People Used To Die Every Day: After Dinner Conversation, #74

By Chad Baker

Synopsis: A young man is caught in a lie to his partner; he is been illegally "sleeping" at night.

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth. Philosophical truth is discovered through intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories, audio and video podcast discussions, across genres, as accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends and family.

Podcast discussion of this short story, and others, is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Youtube.

 

★★★ If you enjoy this story, subscribe via our website to "After Dinner Conversation Magazine" and get this, and other, similar ethical and philosophical short stories delivered straight to your inbox every month. (Just search "After Dinner Conversation Magazine")★★★

• Language: English
• Publisher: After Dinner Conversation
• Release date: Oct 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9798201633028

Book preview

People Used To Die Every Day

After Dinner Conversation Series

OKAY, SO TELL ME THE truth: why couldn’t I get a hold of you last night?

Samir folds his arms and stares at Peter across the little round table in the bar. I know you have class on Tuesday nights, but you get breaks. And it’s not like you couldn’t answer a text from class, Samir says. He has not yet taken one sip of his martini. So. Where were you really?

Peter feels a red rush of shame. He never meant to lie to Samir. At first, he rationalized not telling his boyfriend on the basis that he was just trying it out, experimenting, curious. Maybe he wouldn’t even like it. Maybe he’d only do it once—in which case, it would hardly be worth mentioning, right? But he had done it eight times. Eight wasn’t experimenting. He did like it. And he didn’t want to stop. So now it was time to come clean.

Peter glances at the tables near them. It’s just before midnight, and the gastropub is filling up with Chicago’s young professional crowd: carefully tousled hair, sleek bodies, explosive laughs. On weekdays, this bar runs a happy hour special from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. to bring in the after-work crowd just off their second shifts. Samir likes this place, but it makes Peter’s head swim. His eyes keep getting pulled away by the 12 screens affixed above the bar and on the walls, which show a football game, music videos, a series of amateur clips in which people try to do a backflip and fall down.

Peter doesn’t think anyone is near enough to hear them, but still he lowers his voice and hunches over the shiny, faux-onyx tabletop so that his nose is almost in his beer stein when he says: I was sleeping.

Samir’s stony face gives no reaction except for a hot flare behind his dark eyes—or maybe Peter imagines that. After almost a year together, he is still not very good at reading Samir.

Look, I wanted to tell you, but I—

Samir holds up a palm to stop him. I’m not going to talk about this here. Let’s just finish our drinks.