Wine

Last night, after Re-Boyfriend passed out on the couch, I decided I wanted a glass of wine. I got the bottle of Pinot Noir that had been residing on top of the refrigerator and screwed in the wine opener. As I pressed on the sides of the contraption, I found myself successfully removing the corkscrew from the bottle, but with no cork attached to the end of it--which was really the point of the whole operation.

I tried again, and the corkscrew again emerged without the cork. After five repetitions of this little exercise, the cork was beginning to look a little bedraggled, full of holes and crumbling, but it remained in place.

I decided to switch strategies. I began to use the edge of the corkscrew as a sort of shovel, flinging bits of cork around the kitchen as I dug into the top of the bottle. After ten minutes of intense shoveling, on what was perhaps an overzealous scoop, the corkscrew snapped in two.

Refusing to be deterred by this setback when so close to my goal, I tossed the two halves of the corkscrew into the garbage and grabbed a knife.

In retrospect, this is where things began to go horribly wrong.

I jammed the knife into the cork and managed to remove a quite sizeable chunk (thank you Williams Sonoma!) before cutting my finger. I sharply brought the finger to my mouth, knocking over the wine glass that had been waiting patiently on the counter. As the glass fell to the linoleum, shattering into thousands of little sharp pieces, it occurred to me that I wasn’t wearing any shoes.

Having no choice but to walk barefoot through the valley of glass, I tried to tip-toe dance around the visible shards. This strategy worked for less than thirty seconds when, 6 inches from the freedom of the carpeted living room, I cut myself again.

I sat on the rug to examine my foot and contemplate my next move in this chess game with the wine bottle.

Not wanting to bleed all over the carpet as I searched for a pair of my shoes, I grabbed Re-Boyfriends wool socks and brown shoes that were conveniently nearby. Thus attired, I grabbed the dust buster and walked confidently (but a little stumblingly) back to the kitchen. After picking up the larger pieces of glass (and managing not to cut myself on them!), I began vacuuming the area. I almost felt like the situation was under control but then, in a move I should have anticipated, the dust buster broke.

At this point, I really needed a glass of wine. I gave the bottle an experimental shake to see if the liquid could make its way through the infuriatingly still-in-place cork. It could. And a lot of it wound up on the floor, since my shake wound up being more “vigorous” than “experimental.” Deciding to deal with things later, I filled up a glass and took a big, semi-triumphant sip, ignoring the floating bits of cork that stuck to my tongue.

And, of course, that was when Re-Boyfriend woke up, finding me in pajama shorts with men’s shoes and wool socks, sucking at my bleeding finger, surrounded by broken glass and small puddles of wine.

“My foot is cut too,” I told him.