Went to dinner at a friend's house last night. An initimate group of some of my favourite people in the world. Took a couple of bottles of low alcohol wine because it seemed like a good idea. (yes, you read correctly.) When I arrived my friends were lolling on the lounge, there were hors deuvres on the table, and wine glasses scattered about. On stuff. Not in hands. I took a closer look. The wine glasses didn't have wine in them. This was big. What exactly did I walk in to here?
"Are you guys drinking water out of wine glasses?"
"Hmmmm." was the reply. Kinda like 'i acknowledge your question but I plead the fifth'.
I set about pouring myself a glass of wine. (Clearly I had not yet been lobotomised by this weird abstaining sect.) Like she had just disapparated from the lounge to my shadow, Fiona was right there behind me, reading the label over my shoulder "Is that that low alcohol stuff heidipants? Are you trying to be good or do you actually like it?"
"Hmmmm." was my response. I too, was afraid of the truth.
Dinner with sparkling mineral water revealed the chasm that truly exists between a lubricated saturday night dinner party and a monday night family detox dinner. We ate heathily. We sipped our drinks (me low alcohol wine, they ludicrously expensive mini bottles of italian fizzy water.) We shared the misery of sobriety.
We also rode the wave of possible failure. "Should I cave?" Steve posed, but we knew it was a rhetorical question. Withouth even so much as a 'hmmmmm' he picked himself up and worked through it. With another sip of water, a coffee, and a lemon lime and bitters. And then some herbal ecstasy.
Yes fuck. Can you believe it?
I had given up the fight for the night by then. Sod this drinking shit. Let's watch a movie and drink water. Then he pulls out a fucking herbal high. "as good on the dancefloor as it is on the couch" was the description on the back. I was now as confused as the herbal scientist who made the shit.
Well, I don't know what kind of party is in that brew, i was thinking, but he better be hoping for couch goodness because he's got more chance of harry potter popping in than he does of me getting my happy feet on right about now. Sober and all.
We watched a disney/pixar g rated animated feel good family number, then I pulled the plug. "How's that love drug going kids?"
"Hmmmm."
Oh, right I get it.
They did their little floaty thing back down the hallway as I walked to my car toting the left over wine and wondering why I had such a pounding headache. Why my friends have turned into mormons. And what is it with February? Let's hope this month gets old fast.
