Pals

My freshman year in college I was assigned to a dorm floor that also housed two Indiana University offensive lineman. On Sundays, the dorm cafeteria was closed, and the three of us often went to the all-you-can-eat buffet at Ryan’s Steakhouse. My two football friends would eat for hours. I could not keep up. I would eat a hearty, gluttonous lunch, study for a couple of hours at our table, then reload and force down an early dinner. Two big meals for the price of one. It was not close to the most unhealthy habit I developed during my first year in college, and it was friendly to my quite limited budget.

This past Sunday was the first time since 1992 that I sat in a restaurant long enough to eat a meal and get hungry again.

I met a friend for lunch – just the two of us in a crowded bar and grill with football on all the screens and logs ablaze in the faux-stone fireplace. Mike is the kind of friend I can fall out of touch with, then reunite and be instantly connected to without missing a beat. No awkward small talk. No searching for the appropriate wording. Mike likes to go commando (something I found out the hard way when I barged into his hotel room in Miami years ago), so I often start the conversation with a query about underwear. He confirms my suspicion, and the conversation is off and rolling.

Mike is older than me (a fact that I rarely leave unnoted when we are together), and he is, indeed, wiser. I find that cliche to be almost entirely false as, at the risk of sounding judgy, I seem to know a lot of old stupid people. Mike has a few years on me, but he is neither old nor stupid, and his wit and razor-sharp intellect is undoubtedly what draws me to seek his companionship. That, and his commitment to brutal honesty. The lines on his face betray him and reveal that he has tried all the ways to communicate, and long ago dispatched sugar-coating and subtle avoidance as worthless wastes of time. If Mike cares about you, he’ll tell it like it is, and I can think of no greater compliment.

We outlasted the lunch crowd on Sunday afternoon, and stayed long enough to see the restaurant re-fill with dinner patrons. We barely glanced at the screens, but I could not help but notice that we sat through the entire NFC matchup and most of the AFC playoff game. The sun that blinded me while I ate my sandwich was retreating behind the mountains by the time we stood to leave.

And I was, in fact, hungry again. As I walked to my car, I wished we had chosen a Golden Corral with a perpetually restocked buffet.

Here is a partial list of our discussion topics on Sunday afternoon: Mike asked for an update on all of my kids, and I learned the latest about his as well. We talked about our different techniques to avoid the toxicity of politics – an especially valuable topic coming off an election year and careening through a transfer of power. We talked about the brutal fluctuations in the steel industry, and the arcane systems often pieced together to manage incredibly expensive production workflows. We talked about diaper assembly lines, office supply closets devoid of office supplies, and the downside of being a reliably hard worker (sometimes we get stuck doing shitty jobs because they know we won’t complain). We talked about naps in the sun, GPS cat tracking devices, times when electronic reading devices have advantages over physical books (and vice versa), seldom used parts of our houses, and why we both give tater-tots the nod over fries on the rare occasion that they appear on the menu.

We talked about the many times we’ve traveled together. We agreed that Saint Petersburg was boring, the “historic” resort in San Diego felt like it might slide into the ocean, and the hotel his travel points earned us in Miami (complete with a rooftop pool with unlimited towels) was a brush with a significantly higher income tax bracket. On the very next day we returned to “our people” as we risked our lives at a roadside bar with questionable refrigeration on a deserted stretch of highway in the middle of the Everglades. The pictures of naked women on the bathroom walls in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms had us leaving money on the bar as our wives pulled us toward the door.

Then we talked about Tucson.

I realized for the first time, sitting with Mike late into that Sunday afternoon, that he had witnessed my rock-bottom moment. I did not crash a car or lose a job or get arrested. I sat in the back of Mike’s rental car on the way to the airport in Tucson drinking the weekend’s leftover beers and bemoaning the life I was flying home to – a life with four healthy kids, a loving wife, a nice house, and a challenging career. I was terrified by the very life I was eager for as I studied between meals with my football friends.

Before that desperate car ride, Mike and I had shared the joy and relief from a weekend away from responsibility and reality – soaking up the sun and suds poolside at a Tucson resort. But he could never understand – not then and not now – how I could be so devastated to return to a life as full as mine. He vividly remembered his confusion. He didn’t understand what I was experiencing, but my pain left an indelible mark on his experience with humanity.

Later in the conversation, Mike shared an experience with pain and relief that he had trouble putting into words (a struggle I am unlikely to improve upon here). He told of his own relationship with deep, intense pain, and what it felt like to have his adult kids come to be with him when the tables were finally turned, and he needed them. He explained the tangible – that they put their lives on hold, that they traveled through the night, and that they never hesitated to clear the obstacles of responsibility and physical distance to get to him.

But then Mike tried in vain to describe how it felt to be with his wife and kids in that moment. Like someone putting on clothes in a department store fitting room, he tried out comfort and relief and warmth and even love, but they all felt somehow lacking to describe the feeling their presence brought him.

I will soon forget our conversation about the diaper assembly line and eating conch sandwiches at a roadhouse in the Everglades. But I will never forget the look on Mike’s face as he tried unsuccessfully to explain what his family means to him. Family is hard. Family is conflict and disappointment. Family is surprising decisions and seemingly illogical choices.

But when it matters most, family is what matters most.

I did not understand the message from Mike’s words. As I leaned in to hear him clearly in a crowded restaurant with a crackling fire and football pouring out of the speakers, from 18 inches away, I saw the message on his face. In fact, I didn’t just see it, I felt it, too. God, the cosmos, electrical charges given off by human cells – I don’t know the origin. But even without adequate words, I felt what Mike felt. And that part of the “conversation,” I will never forget.

As I pulled onto I-25 and considered the breathtaking view of the sun behind  the mountains casting a shadow on the United States Air Force Academy, I had one last endearing thought from my afternoon with Mike. If I had consumed beers, even just a couple of carefully spaced IPAs considering there was lingering ice on the highway, I would have missed it. Whatever message Mike was trying to convey – the one neither he nor I can describe, but that I can’t stop feeling – that message would not have been available to me. Not God nor the cosmos nor human electrical charges could have transcended the toxicity of alcohol.

Mike is the only friend I have that I can meet for lunch and be hungry when we leave the restaurant.

Hungry, but incredibly full.

If you are ready to feel that which the toxicity of alcohol hides from you, please consider joining us in SHOUT Sobriety.

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