Epicurus and the Modern White Collar Career

Being 22 in an office of middle aged MBAs is a strange experience, especially if you live in the debauched and hedonistic isle of Manhattan, while your cubicle cohorts are domesticated yuppies of the suburbs of Westchester and Greenwich. Its almost as if you have to straddle two worlds—one where you are doing pivot tables and reformatting Powerpoint spreadsheets and another where you’re constantly texting and calling college buddies with messages like, “yo dude, where the fuck you at?”

Really though, you already know the answer to that question, or at least you know your answer. You’re at a bar, preferably a cheap one because you live in Manhattan and even a cheap bar is beyond your meager means as a first year analyst living in a luxury high rise midtown apartment. You’re a dumb bastard for not doing anything remotely close to balancing a budget or at least identifying it. You blindly spend…never on anything substantial, but substantially hedonist yes. The drinking is constant…to a degree that even your college self is impressed with your tenacity and relentlessness. The one thing that surprises you is your ability to get away with this outlandish behavior while at a white collar job of coworkers that have been known to be church ministers, senators, and all around moral administrators. Despite this unnerving fact however you recognize others like yourself…more like your future self. Thirty somethings that embrace the comfort of a great night amidst friends and drinks fermented. Your humor, though toned down and not quite as in your face vulgar as your repertoire among friends is still widely accepted for its off center irony and wit. What you do know is this, your hours are now clearly divided. No longer is their a murky haze of school and partying. Now there are two definite worlds, the hours of the work week when you’re in office and any of those outside of it. You try to be well kempt, responsible, and speak in grammatically correct sentences while in the array of cubed alleys. Outside of this world of self and mutual respect you live in a land of broken dreams where you’re constantly in a battle to arrive at your better self. Though nowhere near that state of being you spend the journey towards it idling in booze and arbitrary acts of self amusement, getting yourself into any sort of adventure or trouble that crosses your path. The working world may be different, but am I?

The drink in my hand tells me no, and the 8 previous drinks of varying alcoholic concoctions seem to confirm this. I enjoy the learning and interactions with those in different life circumstances then myself. My view broadens, my horizon widens, and my thirst deepens. It’s at this point I realize the real thirst that drives me isn’t that of alcoholic assortments, but that of learning and new experience. Should I be so lucky, I will continue this reckless trek through undiscovered wilderness and my discoveries will be endless and unexpected. Either way though true intoxication is like a passport to bad behavior but more importantly an irreverence towards consequence which opens the gateway to new experience.

Drunk In The Time Of Cholera

The following is a dazzling piece of diction by my esteemed editor. He has finally deciding to grace my audience with a refined and crisp eloquence that this blog has desperately been missing. Kudos to him…and I was drunk and passed out while he wrote this piece.

Most people consider alcohol to be a means to an end. You get yourself drunk so that you won’t be too embarrassed to walk straight up to that girl from your French Lit class and tell her you can’t stop staring at her in between those ridiculous feminist readings. You drink so that you can go out and feel like part of the crowd in overpriced, underlighted subterranean bars on the lower east side. You drink so that you won’t have to think about how desperately awful you feel about your current state of affairs. You drink as a means to an end.


I drink as an end to a means. Drinking is the end game. I don’t drink for anything other than the obvious conclusion of relenteless alcoholic intake, intoxication. People who don’t drink might not know this, but being drunk is a magical state. The feeling of walking intoxication is akin to existing in two planes of reality at the same time—one where you are the master of the universe, suave and witty, and another where you are a stumbling and incoherent mess. The beauty of it is while you exist in both, you only see yourself in one; the cooler one. It’s almost impossible for someone who is truly drunk, 3 sheets to the wind, to know how obnoxious they are capable of behaving. It’s a problem that I’ve not yet come to terms with, as I simply refuse to censor myself when in the company of guests. This manifests itself most often when meeting people for the first time, as I often have the bad habit of asking people their favorite sexual position (I’m partial to reverse cowgirl myself, not least because it has a western element to it.)

More often than not, people frown on frequent, daily drunkenness as a sign of moral failing. I find this to be highly hypocritical, especially since some of our greatest statesmen (and they’re all men) to be functional alcoholics—Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George W. Bush—more people should resign themselves to the fact that getting drunk in the middle of the day/week/hour is a sign of commitment, and not any kind of desire to run away from your feelings or emotions. In fact, if W was still drinking, he probably wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, or at least could have been talked out of it over a couple of whiskey sours. I think if W was wasted, I could have screamed “Hey dude, maintain!” a couple of times and he would have snapped out of it.

