Dear Tubby

Dear Tubby.

I’m sorry I told you I was a banker.

This was in the mid-90s, after college. You’d graduated a couple years ahead of me. We’d never known each other very well, but we shared some close friends, and you’d never been anything but very nice and very friendly. Your nickname, I would think, said more about your personality than it did your weight. You were jovial, and certainly not that tubby. You played on the soccer team.

We hadn’t seen each other in a while. Probably more than a year. I was living in the East Village, freelancing for a music magazine, smoking pot all day and dabbling in harder drugs when they’d come around. You were living in New York, too. Or at least working there, since that day-it was a Friday, I think-we ended up on the same train out to Tarrytown, where our friend Todd was having a party. Todd shared a house with two other guys. There was a pool table in the basement. His parties were fun, even if they tended to fill up with a meatier sort of Westchester dude than I usually hung out with.

An old girlfriend who I was still in love with had been visiting from out of town that week, staying in my apartment but not having sex with me. She’d brought some drugs with her and we’d done them that morning and still not had sex. So I was in a bad mood.

Besides the Westchester dudes, Todd’s parties also drew a crowd of people from our college who had settled in New York. I liked these people, generally. I liked you. But being all coming-down and unrequited, I was not looking forward to seeing people with whom I’d have to talk about how and what I was doing. In hindsight, it’s clear that I should not have gone to the party at all. Why did I even get on the train? I don’t know. Something to do except sit around and listen to records, I guess. My old girlfriend had gone home. Something to do to get my mind off her, maybe. And I’d told Todd that I would.

Metro-North out of Grand Central was packed on a Friday afternoon. Hazy-brained and crazy-haired, unshaven in an old sweatshirt and army fatigues, I felt like an alien amongst all the business suits, and thought uncharitable thoughts. Automatons, all these commuters, sell-outs. Trudging through life with their briefcases and their Wall Street Journals, punching the clock, working for the man. All the clichés. Of course, I was living just as much of a cliché myself, just one on the opposite end of the spectrum. And my clothes probably smelled worse.

I didn’t see you on the train, didn’t know that you were coming. And I’m sure my hello was less than exuberant when we met at Todd’s car. You were wearing a suit, too. We got into the car, you in the passenger seat, me in the back, but Todd had to go to the ATM or something, and so left us there for a minute. You were friendly as ever, talking about how nice it was to get out the city. I stared out the window at other people getting into other cars, suppressing a sigh as I waited for the inevitable question.

When it came, “So what are you doing, Dave?” I surprised even myself with the snarl in my answer. “I’m a banker, Tubby.”

Downright rude. No two ways about it. But you took it very well, chuckling and repeating it like it was funny. “A banker! Dave Bry the banker…” We didn’t say a lot more before Todd returned. I was quiet on the drive to his house, while you two chatted and laughed like normal people do. I moped my way through the party, smoking pot and playing pool but not talking to people much. You were your gregarious self, walking around with a beer in your hand. “Hey,” you said a few times, when we passed each other, “It’s the banker! Dave Bry the banker!” But your teasing back was warm, friendly. As if you hadn’t even heard my snarl. As if I hadn’t been so obnoxious. You were having fun. Probably wishing I would lighten up and do the same.

Of course, you were a banker. Not that I knew that. Not that I’d bothered to ask. Todd told me later and I felt like an even bigger idiot.