That Drunk Guy

Life has been so hectic this summer that only now, the finality and reality has set in that two of our good friends Broomie and Ms. Everheart just packed their crap away and ran off to Indiana permanently. Fucking jerks.

Sure, i've been missing Ms. Everheart for a while, but she had made it cognitively convenient for me to write her out of drinking scenarios by the announcement of her pregnancy. In my mind, she hasnt moved away--she just cant drink for 9 months. However, i cannot ignore the fact that Broomie himself, who is not pregnant, is gone. Because Broomie was "that drunk guy" at all my parties. So we no longer have a drunk guy. Broomie was a closer. First to show up, last to leave. Or maybe not even leave. He'd come to know our couch well. He'd drunkenly argue about anything. We'd drunkenly argue back. Broomie
would finish the scotch bottle by midnight. Broomie would down shots of Pepto and bourbon. And after a crippling night of drinking, Broomie never missed his 8:30am tee-time. That bitch would call us from the 18th hole, all giggly from the beers he consumed before 11am. That pretty boy Broomie in all his Ron Livingston dopellgänger nice hair ironed shirt glory. It seems like we had been smashing good chums with Broomie and his lovely wife forever, but as i recall, it was Broomie himself and i who met first. Before the Broomster was our investment banker, he was a graduate student in my program. I believe we met at the peak of his disillusionment with science, mere months before he dropped out to pursue the world of finance. I remember the event hazily--it was some departmental function where Broomie and i were the only two people drinking inappropriately large amounts of booze. It was almost reminiscent of the time Hotrod and i got to know the Ash-hole (the original Drunk Guy). Unlike the Ash-hole episode, however, Ms. Everheart did not attempt to strike me dead (you know what i'm talking about SEDA). Anyhow, Broomie and i realized from our mass imbibing that we were kindred spirits, we introduced our spouses who were also mass imbibers, and the rest was history. When I met Ms. Everheart, i remember asking her if i could call her Angie (not her name) because she was a gorgeous tall redhead and she looked like Angie Everheart. She obliged, and i think this set our relationship off on good footing. Now, many hangovers later, those jerks have skipped town to go off and raise their child far from the influence of Aunt Lady Head and Uncle Head and cousin Baby Head.

Alas it is all very very sad, and as we begin to make our postpartum partying comeback we are without "that drunk guy." I'm accepting resumés, but its a tough, tough act to follow.