- Black asks White what he has against being happy. White says he thinks happiness is ridiculous—no one's really happy, it goes against the human condition. We're made for suffering.
- Black says that happiness might not even be meaningful if you didn't have some suffering to compare it to. You can be in pain and still be happy. White doesn't think that makes sense, and Black jokingly acts like he's stunned by this rebuttal.
- Again, White changes the subject and asks if Black has anything (booze) to drink.
- Black says he doesn't. He used to be a drinker but he quit; most of his friends died from drinking or "reasons not too far from drinking." In fact, one of his friends, not too long ago, got run over by a taxi—he was drunk and going to get more booze.
- Black isn't lecturing White on drinking, but he tells him a story about how Evelyn, a girlfriend of Black's buddy Redge, once irritated all the guys they were drinking with by hiding the whiskey bottle. She wanted it all to herself.
- Redge asks her and she pretends she's too drunk to talk straight, so finally, Redge gets in her face and imitates her babbling noises and she admits she hid it in the toilet.
- White thinks that's funny. Black explains that drunks aren't worried of dying from drinking but from running out of whiskey beforehand.