Live from Hollywood!

1. When someone asks me how I'm doing, apparently saying, "I'm not dead. Supposedly that's a good thing." isn't an ideal response.
2. I probably shouldn't tell a partner "not to hate me 'cuz I'm beautiful."
3. I maybe shouldn't have told another partner that I was going to move into his office with him and that I'd bring drapery swatches round later. (Fortunately for me, he thought this was funny.)
4. And today's boneheaded, loose-lipped comment: I really shouldn't have asked the managing partner of the entire firm (who works out of a different location) if he had a pass to be in our office.

I've worked myself into quite an obsessive frenzy about that last one. I'm praying that there won't be any repercussions from it. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. I wasn't even trying to be a smart ass. He had passed by a couple of attorneys on his way passed my desk, and he had been smiling and laughing with them. I looked up, smiled, gave a friendly wink and then that lame joke sort of popped out of my mouth. Unfortunately, this guy has a reputation for being a bit of a tightass. He kind of muttered something and went on his way. Please God, don't let him make some kind of issue with it! Perversely, I'd almost rather be fired for it than to be called into my boss's office and lectured about my behavior. It would be such a stupid, ridiculous thing to be let go over, and I could take some solice in that and make everyone I told about it view me as a victim of an ego gone mad. If I just get a "you're on thin ice" speech, then I'll be petrified and paranoid for weeks.

When it comes to my job, the only saving grace I have is that I'm damn good at it. I do my work quite well. I complete all of my assignments in a timely manner. I never complain about my workload or when people drop projects on my lap. One good reputation I have at work is for being a guy you can bring a problem/mess/emergency to who will take care of it, do it well, do it in a reasonable time and not bitch about being given it.

Flight Fright

My best friend from college is getting married in October. I'm trying to plan my money to pay for a flight to Philadelphia and the cost of the fancy inn where the event is being held. I called her at work today to ask about some details. She was in a rather nasty mood and decided to take it out on me by repeatedly kneeing me in the psychological groin. ("Your blog entries certainly are things *I've* been hearing over and over again." "When are you going to realize that *I* have a real job?" blah blah blah) She and I were intensely close in college and have a long history together, though I won't go into it here.

Because of my love for her, she certainly shouldn't be glad that I'm flying out for her wedding. She's having a very small affair, and I'm truly honored to be invited. However, if she knew about my recent experience on a flight, she should be glad that I'm willing to drag my ass onto a plane for any reason. In July, I flew to Massachusetts to attend the wedding of another friend from high school. I have never enjoyed flying, but I've always sort of viewed it as a necessary evil. People tell you that it's so much safer than driving, but death isn't really the issue for me. I've got to check out some time, but I really don't want to spend ten minutes dropping out of the sky like a stone and thinking about it before it happens! Anyway, on the flight out to the east coast, there was a lot of turbulence. I was crammed into the middle seat and generally annoyed with the tedium of flying. ("A giant bus in the sky" as my brother puts it) About two-thirds into the trip, I started thinking to myself that flying is boring and dreadful, but not really anything to be scared about. Then the turbulence got extremely intense, and the plane shook violently. Then we began to rapidly lose altitude. People were screaming, and I was clutching onto the seatback in front of me saying, "Oh God...Oh God...Oh God." We finally leveled out, but to add insult to injury, that asshole of a pilot never came on the speaker to explain what happened and assure us that everything was all right. It was honestly one of the worst experiences of my life! And I had to board a plane back to Los Angeles two days later!

As such, I'm planning to be unconscious for as much of the flights to and from my friend's wedding as possible. I'm going to ask my doctor to prescribe me Ambien, but I'm only going to ask for two tablets for the reasons explained below.

Adventures in Ambien

Ambien is a fast-acting, short-lived sleeping pill. The first time I took it was in Baton Rouge when I was there for my grandfather's funeral in the year 2000. My brother gave me one of his pills to help me sleep since I was upset. Apparently, a rare side effect of Ambien is to turn an extremely small percentage of people who take it into raving lunatics. Since I don't have all that far to go, this is how it sometimes affects me. After taking the first pill, I apparently decided to take several more. Then I proceeded to act like a maniac. Then we went out to a restaurant, and I ordered manicotti. To this day, I don't know exactly what manicotti is and don't remember ever having eaten it. All of this was reported to me by family after the fact. Another side effect of Ambien is memory loss, and I had that in spades. Seeing how I don't have memory black outs when I drink, not knowing what I did really freaked me out. However, as will become obvious (and which seems to be a commonly known fact), I do not have the capacity to learn from my mistakes.

Flash forward to last Christmas. My entire family converged in Orlando to spend the holiday together. My parents, my brother and his family and my sister and her family were all there with me, the eternal fifth wheel. I should note here that I have a rule when it comes to my parents. EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS *FINE*. I can no longer bear to drag my aging parents into the vortex of existential angst that is my life. They've dealt with enough of my issues. They can't do anything to help me, and I don't want them to know about my general lack of enthusiasm for being alive. Whenever I talk to them, I "accentuate the positive" and put a happy face on everything. The main reason I get up in the morning, go to work and keep everything together as best I can is for them. I love my family and don't want to cause them any pain. They are the only ones who have always been there for me, NO MATTER WHAT.

Therefore, whenever we get together, I do my best to put my best foot forward. Unfortunately, I usually manage to fuck it up. Case in point: When I was in Florida for Christmas, I was going through narcotics withdrawel after a particularly heavy period of use. One of the effects of that is terrible insomnia. I hardly slept a wink the first night, and I was kind of a cranky bear the next day at Disneyworld. (I'm enough of a mess on a good eight hours, so you can imagine what I'm like when sleep-deprived.) I only got a few hours the next night, but I still managed to have a good day at EPCOT with my family. The next day I was supposed to go to the studio park with my mother. I knew I still wouldn't be able to sleep well, and I was worried what the accumulated lack of sleep would do to my psyche. So, yet again, I asked my brother for one of his Ambiens. And, yet again, he gave me one. Mistake! My plan was to take the Ambien, have a beer and enjoy a good night's sleep. Well, once the aforementioned beer and Ambien kicked in, I felt good. Logically, more beer would make me feel even better! So I had several more. I remember watching TV after my the rest of my family went to bed. I remember writing all of these bizarro notes to myself. Then the next thing I remember was my parents, my sister and my brother-in-law standing over me at about 3 o'clock in the morning. Evidently I had thrown up on my bed and had taken to sleeping on the floor in my room. My sister took this all in strides as part of the never-ending saga of my fucked up life. My brother-in-law simply ignored it all in his stoically Norwegian fashion (while possibly—yet once again—chiding himself about jumping into a gene pool without first testing out the waters). My parents, on the other hand, were less than thrilled. The next morning I had to vigorously backpedal to them about how I was afraid of not being able to sleep and how it was a mistake for me to take Ambien since it has an unpredictable effect on me, etc.

Since I have to do something to quell my terror at flying and since I don't have a lot of options available to me, I'm hoping the "limit myself to one Ambien out, one back" plan is a success.

# posted by Michael St. John @ 9:27 PM