3 Chapter 3 - Hazy Memories

When I first came to know Neo, he was thirty-three, his wife and kids had just left him on account of his love for his mistress which we both shared. He was a teacher in the local college but he got kicked out for going to work drunk. I found him sitting in a dark corner of The Lonely Drink, the local bar where most drunks go to, to get fucked by the whore of their choice, whisky, rum, you name it, they got it. I just had my first paycheck for my job as a baggage boy in the nearest supermarket and I thought I'd celebrate. All the tables were full on account of it being a Friday night and everyone had money to spend. I asked him if he was with someone and if I could sit with him and drink, I also offered to buy him a drink as payment for letting me sit with him, which when I think about it was absurd. He refused and simply told me that I could do as I please.

I was on my second bottle of beer when he talked.

"So what do you do?" He asked me in a voice that gave nothing away.

I almost laughed, the question was so cliche but nevertheless I answered. "I'm a baggage boy."

"Teacher here. Well, not anymore." He said this more to himself as if he couldn't believe it. "Probably has something to do with these." He gestured to a couple of empty bottles of beer that was at the bottom of the table. He placed them there probably so the bartender wouldn't notice that he had already drank enough alcohol to fill a bucket.

When you've drank as much alcohol, smoked a ton of cigarettes and woke up in places you had no idea how you got there, you begin to see things in a different perspective and understand that somewhere out there is someone just like you, drunk as fuck and probably more lonely than you are. And at that moment I knew that Neo was one, a stray dog just like me, trying to find a place he could call home.

"Rough night huh?" It was the only way, I understood that he needed to get it out of his system, otherwise he might end up doing things that he might come to regret once the night was done.

"Tell me about it. My fucking wife left and took my two kids, can you believe that?" He was laughing but there were tears on his eyes, flowing like the Niagara, he wiped them with his hands to no avail. "She told me I should stop drinking, told me a thousand times but I can't, cause if I did I wouldn't be able to stand and face the world everyday."

And there it was, an alcoholic's confession, and I understood what he meant. Someone who isn't one will never understand why. There are probably a dozen excuses an alcoholic can come up with on why he drinks and most of them will make no sense to a normal person.

I let him talk for as long as he wanted because sometimes all that we really need is for someone to listen, not to tell us that everything will be okay but simply just to let us know that there is someone out there who will listen without passing judgment.

After that initial meeting, Neo and I became drinking buddies. We'd meet in the bar and drink, and I was delighted to have company for what seemed like a long time. We'd discuss anything that came to mind. One of Neo's favorite subjects was philosophy and as time went by I came to love and respect his knowledge of it.

It was one of these talks that I remembered, it was also the last talk I had with Neo before his neighbors found him hanging on his ceiling fan. After that, I went for months thinking whether I could've said something that could've reached out and took away the emptiness he felt inside.

**

"What do you wanna be?" I was on my third bottle, he was on his fourth. And the question just came out. I could see he was dead serious and in his eyes I could see the sadness. "What do you dream of becoming?"

I wondered about it before answering. When I was a kid, I used to dream of becoming a doctor, a teacher or an engineer. Back then, I didn't know anything about life. When I became a teenager, when one of our teachers asked us about the career that we'd like to pursue, I merely said I wanted to become a game designer even though my heart wasn't in it. I thought hard again, what did I really want to be? Then the answer came from a childhood memory. It was J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I remembered reading the whole trilogy in the span of a week when I had it in my hands. I remembered how vivid the characters from the book were, and how that when the quest was done, I was left begging for more. I remembered thanking Tolkien for giving someone like me who often would look to escape reality, a world to run away to. In short, I wanted to become the creator of something that would inspire and connect with other people. I wanted to become a writer.

"A writer." It was the first time I said it out loud. The first time and might be the last time.

"So what's stopping you?" He said it casually, in tones that brooked no argument.

"I don't know." And it was the truth, as shitty as the answer may be.

"Aristotle once said that the good life is the realization of your innate abilities and talents and utilizing it for the betterment of all." Now he was preaching, a drunk teacher giving a lecture to his drunk student. "If there's one word I hate in this world more than anything, it's the word 'lucky'. You see all these successful people around the world? Most people would tell you that the reason of their success is because they got lucky. None of these assholes would know the amount of time that these people put up to reach their dreams and aspirations. The Wright brothers were told that the building of a machine that could fly in the sky like the birds was impossible. They were mocked and told that it could not be done. Then when the first airplane rose through the sky, those very critics immediately changed their tune and called the brothers' heroes and innovators." He took a swig from his bottle and went on, he was on a roll. "We only get one chance in life. Sometimes all that's left are our dreams, it makes living in this world bearable. So here's my advice for you. Write. Write whatever the fuck you want. It doesn't have to be good. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. And here's another advice. There will come a time that the world will tell you that it cannot be done, and you'll despair and that's okay because the pain will shape you and change you for the better. And the next time instead of seeing a brick wall when you're confronted by the difficulties of living, you'll see a ladder that leads you to your destination."