"What're you drinking, mate?", a stranger yelled across the table.
"Captain Morgan with Coke", I yelled back.
"Two of those on me, coming your way", he replied, sharing airy high fives.
I had just gatecrashed the band performing at this buzzing little bar called The Terrace, at Bangkok's Khao San Road. They were gracious enough to let a reveler take centerstage, and I reckon I must have entertained well enough for strangers to buy me drinks. And become friends.
That's how I met Tom.
He had landed himself his first big job in Sydney. The Bangkok trip was ostensibly to get suits stitched (it's a thing, apparently) but it also had a few friends tagging along in celebration. And celebration, it was! Tom was soon buying every Dick and Harry drinks. Everyone was buying Tom drinks too, because the entire bar was celebrating his passage through the adulting portal. This went on till sunrise, and wound up when the bar itself gave away shooters for free, because Tom and his friends had blown up the salary he was yet to earn.
We staggered out after exchanging phone numbers, hugs and very hazy memories of the evening-that-turned-to-night-that-turned-to-day.
And that was that.
Until a year later, when pictures of some of this debauchery popped up on my social media feed. I dropped Tom a mail asking him how his job was going.
"I'm in Madrid, mate!", he exclaimed. "We got so trashed in Bangkok that we missed our original flight. We then decided to extend the good times by a week and by the time I got back, I'd lost my job".
"What are you doing in Spain?", I ask, trying to sound casual, like these things happen all the time, see?
" I met this Spanish girl two days before we left Bangkok on that trip, and she was headed to Sydney too. I showed her around since I didn't have a job anyway, and in two weeks, we were inseparable. I lost a job but found the love of my life. I'm going to be wearing all those suits that I stitched for my wedding. You're invited!"
Lose job, find wife - suited Tom just fine.
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