Rub a dub dub

A young woman who was at my meeting yesterday expressed some trepidation about an upcoming business trip. There was going to be an open bar which is a particularly nice kind of bar for an alcoholic. Honestly, we like bars. We like all of 'em. I can't really remember a bar that I didn't like, and I got beat up outside a few of them.

A lot of good, practical suggestions were offered: taking along some literature and a bunch of phone numbers; scoping out Meetings that might be in the area; carrying around a glass of tonic with a lime in case anyone asks why you're not drinking, even though no one ever does. I always had this line ready: "I think I have the stomach flu and I'm really, really, really queasy." That one got people backpedaling. No one brought me a drink after that, although sometimes they would ask the next morning how I was feeling.


"Fine. Why do you ask?" I'd say, suspicious of their motive, totally oblivious to my lie of the day before.

I think it all goes back to the basic fact that I'm not nearly as interesting to everyone else as I am to myself. I never think about anyone else -- ever -- yet I'm under the impression that everyone else is thinking about me -- constantly. My self-centered arrogance is truly spectacular.

I had a job at one point where every now and then the owner of the company would visit and go on sales calls with me for a couple of days. In the evening he would take me out for dinner, and he always ordered a beer. One beer. One fucking beer. At our first meal he asked me what I wanted to drink, and I got an iced tea, sitting on the edge of my seat, my mind whirring with all of the potential stories and excuses I could trot out. I didn't have a specific lie selected -- I figured I'd go with my gut. He didn't ask, of course. Moreover, every single time he visited he asked me if I wanted a beer, never once questioning why I didn't drink. He probably figured I didn't like beer.

I felt like throttling him.

"What's the matter with you?" I wanted to shout. "Can't you see I don't drink?"

A lot of times at conferences and trade shows and the like I'd talk to people during the cocktail hour and eat my dinner. Then when the drinking vibe stage of the evening started, I'd excuse my self to go to the bathroom and just head right on up to bed. No one ever asked me where I was the night before. They didn't care. They didn't notice. A lot of them went up to bed, too. We were the ones who felt OK the next day, and were productive.



I worried from time to time whether my socializing or lack thereof was hurting my business prospects, as if a lot of orders were written at 2AM in a hotel bar. I may have hurt my prospects from time to time, who knows. I seem to have done OK in my business career. Not great, but I've gotten the bills paid.


Then I think about break dancing on the buffet table.