Wine at Work

You always know when a holiday is rolling around when you wander over to our corner of the 9th floor.

Especially at around 2:00 the afternoon before a few days off are pending.

Yesterday we had wine and cheese and the Chili Peppers cranking.

Guys trading scar stories, girls trading bra secrets. Bosses not giving a damn. And Julie talking about going topless at the Caesars pool in Vegas this weekend.

I worry so much about work. So much so that it saps my creative energy. I’m in charge of a lot of profit-making work, but I’m not supposed to know about the profit part. Val, the ex-copywriter turned account executive, tells me both sides of that story.

She’s also gotten kicked out of a bar in Mandalay Bay with me, bummed Xanax off me in more than one airport and begged me to tell her about my love life one night in a Denver bar. I told her. She approved. She got a total kick out of the Rizzo ruse. She was envious of the sweaty summer Fridays. She was sympathetic toward the fizz-out ending. This is all within the past year.

Anyway, I had 2 paper cups of red wine. Ate a sleeve of crackers with Arsen, our new Albanian artist and Lauren, my new Jersey City copywriter. Ran across the street to get orange juice for the vodka people. Hit the ATM for a shitload of cash. Wrote a work list for next week. Then I bolted uptown for the train home.

People were visibly drunk at work. That’s a bad sign.

I’ve spent a lot of my life swimming with deep water below me and sunshine above.