A couple more days to enter to win a friggin’ iPod Nano! It’s red! And gets radio reception, apparently! I wouldn’t know because my iPod is like a 64kb iPod Mini. (Also, dudes, sorry for being totally blog-world absent this week: the computer at my new office doesn’t. do. internet.)
NTKOG #107: The kind of ethanol-fueled writerly type who knocks back a snootful in the privacy of her own parlour then commences to Creating Literature.
I am: partial to: 1) the occasional snort of brandy; 2) my own company; 3) pretending, and often, to be F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I am not: an alcoholic.
The Scene: My apartment. Alone. I’d spent a Saturday night out celebrating Porn Star’s birthday with Anglophile and some of his friends — a rambunctious night, capped at a skeezy bar ’til the last train home — but maintained only a buzz due to some combination of the prohibitive cost of alcohol and the fact that Porn Star and Anglophile are non-drinkers. In fact, through some confluence of medication-mixing, religion and incomprehensible personal preference, all of my Boston friends are non-drinkers. Kind of hard on a girl, what? Still, I’ve seen Lifetime Movies, and I know that when the going gets tough, the tough crack open a jaunty little Bordeaux.
I should have known that this NTKOG was turning against me when I realized I didn’t have a corkscrew. Apparently, in a fit of boozy benevolence, I left The Ex all of my corkscrews in the break-up. Still, have Merlot, will MacGyver. Spent ten minutes sitting on the edge of my bed with the upside-down wine bottle clamped between my knees, thwacking the bottom with the sole of one of my cowboy boots. This yielded nothing but a pissed-off neighbor. After a few more strange tricks, I ended up jabbing the rubberized cork with a pocket screwdriver and digging it out in a few large chunks.
Um, hope Delta Burke’s available to star in TKOG: The Movie.
After I filled up a coffee mug with the liberated rosé, learned three key lessons: 1) DO NOT PAY THREE DOLLARS FOR A BOTTLE OF WINE; 2) especially if you are drinking it by the bottle, and 3) have no sparkling conversation to distract you from the fact that you are drinking THREE DOLLAR ROSÉ.
What I hoped would happen: I’d engage in a witty inner monologue before loosening the muse and pounding out forty-five pages of wonderful and inexplicable fiction. (Not to brag, but Drunk TKOG is something of a wordsmith. You may know her from such literary masterpieces as: “What Grown-Ups Mean When They Say God Is Dead,” “Post-Prandial Depression And Other Erotica” and about sixty thousand regret texts peppered with esoteric interwar British naval slang.)
What actually happened: After a mug and a half of the godawful pink vinegar, I lost the will to continue swallowing, and ended up spending the next seven hours in a slowly sobering melancholy state, listening to The Weepies’ “Gotta Have You” on perma-repeat and obsessively google stalking myself.
Um, I thought booze was supposed to make you fun?
The Verdict: Oh lordy, this was a fail on so many levels. Turns out alcohol is, at best, a social performance enhancing drug and not in fact any sort of panacea. That much was old news. What I did learn, however: rock bottom isn’t just a figurative phrase. It is in fact a very literal term for the drop of wine you lick off a pocket screwdriver, alone, at 4:30am. Good lord. Never again.
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
HA! Delta Burke… 3 dollar wine…. Do you want me to call a crisis hotline for you??
How much do I love this? So much that if I knew any esoteric interwar British naval slang, I’d be using it right now.
I’ve heard tell that a Mr. Charles Shaw makes a mean $2 bottle of wine, but I wasn’t impressed, myself.
Funny and sad at the same time!
“… esoteric interwar British Naval Slang!”
You know… wine isn’t the best booze to drink alone… it’s made for couples.
On the other hand, beer can be a good company! If you try this again someday, you should go for a premium beer (I would recommend Deus, for the best – or for one just above the standards, Hoegaarden).
Sorry, but my inner wine snob won’t shut up if I don’t ask whether you remembered to chill the wine properly or not?
Worry not, sir! This wine was abominable even properly chilled. Although I’m no wine snob — I’m more of a classic cocktails aficionado — if college taught me anything, it was that wine must always be served at the proper temperature.
[chuckle] I’m the sort of person who drinks most stuff (well except white spirits and cheap [sticker price; things that are on sale are different] wine).
I’ll buy you a virtual cocktail or several (or real ones if we’re meeting physically), as long as we can go to a good beach bar for them!
I’m taking it that this is the famous TJ’s 3 buck chuck? Cause that shit is awesome. For wine anyway.
Also, if you ever need a Bostonian to drink with, I’m down with that.
