Just For the Taste of It!

Pomeida has been at it again. He called me tonight from a Cinco de Mayo cocktail party to lament his lot in life. It seems Pomeida has been working 7 days a week for the past couple of months and has become a bit, as he puts it, “out of control.” Since “Out of Control” is his nickname down at NYPD headquarters, I asked just what that means these days. Here’s the quick story:

Pomeida went out drinking Tuesday night with a co-worker, Ryder, and some friends from school that happened to be in town. Of course, when Pomeida says he “went out drinking,” it usually means he blacked out, threw liquor bottles at the bouncers, sodomized a stripper on the bar, ripped a urinal off the wall, and in general behaved like Paris Hilton on a bad angeldust/ meth speedball. If you don’t believe me, ask him why he doesn’t (or can’t) go to Boys Room anymore.

Well it turns out that Tuesday night’s activities involved taking the str8 boys to str8 bars and drinking until everyone proclaimed their mutual love and then started crying about how they weren’t good enough for their girlfriends. It’s at this point that Pomeida usually douses the whole bar in gasoline and flames out like the Hindenburg over Lakehurst. However, he held back. He poured the tourists into a cab, and dragged Ryder to a bar or two before taking him home. No, not Ryder’s home, Pomeida’s home.

It’s at this point in the story that I start to get worried. Only three things in Pomeida’s stories scare me: when he gets mugged, when the police are called, and when he decides to bed down a str8 boy. Doing str8 boys is a messy business. Half the time it doesn’t work (there was the famous incident with Pomeida and Eco-Challenge boy) and when it does, there’s bound to be fallout. Str8 co-workers are the absolute worst. If you fail, you have to face the guy every day. If you succeed, he has to face you every day. And there’s a good chance he’ll hate you, or even worse: he will think he’s in love. Either way it’s a nightmare, and what with the hangovers and the constantly ringing telephones, work is hard enough.

Anyway Pomeida dragged poor, drunk Ryder up to his 38th floor walkup and they had a nightcap or two. And it’s at this point in the story that Pomeida blacked out, because the next thing he knew, it was 4 AM and he was stumbling towards the bathroom. Ryder was nowhere to be found. Until he opened his bedroom door that is, and there was Ryder passed out on the oak parquet in the hallway, fully clothed and snoring like a baby. Pomeida pulled it together enough to get Ryder awake and to the couch, and went back to bed.

The next day was rough, to say the least. Pomeida didn’t even come to until 11 AM when his secretary called. Ryder, being a bit more responsible than Pomeida, had already left. Pomeida told the secretary he was working from home, had a doctor’s appointment, accidently chopped off a leg, and that he’d be in later. Unfortunately, the secretary said, he’d been scheduled for a conference call with opposing counsel at 10 AM that morning. Oops. And there were about 7 different people that expected phone calls or had work assignments they needed to pick up. Pomeida sighed, rolled himself out of bed, and headed into the office.

Once there he put out the fires and started typing away furiously on a brief that was late. Ryder stopped by the office. And this is where things went out of control. Pomeida has a very strict, perhaps even rigid eating and working out schedule. Part of his schedule involves drinking Diet Coke at precisely the right times throughout the day so that caffeine in his system stays at a safe level. Too much caffeine, and he runs through the office decapitating paralegals and kneecapping partners. Too little caffeine, and he just explodes like an old steam boiler, killing everyone within a several-hundred foot radius. So he always carries a few cans of Diet Coke in his gym bag to keep humanity safe.

Sadly, it was not to be. When Ryder came into Pomeida’s office and started babbling, Pomeida ignored him and continued to type furiously on his brief. Ryder picked up a can of Diet Coke from the gym bag, shook it briskly, and set it on the desk next to Pomeida’s keyboard. It took a moment for Pomeida to realize what had happened, but when he did he grabbed the can, whirled around in his chair, and threw it at Ryder. It missed. The now fully-agitated can of Diet Coke flew across the hallway, bounced into the room full of temps coding documents, and blew up like a grenade. And kids, that’s why Pomeida has a $300 dry cleaning bill this month.