What then?

Very hungover today - not one of those triumphant hangovers either - it's because of the Salaryman's Special, id est the marketing department's huge drinking expense account. It's difficult to appreciate how self-destructive behaviour is so often encouraged and rewarded by business, although I think I know why it is now.

You see, I always dread these work binges as I'm sure I'll have a miserable time or else blurt out something inappropriate, like 'I have a personal history of working in evil industries. Oh yeah, this one too' and 'when the revolution comes I'll be holding a clipboard and you'll all have your backs to the wall. How much sheer pleasure are you going to get out of your BMW then, buddy?'
But of course I don't have a miserable time or make silly threats (at this rate I'll have my back against the wall too), because I concentrate on asking questions and making inconsequential but slightly naughty remarks, like about how the cheapest way for couples to travel comfortably in Japan is to stay in the love hotels and how the phrase 'look at the sea' in Finnish is pronounced like one of the nastier Italian cusses*.

But mostly I ask questions, because people love to talk about themselves and I love to listen. Can't get too many layers down at a drunken corporate dinner, but you do pick up some good stories, and the odd joke about Soviet strippers that you try to remember so you can tell it to your sweetheart but then you can't because by the time you roll your drunk ass home he's asleep and by the morning you've forgotten.

Anyways, I think I understand why all the drinking goes on the expense accounts and HR thinks it's just marvellous. Not just about group bonding. It's also, I think, about the need to drink away your doubts. The company we were out with last night does a lot of business in China, and the 50-ish bloke from it who I was sitting across from chatted at length about the country. He loved it - he loved the cities, and he loved the countryside - he got this sort of soft look on his face businessmen don't know how to fake while he was talking about it, about how he felt so safe with the people, about how cosmopolitan Shanghai was, about being a one-man tourist attraction in the farming towns . . . he turned the talk to politics when explaining lots of his clients were party members - 'big communists, big millionaires'.

When it comes to these sorts of issues I always get a burning jones on to pick brains - hitting that sweet spot that indicates how the world is run! But that doesn't work - it's always dirty and businessmen go into their little shells if there's a breath of perceived accusation in the air, and then to re-engage them you have to talk about how cute puppies are. So instead I ask them the sort of questions my analyst used to ask me. "Why do you think that is?"

His soft look got all sad. "I think it's obvious," he said. Paused. "But it's a mercy too. It's not a good system but it's good it's there. With all the government's foreign investments and their closed books - who knows what would happen to the economy if it wasn't controlled? If they don't keep it rigid it could collapse anytime, and then what would happen to the world? And with those people it's easy to get things done." Another pause. "And the people aren't ready for freedom - they've had a dictatorship for so long one way or the other." Pause. "But you know, if you want to know about the students, there's nothing, no record there, absolutely nothing . . . the government is a juggernaut, fighting against it is like that kid who stood in front of the tank - you get squashed."

He looked so sad, and somehow a little baffled, that I didn't have the heart to tell him that Tank Man is probably okay, or as okay as you can get when you're a Chinese type who goes shopping, heads home weighed down with two grocery bags, runs into his own military mowing down its own people, and has the sort of fucking almighty balls that makes the rest of us believe that maybe the human race isn't on the road to perdition, the balls to stand in front of the tanks and say "What the fuck is this shit?!"

There are tough questions - even neo-conservative questions - but questions that need asking. That businessmen can avoid by drinking, by expense accounts, by the good things that they get in the commission of their work. Questions like, what if the status quo changed? What if people are ready to live in a free country? What would happen to the businessman's good things, what would happen to the economy, what would happen if making money wasn't based on predictability of the rule 'do what's easiest'? What then?

Maybe a hecatomb. Maybe not. Maybe now is a hecatomb. It's hard to know but worth wondering about. The Salaryman's Special is a good way to avoid wondering about it, or a good way to deal with wondering about it - a slow suicide. And on that happy note, I'm taking my atrocious hangover to the office.

*Cazzo merda! No, I'm not fucking joking.