Alas, it wasn’t Chuck. I’m actually pretty okay with Three-Buck Chuck (or, as I call it when I’m feeling whimsical, Tuppenny Charles). The liquor store across the street offers three for $10 wines, and the last time Justice and Kiss-Ducker were in town, we picked up the three bottles with the most whimsical labels. Turns out the company spent all of its $$ on label design.
Also, don’t think I won’t take you up on your drinking-buddy offer! Especially if you’re also a fan of karaoke or trivia nights…
But the labels were so whimsical! Well, color me disappointed. Did you try adding bad white wine and then vanilla vodka?
Well now it’s official that TJ’s has the best Three Buck Chuck!
And I don’t doubt that you will take me up on the drinking offer. Email me at tapcat16 (at) hotmail (dot) com, and I’ll send you my gmail address.
Oh my god, esoteric naval slang! I love it.
Publish your drunken epics.
Oh, I’ve had a couple of your Saturday nights after my divorce and after my diagnosis with cancer (all better now).
I start out good and then become the subject of a bad country western tune.
I just hope you had enough aspirin the next day.
“After a few more strange tricks, I ended up jabbing the rubberized cork with a pocket screwdriver and digging it out in a few large chunks.”
Sometimes it’s possible to push the cork down into the bottle with your thumbs.
I’ve never tried to write on wine but one time I wrote under the influence of doctor prescribed nasal decongestants. The resulting story was total nonsense but was described as Borgesian in workshop.
Ha, if it’s $3 wine, it has to be *sparkling* wine. The fizz helps hide the sting of the nasty flavor
Dear, as your mother I find this alarming on two counts: why do you NOT have a proper corkscrew, and did your dear departed grandfather teach you language that we knew nothing about?
I never heard your GF swear once, but he was an officer on a British mine sweep in WW2. His job was to measure the rum for the officers and the grog for the sailors (suspect it was “One for me and one for them.”) He would have loved Two Buck Chuck. Did we ever tell you that our neighborhood market some 35 years ago was the original Trader Joes? Time flies.
No generalisation is true, not even this one!!
Ok, disclaimer done. In WW2 British naval officers would be expected to be “too much of a gentleman to ever swear in front of a lady”.
Ken O, dear, we do so seem to clash. I’m not sure what generaliZation you are referring to, but I can assure you that TKOG’s grandfather never swore and he most certainly was a Royal Navy Officer. He did, however, enjoy a jigger of rum, vodka or gin. I know you don’t wear them under that kilt of yours, but your boxers do seem to always be in a twist.
Mom, I believe you. What I was saying was that he was of a time and profession where swearing in front of a lady was “not done”, even (especially?) when said lady was a member of your own family.
Could have been worse, dahling, in an effort to stay awake and unleash my inner muse at the same time one night, I spiked my coffee with bourbon, what with being a KY girl, made perfect sense. Uh, not only did it taste disgusting, the resulting writing turned out somewha similar to something one would have expected from Kerouak, Were Kerouak drunk on coffee and bourbon, blind and perhaps typing while on a sit-n-spin trying not to vomit. I saved it so when I become famous it can be published as my earlier epic failure to inspire people never to give up. HA!
Psssst! Post an excerpt on your blog!
your mom’s comment just made me giggle.
um, i could be your boston friend who drinks? if you’re looking. because methinks we’d get along quite well.
Um, heck yesly we should go out drinkin’. I’m totally emailing you about this now.
For future reference:
http://lifehacker.com/5396212/open-a-bottle-of-wine-with-your-shoe
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a chump I was, smacking the bottle with the shoe, instead of letting the shoe cushion the blow as I smacked the bottle against the wall! Clearly more force was needed.
“I am: partial to: 1) the occasional snort of brandy; 2) my own company”
That’s me too…not so much the pretending to be F. Scott Fitzgerald though
I’m also a sleepy drinker. Alcohol consumption leads to me, not being enlightened (except for the time I came up with a design for wall-less rooms), or dancing on tables — nothing exciting for me. I just sleep.
First I love the weepies. Love love the weepies.
I think we may differ on our alcohol intake. I am also not an alcoholic by my standards, but I don enjoy it on nearly a nightly level of friendship. But girl, get yourself a winecork!!
Drinking alone can be fun. You just did it wrong! First, better wine needed. Second, real wine glass needed. Also, I think the point of drinking alone is not to finish an entire bottle and get drunk, but to have one (at most two glasses) to relieve stress.
I am a huge fan of drinking alone, but, also, in college I exploded a bottle of red all over my favorite boots because i was trying to open it with a hanger. Yeah, that happened.
A Bostonian who speaks of esoteric interwar British naval slang? Looks like I found another blog to follow….