City Worker Shares His Secret Ruse Of Going Out On A Thursday Night So He's Hungover Tomorrow On Company Time And Fresh For The Family By Saturday

INGRID DOULTON | Lady Writer | Contact

A commercial real estate agent in our town's beating cosmopolitan French Quarter has this week told friends and colleagues his secret plan that he follows to a tee each week.

Today, Roden Rosney has been to lunch. With some important clients. He was paying, he took them to Chesney's. If you don't know, it's a nicer place where the waiters wear ties and offer you a drink for tipping 15% or more. You can even ask them to shut the door to the private dining room so you can get up to whatever you want in there. Talk to anyone, talk about anything. Chesney's has done more for the Betoota Chamber of Commerce than any other limp tax policy ever has. When the lunch ends, he will walk his clients out. Shake their hands, wish them well. He'll have a Peter Stuyvesant with his underling agent, who was there to listen and not to speak. They'll go over everything, flick their lit butts in the gutter and go back inside. Two more beers, two cocktails and a good poo later, they've paid the bill. A 20% tip sees them offered another drink, they choose a glass of champagne because they're good and pissed and the waiter offered it first.
By 5pm, he's confirmed to his wife that he will not be home for dinner, as planned. He apologises but doesn't mean it. They're now in the back of an Uber Green. A Polestar something. Both Roden and his understudy are too big for it. If you're a big man and been forced to get into a Polestar, you'll know what I mean. They're on their way to the Royal Commercial Railway Hotel, where they'll sit in the sports bar for an hour, drinking schooners at a rate of 1 sch/15 min for a time. His underling will peel off without saying goodbye. Because he's 25 and trying to keep up with a 36-year-old man who's been doing this since 2005.
As his underling leaves on a bus, now unconscious and guaranteed to miss his stop, Roden's university mates roll in. They drink more and more. Someone buys some Chinese smokes. Someone wants to get dinner, they're immediately ostracised. What isn't ignored and mocked is the idea to change venues. They're back in Ubers now, half a dozen of them. Heading to a place back in town. Somehow, they're all let in. Roden has been to this place before, he also knows now it's only 7pm and if he's going to be going well into the little hours, he'll need to pull on the reins firmly here. He declares it's his shout, it's Guinness for all. He looks at his wallet, he's now sufficiently pissed enough to tell himself this is work-related. His employer Colliers Betoota is buying this $89 round of pints. Thanks Colliers, you cunts, he says in his head, but also out loud. Only he and the bartender hear it.

They're in the bar, that has a name that nobody can recount on the spot, for hours. One by one, they peel off until it's Roden and two others. They elect to get cocktails down the road at this nice place that's full of people that don't routinely abuse alcohol, but see it as a nice treat. So when Roden and his mates walk in, the front of house "person" suggests they go somewhere else. They end up at the last chance saloon, which is an Irish pub on the banks of the Old City Canal, near where it drains into the Diamantina River. O'Malleys. They get some rum and Cokes. There is a dance floor going, they see the people going at it. They look about 40. It's 11pm, they shudder. More rum, someone gets a packet of chips. Roden isn't having fun anymore. The others suggest getting a bag of cocaine, Roden says no, the human cost of that stuff is just too immense. They chop people up over it, and for what? So fat fuck professionals like him can drink more piss and still be able to tell you who the Prime Minister of New Zealand is? It's silly. Anyone who does coke is a cunt, he says. It's the last words he'll say to them, he's already walking backwards toward the door, feeling for a lighter in his now heavily soiled MJ Bale off the rack work banger.

He's in a cab, heading home. The driver says nothing. Perfect. Once he's home, boots off at the door and he's on the couch, eating cold tuna bake and looking at NRL highlights on his phone. It's where he's found in the morning by his wife. She's not upset, just disappointed. Again. Anyway. He'll be fresh tomorrow, even fresher by Sunday.

More to come.