Friendly Fire

There’s this line in The Underminer: Or The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, where the title character tells a friend, “…but if you could just do me a huge, huge favor and just don’t mention it to anyone? I know how you kind of have a problem keeping secrets!” It was that line, which pushed the book into a whole different area for me personally, because a good friend of mine said something like this to me on a number of occasions. It really did a number on my self-esteem.

The book, written by Mike Albo in collaboration with Virginia Heffernan, is all about a good friend who slowly breaks down the psychological well-being of a longtime pal with backhanded compliments and detrimental observations. Presenting an inescapable figure who’s there to remind you of all the mistakes you’ve made along the way—while at the same time maintaining an upwardly mobile existence for themselves: an incessant namedropper, oblivious to his own inexhaustible serendipity, beating the victim into submission with ill-conceived attempts to boost his self-confidence, becoming an unstoppable social and financial force with every encounter. Yes, my friend has pretty much been sailing through life since college; landing a series of dream jobs, never having to work retail or be single for longer than a week, but in truth, there’s no way he could hold a candle to the creature that’s been set before you in the pages of The Underminer.

Having already made a name for himself on the New York alt-stage, Albo first conceived the idea as a one-man performance of the character debasing its (you never know for sure if the Underminer is male or female) victim with relentless pity and a knitted brow. Expanding upon the central relationship by providing a 15-year run, the book begins with their college years, the starting point for life’s success—well, at least for one of them. And works forward, slowly turning up the commentary on conspicuous wealth, trickle-down economics and the self-help industry. Albo’s contributing writer status for a number of glossy publications may provide him with endless ammunition on consumerism, the subject of most of his shows, but don’t confuse him for an anarchist, “We are all part of the mess,” he says. “The real question is how do you maintain your humanity while, at the same time, be part of that mess.”

Since much is left to the reader’s interpretation, people are free to organically attach their own answers to the characters, whether it’s that of themselves or their own personal pseudo-friends, which, according to Albo, is common.

The recent short film adaptation, directed by Todd Downing, gives you less to interpret but, with Albo taking on dual roles as the Underminer and the Undermined, both sides of the mirror become clearer. The Underminer provided many clues that pointed me toward the Underminers in my own life for sure, but I must admit, it also gave me some choice lines of dialogue to use when I’m looking to do some undermining of my own.