Wine bottle

I have this bottle of wine that was a gift from my last serious girlfriend. Carrie gave me the wine shortly before she turned into a Machiavellian lunatic, and supposedly it was pretty good stuff, so I kept it on a shelf next to my bed, and it would sit there and I would look at it from time to time and wait for a reason to drink it. When Carrie and I actually broke up, I thought we might get back together, so I saved it, and then when we were really finished, I was so apathetic towards her that I didn’t want to make a big deal out of the wine.

The bottle got a little dusty, and I waited for a special event, for a romantic night with some unnamed new girl. I envisioned us drinking the syrah together. I would laugh to myself about how Carrie was funding my new romance, how this was probably not how she had first pictured this bottle’s demise, and how I would use the intoxication provided by the wine to seduce the next love of my life. This never happened. Albertine was as close as it got, and she preferred whites.

Last night, after the bath and the I Ching, I drank the wine, alone, working in my office, out of a plastic cup. I was reminded of that scene in the movie Sideways, where the Paul Giamatti character finishes off the pride of his wine collection in a fast food restaurant, drinking it out of a Styrofoam cup. On the surface, that scene looks so pathetic, but there’s a feeling of catharsis there that enabled me as a viewer to feel positive about this lonely alcoholic’s little rebellion. It’s like he’s letting go of this iconic artifact that’s part of the life he needs to change.

I’m not saying my own thing was that critical. I was just getting rid of a consumable that needed to be gotten rid of. Albertine had canceled my Saturday dinner and drinks and afterwards plans, so I figured I would use my free time to expunge the relics of another woman in such a way that I was also dealing with this new thing. I opened the bottle, deleted Albertine’s so-charming emails, and moved on to real work. Hours later, I felt drunk and productive, and proud of myself for handling this new loneliness in a constructive manner.