beerday narrative

A narrative someone asked for as a birthday gift. Still on its rough stage so be forgiving. Haha.

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You boarded his car with beer goggles fixed firmly over your eyes—the world confined to a fishbowl and your head swimmy from all that San Mig Light. He got on the driver’s side beside you without saying a word, his mind seemingly somewhere else, as morose and unapproachable as he had been all night. You found that strange, and slightly annoying, as he was the reason why you and the others were at Sarah’s in the first place.

You weren’t even sure in the beginning if that invitation to welcome his coming birthday at Sarah’s really included you. The first time you had met you were tired, wound-up tight from your new job at the ICW, and slightly smarting from the premature ending of a promising flirtation. You somehow got drunk and shouted at him for some remark he had probably made in fun—something about lit majors being needy, if you recalled correctly. As if that had not been enough, you had stood, yanked up your shirtsleeves, and maybe (now this tidbit only according to your friends) even threatened to inflict bodily harm on his person. The day after, your friends and your niece—who had also been there that time—couldn’t stop hassling you about that incident. Embarrassment came to you in tsunami proportions and you promised yourself that you would never ever drink so much while feeling pissed. And since you had never seen him before at Sarah’s, you prayed that you wouldn’t ever lay eyes on each other again to save yourself from possible mortification. But, as you’d proven often enough in the past, the universe had a warped sense of humor so he sat at your table a few days later. That was the time when he had driven you home afterwards (was he being nice or would he suddenly push you out of the car while driving at 100kph) and invited you to his celebration—and you weren’t sure then if you should accept. You saw this move as suspect: would he pull some dirty trick to exact revenge for what you had done to him?

So there you all had been, his Friday group and your not-just-on-Friday group, sitting together and waiting for him—the birthday boy—to arrive. When he did turn up he seemed light years away from being happy. Now you’ve always had this compulsion to cheer people up, even when you were feeling tired and miserable yourself, and you tried to siphon away his dark mood—but he remained as sullen as ever. When he asked you half an hour later if it would be in bad form if he left ahead of everyone you wanted to hit him on the head with a beer bottle. A few minutes after twelve, when everyone was already smashed from the many rounds of beer he had treated you all to, he urged everyone to go home.

You tried to sleep in the car with your head still swimming—with beer, water, koi—but couldn’t so attempted to make conversation instead. You noticed that he was driving a different car, a gray one, from the last time he had driven you home. Déjà vu struck you—the same situation but with a different person behind the wheel. You had asked that person if he had been driving a red car the first time he had driven you home and he had answered with, “You must have been really drunk that first time because my car had always been gray.”

You asked him the same question you had asked the other more than a month ago but this person that you were with now answered that yes, the red one was his sister’s and this car he was driving now was his. You sat back and chewed on that for a while.

A few meters away from your condo you asked him why he was so sad. He answered that he just was, nothing wrong with that. You tried to make him explain, maybe you could then find that opening to cheer him up, but he managed to dodge all your probes. By this time you were already in front of your place but you didn’t make a move to get out of the car. He put another cd in the player and you asked him if that was your cue to leave. But he asked you to stay and you readily did. It was important to understand why he was so glum—maybe in doing so you could root out your own sadness.

Later on, he asked if you would like to go for coffee at the nearest gas station and you agreed. Once there, you both headed for the rest room and you saw him go past the men’s and head straight for the ladies’. You grabbed his arm and tried to steer him in the right direction; to your surprise, he told you that he was just going to open the door for you. Afterwards, he pulled a chair for you to sit down on but, not understanding, you pulled another chair and sat down on that one instead. He looked at you strangely then, but you could only shrug and smile. You settled yourselves in your respective chairs, facing each other, ready to do battle. And you talked well until dawn.



After he brought you home for the second time that night you suddenly realized, as you were wobbling up the stairs to the lobby, that you still hadn’t fully comprehended his sadness—or your own. You latched on to this failure and placed a hand on your belly, trying to find the familiar feeling of dejection, but found yourself smiling instead.