/lit/ - Literature

One of my old friends make $120k a year, and I find it fascinating, being that we grew up together and both did fuck all until we were about 25 years old, at which point we diverged. I finished college and went on to a mediocre career, very much "prioritizing my free time and private life", while he got a job in tech after getting a Bachelor's, and shot off into a full lifestyle of making himself, and his new peers, quite rich.

We went a few times because he was in my city one week. I honestly felt like I couldn't relate to him anymore. All he talked about was work and money. I think I had no reaction at all when he told me he bought a $7000 sofa "that he doesn't even use", because at that point I felt like he was pressing the "impress me" button one too many times. It was particularly odd thing for him to mention, because just a moment before I was expressing my annoyance at the fact the the arm on my desk chair is getting lose, to which of course he had to respond by asking me how much it was, to which I said $300.

It's hard to know how to react when I'm having a lunch with someone who's simply dropping facts one after the other about how his boss drives outrageously expensive car, or how they spend thousands on a company dinner. I'm sure he's very excited about all of it, so I give him that. He's probably thrilled, and I hope at another point we can actually relate to each other.

He drank an absurd amount of alcohol and then got very irritated when he couldn't score any cocaine. He left early because he said he had to get up at 5am for an important meeting, but then when I went to pick him up at his hotel, I found he had been sleeping until 2pm. The next day his mood was starting to shift. He seemed irritable and depressed, and even got upset at me one moment because I didn't seem to respond to a political argument he was trying to have with me. He said something like, "Well, I just wanted to have an intelligent conversation with you. You were always an intelligent person." Somewhere in there I said, "Yeah, you're smart, too". He replied, "Well, you never acted like that when we were young. You always acted like I wasn't as smart as you." I can tell he said that with serious resentment. Honestly, I don't recall any incidents from which he could make that conclusion. He was a drug addict when we were about 20.

I didn't mean to walk away from each other that week with me thinking something clichéd like, "Ah, so you see, the rich aren't so self-satisfied after all." I just don't understand him, which normally isn't a problem for me -- not understanding others -- but I guess the thing is that he was being so self-assertive and self-congratulatory that, in a way, he wanted me to understand him. Or, he wanted me to appreciate his life, which is not really what friends are like.