My Profession: 'drinking buddy'
When people ask me what I do for a living, I'm a little lost for words. I envy those who can say 'I'm a carpenter' or 'I'm an automechanic. For all those professions speak for themselves and need little explanation.
I'm reluctant to expain my 'choice' of career, for I am a drinking buddy. Is that what you REALLY do? They'd ask, and the answere is 'yea'. I actually make my living in the role of drinking companion - and I'm good at it too.
Someone experienced in personal diplomatic skills, and can even clean up afterwards. Me, a live-in drinking companion who could actually do household chores. In many ways, these skills are in high demand - especially in the higher forms of my art.
One can be almost dispensable; pretending to listen to someone's same old boring life-story with any kind of interest, much like any other competent therapist.Someone like a bartender or psychologist. Okay, maybe I'm not a competent therapist like a psychologist or bartender could be, but I could do your astrology chart - and that's like being really close in horseshoes.
Just be sure to remember: my advice costs usually nothing - and it's worth the price!This drinking buddy could even walk your dog, an almost financially rewarding chore in many of our urban centers these days. You can blame that on all those 'poop and scoop' urban by-laws coming into effect.
As with any other distasteful chore, picking up Rover's doggy doo will cost you plenty if you really had to hire somebody else to do it. For a time I actually believe myself to be a writer, but that would be a lie. About the only thing of mine that ever made it into print was my Fingers!
Nobody has ever paid me for any kind of writing - not like my REAL profession. A drinking buddy would be more accurate, to live-in drinking buddy.
What would my services cost you? Besides a place in your home for me to 'crash' in, an attic or room in the basement, for instance? Plenty - all the joys of dealing with another person, to be sure. And if that wasn't enough, you'd also get to look at me.
I'm a fairly decent chap who'd actually provide (drunks as) references and an as honest as you'd expect a live-in houseguest to be. I'm as harmless as an old dog, really. Yet it still isn't a wonderful picture to look at after awhile.
Unlike wine or antiques, a drinking buddy doesn't improve with age. Being someone's drinking buddy is simply a skill I've acquired; much like being an auto mechanic or house painter.
A profession of that sort could become tiring. It has made me indespensable to third and fourth rate alcoholics and their equally dysfunctional families and friend - it's not a bonus.
This job too often consists patching holes in their fractured psyches - usually during the final stages of alcoholism.As I drify myself from job to job, it's pretty easy to figure out this 'career' is most often a thankless profession.
One thing to keep in mind if you happen to choose this line of work is: Once the drunken fool who hired you begins to speak this certain four letter word - it has to be time to leave. No use beating up on dead horse here, after all, dysfunction drunks who need someone to babysit for them aren't exactly an endangered species, you know. Lots of 'jobs' in this field if you catch my drift. No use hanging on when the free flopping spots and the drinks await, on to the next dometic watering hole, I always say. The one four letter word that always sends me packing my bags is, (of course) Rent!!!
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