I stopped by my local BecMo today. It’s a new liquor store in Ballard. It’s supposed to compete with Total Wine for the mass merchandiser market but it’s kind of dinky; well, at least this particular store is.
Still, it has a nice assortment of boozilicious items, including ginger wine, which I haven’t been able to happen upon in the last seven years or so, when I first tasted it in a drink called Mix Up in Port Royal, Jamaica. The drink, and I don’t yet have the recipe perfected here in the states, consists of ginger wine, Guinness, overproof rum and cream. Done right, it will put you on your lips and you will never even taste a hint of any of the liquor in it.
I don’t typically like drinks with hard liquor in them. I am mostly a beer and wine guy. I learned to love beer as a pirate; the important lesson being that beer has a predictable level of alcohol in it, so when people are busy buying you drinks, you can gauge your intake of booze more accurately. With mixed drinks you just never know. One could be weak, the next one firewater. Before you know it, you’re on your lips, which is never a good thing for a pirate to be, and in the group I was in, it could get you beached or tossed out.
In my private time, I have developed a love of wine. It can be mighty fine wine or very rough around the edges. Quite frankly, I have discovered some extremely inexpensive wines that are far better than their pricey counterparts that so called wine experts tout for their excellence and drinkability.
This isn’t a wine tome, however. It is instead a revisit to the days I spent on the wagon trail. Or is that wagon trial, for it was devised as a scurrilous test of my resolve and commitment.
It all started when things began to unravel in my relationship with Diablo. The S.S. Relationship was heading for the rocks and my other half was preparing her own personal lifeboat. Me, I did everything in my power to save the ship, including taking her on a perilous journey on the wagon trail.
Yes, I stopped drinking. Cold turkey. The day after New Year’s Eve. In her whacked out head, Diablo was convinced that it was the demon spirits that were ruining our relationship. I can’t blame her, really. It is far easier to blame some mirthful grapes than it is to take a look in the mirror and accept the blame yourself. I was indeed something of an asshole, but only because she was impossible to live with. I can now admit that I would drink a bit too much wine to 1) make her continuous bitching more palatable and, 2) piss her off some more.
I know, not a good plan on my part. As I said, I volunteered to go cold turkey. On the spot. For as long as it took to mend our relationship, even if it took the rest of my born days.
Thankfully, it only took six months. Our seemingly fairy tale romance and marriage had finally showed its many worts. It never was about the drinking. It was about a shaky relationship from the very start that was stoked by an intellectual and sexual curiosity about one another. Nothing more. Certainly nothing lasting.
Still, those six months were well worth it. Coming from a family with an alcoholic patriarch, I had been concerned that perhaps I had his genes. What I found in those intervening months is that I don’t need to drink. I don’t need the crutch. I don’t have a craving. Frankly, I could care less about the whole thing.
What those months provided me was time to reflect on the mess I was in without clouding it over. I came to terms with the fact that I didn’t really care for my other half. Certainly not in some cosmic, soulmate kind of way, as I had deluded myself into believing when I left Seattle to find “true love.” We were entirely different people with different dreams and needs. The only thing that was missing was an excuse to part, something she eventually found. Her excuse was that she didn’t love me anymore. I doubt she ever did.
How can I say this? Simple. You love someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. I was simply anotherone of her many “projects” and when she couldn’t finish it to her liking, she decided to shelve it and move onto something, and someone else.
Me? I finally got off the wagon trail. I still remember the day. It dawned on me in the middle of grocery shopping that she no longer had any hold on me. She had lost her conntrol. This was months before the epic storm in Key West, when I finally went Cat 5 on her as she once again tried to use the only two charms she had (re: boobs) to enchant me into doing her bidding.
To celebrate that June, I bought a bottle of wine at the store. A really good bottle. When freedom rings, you don’t exactly want to pick up Two Buck Chuck. Emancipation deserves a fine bottle of vino and I sprung for it. Well, we actually sprung for it as I took it out of our joint checking account.
Never before nor since has any glass of wine tasted as sweet as the wine of liberation. As we were still living together at the time, she wasn’t happy to see me with a glass of wine. She huffed and went to her side of the house. And as she turned, judging me in her delightfully belittling and usual way, I toasted the back of of head and thanked my lucky stars that we had not only split the sheets but the house as well.
Never let it be said that I won’t do nearly anything to save a relationship. I gave up wine for a whiner and thankfully the wine won. And so did I. So, a toast Diablo, from the Wizard of Shiraz. And yes, I still owe you the striped socks to go with the house.
In the Emerald City, wondering where the wine screw is,
– Robb