To An Audience of One

Few people read this blog. Because so few people read this blog I tend to pander to the ones that do. So when a regular follower requests an entry in her name I feel compelled to deliver.

For those of you unfamiliar with the kingdom of Bengalia, it’s a small wretched land between our sewer system and hell. The person to whom this entry is dedicated is from there. At times I’m stunned at her inexplicable lapses in decency and common morality; but I have to remind myself that she’s from a place where those things don’t exist. So when she casually rapes a four legged animal (crawling babies included) to when she sells opium to senior citizens convincing them its arthritis medicine I have to look the other way because I mean that’s what friends are for. Yes, I admit it; I am friends with this person.

I’m friends with her because despite all her shortcomings for which there are many there are also her long Cummings…did I mention she appreciates a vulgar sense of humor? Really though, she has demonstrated an impressive ability to “be there” for me during my many over exaggerated moments of duress when my whining reaches maximum capacity and my proclivity towards self deprecation and self desoberazation achieves unfathomable lows. She genuinely believes some very nice things about me to be true. For instance she recently said that despite being a lawn mowing Mexican I am a really nice guy. If that’s not sincere I don’t know what is. Not to say that I do know sincere, considering my recent forays into trust have only served to prove I’m a shitty judge of character. However, I’ve seen no reason not to trust this milk chocolate colored lust being. I only hope that should she ever need it I can be there in the same way she’s been there for me…to offer a lewd joke at her expense and to degrade her entire race with egregious political incorrectness. You’ve been a dear and valuable friend and all of your attention is much appreciated almost as appreciated as those carpets your mom made for me, which don’t even compare to the raw, sweaty, passionate …lets just say I’ve grown quite fond of your mom and I think I will continue to GROW fond of her over and over again.

Things Not to Do

Sometimes I think life is just a growing list of things “not to do.” Like this past weekend for example, I learned that one thing not to do was drunkenly imply you had fornicated with your coworker’s wife only four hours previous to the happy hour which you now attended. But wait, there’s more. Additionally, you learned that if you must make this reckless implication it should certainly be far away from an uncensored arena of alcohol and not directed at the most senselessly profane and politically incorrect man in your office. That’s right; your harmless retort to his own insinuation of your meager sexual history has provoked an obscene exclamation of none other than “Matt fucked my wife!” When he sees you gasp in horror you notice a twisted, sadistic twinkle in his eye before he turns and devilishly approaches your V.P.

“Hey Gary” he says, “Matt just said he FUCKED my wife.” The mouthful of burning whiskey erupts from your mouth at the shock of his sensationally damning statement right onto the unsuspecting administrative assistant standing to your right. Yep, you guessed it; let’s also add that to the list of things not to do.

“What the fuck?!” she exclaims. Shit, you’ve never heard her curse before, much less an f-bomb, merely proving just how fucked you really are.

Ok, let’s recap. Your ride home and prior to this night closest friend at the office has just spread an inexcusable rumor accusing you of breaking about 5 commandments, no wait, 6. He’s just added a part where you stole twenty bucks from him to pay for the condoms. "Wow that’s some graphic story telling", you think, especially for a company happy hour. Next, your V.P., the one you should be kissing ass to, has just told his wife to go wait in the car and is giving you a stare that borders on a judgment to hell and genuine fear. It appears you won’t be getting that promotion after all. And finally you’ve spit up half swallowed whiskey all over your poor admin’s only nice dress. The nicest lady at the office, not only does she have to put up with awful treatment at work, she also has to walk into a thunderstorm of whiskey and ice.

Well Matt I certainly think you’ve added enough to that list tonight. It’s too bad someone just handed you a tequila shot with a mind eraser as a chaser. “If I’m lucky I at least won’t remember getting fired tonight” you think to yourself. The tequila burns, the mind eraser numbs and then you feel someone sensually sliding their hand into your armpit…at least you think it’s sensually. Fuck it, it’s all the same anyways and without thinking you turn to the young lass fondling that soft ticklish juncture of arm and body and begin a passionate tongue massage of the inside of her lips as you pull her close. It was dark and she was probably just trying to push her way through the crowded bar. If only you would’ve thought that way at the time, but you didn’t.

When you stumble back, a direct result of her pushing you off you realize to utter dismay that it is Rob’s wife you just French kissed in the face. That’s right, the same Rob who earlier you joked with about fucking his wife of one year. Which brings me to the final addition of “what not to do” discovered on this educational night. Don’t joke about hooking up with your coworker’s wife only to actually end up doing it right in front of said co worker. You’ll only end up unemployed with nothing to better do than write an ill conceived blog.