-Weekend Retreat-

My heart to heart with my cousin this past weekend has me slightly worried about his state of mind. It is dark, and he is miserable about many things; work, his lack of a girlfriend, his housemates, the university education he is finishing at twenty-eight years of age.

Not so old, I maintain, to be single, in school, or working a non-career path restaurant job. But whether my rationalizations or consolations are worth anything isn't really the point. If a guy believes he has been saturated with failure, he may also believe failure is a visual stain detectable by anyone who hasn't.

Earlier in the evening, we drank our "first" beers at his restaurant. Perhaps that is a warning right off the bat - that our unstated goals are inebriation and beers are bullet points, but this is not about alcoholism.

As my cousin went about the elaborate preparations of closing the restaurant, I waited at the bar with four of his coworkers, non-career servers all, four women anxious to get out and party for the remainder of Saturday.

Plans were made to go out together, but already an outsider can see that would be impossible. Names of different bars are thrown out, servers complain about needing showers, no one listens the first time anything is said.

When my cousin and I left, we were alone, with the prospect of meeting the others later. He confessed that it was unlikely to happen, and he was mostly right. We did not meet up with his coworkers, despite his cell phone, which he checked incessantly for messages while we waited in a college bar. There he stewed, observing patrons whose attitude only seemed to embitter him, and we returned to his home with a six-pack and a deck of cards.

He won, but it didn't help.