We went to my cousin’s wedding the other day, and as we might have predicted, Paul was there. Paul is always there. He turns up at every social event I go to, or if not him, someone who knows him. This is not in itself a great feat, because Paul knows everybody. They went to college with him, or they live in his building, or they’ve sailed on his boat. Walk 50 feet down the street with him in downtown Chicago and some long-lost friend is sure to hail him and come over to talk. Paul attributes it to his charm and good looks. I attribute it to the fact that he went to Notre Dame.
As for Notre Dame . . . well, we did not know much about Notre Dame, but what we did know we didn’t like. Notre Dame kids were the kind who, if they stopped over at your house when there was some sort of family gathering, would talk to your relatives. If Eddie Haskell had gone to college, we were pretty sure we knew where.
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I first met Paul a short time later, when a PR outfit sent me over to write a press kit about a cruise-boat company he’d started with his buddy Terry. In retrospect it occurs to me that this may have been a setup; the PR outfit was run by a former Catholic nun. But at the time I thought nothing of it.
Alienation is what impels us to write, along with the need for more money to support our drug habits. We are not supposed to have a lot of truck with cousins and brothers and high school and the track team. It ruins the effect. It saps your creativity.
That’s just it, she said. It’s rubbing off on you. It’s like magnetism. You’re becoming part of the social glue.
I decided I needed a little Irish counsel. It was pretty good so I had another. After a little while I felt better.
