Nice guy

Some of our best philosophical discussion take place inside a gym locker room. You could say we're just carrying a tradition begun in Greece 2,700 years ago.

"How is work? Easy?", asked my Taiwanese friend Jin, as I was getting out of the shower and he was preparing to go in.

"Yeah, easy, real easy", I replied. Which was true.

"And life?"

"Hard!", I said, "When work is easy, life gets hard for some crazy reason. And you?"

"Hard work and life OK", he replied.

"Work should be hard, and life easy", I said without putting much thought into it.

I knew his job was hard, I used to do the same thing myself before moving to another floor in the building. For a year or so a while ago, Jin took a job with another company to do similar work, but it was even more stressful there, and he came back. And when my own job was hard and stressful, life wasn't easy either, the tension of work spilled right into life.

Someone's cellphone started buzzing inside some locker, ringing a proverbial bell in my own head.

"Whenever I'm sitting on a throne and a cellphone rings in the next stall, I flush as soon as the neighbour receives the call", I said.

"Nice guy!", said Greg, who was just arriving for his daily dose of sweat and muscle strain.

Another cellphone joined the cacaphony in a locker on the other side of the room.

One of the company's many vice-presidents came out running from a shower stall to get it, water dripping all over, evidently recognizing the ring as his own, even though it sounded like a generic vanilla flavour ring. It turned out it wasn't his phone after all, and the vice-president returned to the shower.

"Can you believe it's June already?", asked Greg, "What happened to those five months?"

I didn't have an answer for him. What had happened to me was no picnic, but I couldn't talk about it now. What happened to these two guys in the past five months, I thought? Probably nothing as dramatic as my experiences, but what did I know. Our conversations, such as this one, ever consisted of quips and witticisms, shallow and brief everyday exchanges. Years ago, when we all worked together, we went out a few times to play pool, drink beer, and talk, but that too did not last long. In the past year, I've had a few personal conversations with Greg over lunch, during which he'd remain guarded as always, and I'd have to fudge and evade to protect common acquaintances' confidences.

A woman friend of mine told me late last year that Greg checked himself into a mental health facility. She had learned about it from her manager, a woman, who had been closer to Greg than any of us. I was surprised to hear it, having always considered him a tower of strength, with his midwestern calm demeanor like that of midwesteners Bob Dylan and Johnny Carson. I couldn't have asked him about it and he hadn't said anything to me. I knew he had women problems, I guess he's one of those 'nice guys' that American women love to abuse a little and then "dump", to use a common female expression, preferring instead men who abuse them just a little (all of this according to press and personal reports.)

"When you're younger than thirty," Greg continued, "Time passes slowly, and you keep thinking 'when will I be thirty'. Then when you're over thirty, time rushes by, and you keep thinking..."

I interrupted, finishing his sentence, "You keep thinking, when will I be thirty again?!"