'd been drinking since April. It was now July.
If you get technical about it, drunks are alcoholics, but for want of a better term, I like to make distinctions between the two. Alcoholics and drunks start in the same place. Their drinking escalates them to the level of being a functioning derelict. Alcoholics then go through a series of stages as the "functioning" part of that term begins to deteriorate. They go through stages of denial about their inability to function. They begin to hide their inability to function. As they begin to fail the people and institutions they care about more and more, they attempt rehabilitation for as long as necessary, up to and including the remainder of their lives. The entire process is fueled by a single thing: guilt.
Remove guilt from the equation and you get a drunk. Drunks don't delude themselves about the inability to function and seldom bother to hide this fact unless there's something to gain from it. They're loud, conspicuous, uncoordinated, a little bit shaky, and make no apologies for any of it. From your local wino to the town drunk, this is a universal truth. That was the line I had crossed back in April. Due to an absence of any remorse concerning my proliferating consumption of alcohol, I accepted my new life as an unabashed drunk. The fun part was watching the world around me deal with it.
So, I didn't care when my name was asked as a question that day in the project room, at least, not enough to be embarrassed. It was the late 90s and I was part of a graphic design consulting firm. I knew I'd never be able to keep the job in the long run, but for the meantime, I had been trying to lie low and milk that salary for as long I could before I was shit-canned. I hadn't done an honest day's work at the firm in over two months. I came to work reeking of vodka Bloody Marys and stayed smashed most of the day. I'd sit at my desk and push paper around to look busy. I could fake it for a while.
Eventually, people began to notice that my work wasn't being completed. Then they noticed that I wasn't even starting it. My name was being spoken around the office in hushed conversations. When people walked by my desk they had an obvious look of pity on their faces. On the good days, I would make mock, sad faces back at them and laugh. By the time of this meeting, I was the office joke. Upper management had been compiling their paper trail of inadequacy, failure, and insubordination for my eventual termination. I had maybe a week left, if I was lucky.
As the sound of my name was absorbed by the upholstery and bounced slightly off the hard surfaces in the room, the air did fill with embarrassment. But it wasn't mine, it was theirs. Throats were cleared nervously and eyes looked down at the table or straight ahead at nothing while the project leader attempted to get the attention of the office drunk. I did the only thing any of us can do at a time like this. I looked up at the lead designer and asked a question that was a equally rhetorical.
"Hmmm?"
The leader re-asked their original question, the one I had missed. The answer to it required some depth of preparation and concern on my part, and I had neither by this point. I shuffled some paper on the table in front of me half-heartedly, acting like I was looking for something to help me answer the question. It was a fruitless charade and I abandoned it after a few moments. I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. I raised my hands from the table, turning the palms upward slightly - the universal sign of empty hands - and shook my head sloppily. "I don't know," I said. I dropped my arms, my wrists banging against the tabletop.