As I walked home from the train I looked up to a top-floor apartment on 8th Ave. A large TV hung on the wall and played, shapes and lights flashing across the screen. It played to a lit-up Christmas tree visible through the window to the left. These were the only two things I could see.

After enrolling Jackie in school we stopped for pastries at the cake place, the place where we got her birthday cake, where they have a picture of Bill Cosby and Lionel Hampton on the wall, blowing out the candles on Lionel’s 80th birthday cake that I guess they made. In the back an old timer was dipping black-and-white cookies. That’s not something you see too often. Feels like something you’re not supposed to see, that’s supposed to stay mystified. Like the way they print a dollar bill, or your parents putting presents in the stockings. Anyway, he dipped the white halves first.

What Happened at Work So Far Today

Our morning meeting takes place in the reception area because all the conference rooms are booked. There’s a couch, a big ottoman, two tables, some chairs. People walk through the middle, heading in or out the door or along the hallway from one side of the office to the other. Some hurry their pace a little, as though crossing the sight of a tourist’s camera. Some give a little smile that says: There you are in your meeting, and here I am walking through it.

This morning most of the seats were taken. I sat at the high table by the wall, in the corner behind the electric Menorah. I beheld the four fake, flickering flames as account executives discussed this and that. I studied the bearings of the people who walked through. Their various gaits. The meeting broke up and I knocked out the plug while stepping off the stool. The Menorah went dark. I furtively restored it and looked around. No one seemed to notice.

In the men’s room, someone in a stall was engaged in a conference call on speakerphone.

In the middle of the afternoon a colleague suggested we go to the Christmas event that was taking place in the lobby downstairs. The Nutcracker emanated from some unseen string trio and mingled with the din of the assembly. White-clothed tables, festooned with tinsel, ringed the famous globe and lined the marble walls. They bore trays of gingerbread cookies, cake lollipops with red and green frosting, urns of cider and hot chocolate, pitchers of eggnog. A black-clad attendant stood at each, offering to shake nutmeg, to apply aerated cream, to spoon mini-marshmallows with a little plastic spoon. Their faces strained with the discomfort of doing for people what they should do for themselves.

Deena came out of the bedroom wiping her nose on a ten dollar bill.

Spent Christmas at G. and C.'s playing poker and drinking beer and I developed this weird metallic taste in my mouth, in the right side of my mouth, like a filling was rusted there. I first noticed it swigging beer and now I can taste it right on my tongue. A dark iron taste a bit like blood.

We talked about the first times we ever got drunk and C.'s sexy sister A. said it was on Jack Daniel's when she was sixteen, bike riding into Chicago with her friend and hanging out at her friend's boyfriend's apartment with nothing but a mattress in it while they made out. I told the story of us driving up to Squam Lake when I was ten and how when we got there Uncle Dale said what do you want to drink.

"What do you got?" I said.

"Juice, milk, soda, beer," he said.

"I'll have a beer," I said. It was one of those times you say something but you can't quite believe you said it. You hear yourself saying it and it's a bit of a surprise.

He gave me a can of Budweiser beer and I sat with the others in the screened-in porch and everyone had their beers or whatever and no one paid me any mind. I took a sip and the first taste was strong and yeasty like liquid bread. By the time I got to the bottom of the can I felt a glorious elation come upon me, on the ottoman by the coffee table, and it occurred to me: this is what it means to be drunk.

I am drunk.

Feeling like a ghost I got up, slid the door open and escaped outside. Then I ran around in circles in the yard, making myself dizzy under the darkening sky and falling down from time to time.