My neighbor is a pilot - he flies for a big commercial airline and in between times pops over to Afghanistan on little lucrative missions he can't talk about much.
I have asked him and he says simply "I CAN"T say anything - if it gets out I lose my job - again..."
Last time he lost his job he was drinking into oblivion in a theme bar in Barcelona and was talking drunken trash talk about dying and death and how it was all a random occurrence that we were even lucky enough to be conceived
So the guy he was telling this to, who happened to be the deputy pilot or whatever, called the police and said my neighbor was suicidal.
The Spanish Police crashed through the door of his hotel suite and arrested my neighbor and took him off to the pysch unit in Barcelona.
He was there a few days before the Australian Consulate lifted him out - then the interminable scrutiny of an official investigation by the airline's Human Resources - it lasted months and he was drinking all the way through.
"They want me to prove I'm not an alcoholic," he'd say, holding my forearm as I walked out to get into my car for work of a morning, "And I'm in the middle of proving that no matter what happens it's not me, it was just drinking and ..."
I forget what bullshit he was telling me after that.
I was a couple of months sober and my tolerance for drunks was low.
Anyway - he lost his job with the airline, like $270k a year, gone, for being a loquacious drunk.
Now, he pops over to Afghanistan in six week stints and comes back humbler and I don't see him leaning over his balcony with a drink in his palm so much.
He says Afghanistan is like Mars - red, hot and out of this world.
He can't tell me anything else, he says, otherwise he'll lose his job.
I have asked him and he says simply "I CAN"T say anything - if it gets out I lose my job - again..."
So the guy he was telling this to, who happened to be the deputy pilot or whatever, called the police and said my neighbor was suicidal.
The Spanish Police crashed through the door of his hotel suite and arrested my neighbor and took him off to the pysch unit in Barcelona.
He was there a few days before the Australian Consulate lifted him out - then the interminable scrutiny of an official investigation by the airline's Human Resources - it lasted months and he was drinking all the way through.
"They want me to prove I'm not an alcoholic," he'd say, holding my forearm as I walked out to get into my car for work of a morning, "And I'm in the middle of proving that no matter what happens it's not me, it was just drinking and ..."
I forget what bullshit he was telling me after that.
I was a couple of months sober and my tolerance for drunks was low.
Anyway - he lost his job with the airline, like $270k a year, gone, for being a loquacious drunk.
Now, he pops over to Afghanistan in six week stints and comes back humbler and I don't see him leaning over his balcony with a drink in his palm so much.
He says Afghanistan is like Mars - red, hot and out of this world.
He can't tell me anything else, he says, otherwise he'll lose his job.