Bare Essentials

Prologue

George Clooney is also taking a break from drinking.

"To give my liver a chance to catch up," he says.

My liver would have to run the Badwater Ultramarathon to even make it to the starting line. Still, it's nice to be in such good company. George, that is, not my liver.

The last time my liver was good company was 1957, the year I met Moe. You'd know him by his Christian name, Mogen David. I was only a wee lass, but it was when I had my first encounter with that ultimate thrill-a-minute midway ride, the Slippery Slope.

It's been an exhilarating downhill careen ever since.

~ CHAPTER I ~
(Remembering Eisenhower)

In an effort to introduce a modicum of culture to the wilds of the Iron Range where they were attempting to raise a family, my parents started a tradition of pouring a wee bit o'wine for each pack member, including the wee bairns, at all festive occasions, said occasions numbering precisely three: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Thanks to centuries of 80 proof Viking blood fermenting in all nine branches of the family tree, my parents' first rule of wine was something easily opened (i.e., screwtop), despite a shared ancestral tendency to rip corks from bottles (not to mention jugular veins from the throats of enemies) with one's incisors.

(*See Appendix One for more on the canis lupus branch of the family.)

Since my first heady out-of-body experiences — compliments of the fevers which accompanied the usual childhood illnesses — I'd been searching for a way to recreate that state of sweaty nirvanic euphoria, sans the requisite 10-gauge injection of penicillin. Pushing on my eyeballs to produce those sparkly little rainbows, spinning in circles until I fell over, swilling Ovaltine ... none of it had the desired effect.

Enter, Moe. Better than the blood of conquered enemies, to be sure, but only just. And so easily opened! Which can also be said of my mouth when it came to sucking down anything remotely mind-altering, not to mention ... but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Thus Moe will forever occupy a special place in my heart, being My First.

But whoever stays with their first? Just ask George Clooney.

~ CHAPTER II ~
(Losing My Cherry)

Once I'd discovered my father's liquor cabinet (an antique free-standing buffet coffined in knotty pine and topped with an orange formica countertop, a shrine to the Sixties if ever there was one, man), I left Moe in the dust like the fledgling smalltown boozehound that I was, and moved on to more colorful pastures.

I slid from liquor cabinet rum (to this day I convulse at the sight of a Bacardi logo) to the lime-flavored vodka the other high school hounds preferred (to this day I stroke out at the sight of a Scope mouthwash logo), followed one high school graduation later by jug wine, the choice of Vietnam era college hounds everywhere, which ushered in the mixed drinks phase of Legal Age, as in, You're no longer a minor hound, you're an adult hound, stick a piece of fruit in it.

I should've stayed with the fruit.

I'll lay odds no woman has ever said that about Mr. Clooney.

~ CHAPTER III ~
(Looking for Mr. Daniels)

After a brief return to that old gigolo, wine (this time in those darling stone bottles from Germany, which made those adorable containers for dried flowers, the chief reason for choking down the stuff), I embarked on a long season with Jack.

Hey, I was young (until I wasn't). My liver was laying low in a monastery blowing doobies under a vow of silence (until it began to speak). Jack felt like the grownup I'd been waiting for (until he started beating the shit out of me and the honeymoon was over).

I recovered with the help of a few one night stands — okay, three-to-four-year stands — most of them alien, all of them illegal, none of them sponge-worthy.

(*See Appendix Two for "Seinfeld" references.)

And then, one dark and stormy night, it came to me. In a vision. Literally. I was tripping, and the wallpaper spoke:

"Keep this up and you'll be toast, Lucinda."

Which isn't my name, but who's counting? I mean, you think George remembers names the next morning?

And that is how, in my fickle-hearted roundabout boozehound way, I eventually returned to my first love, Il Vino.

Rest assured this current incarnation is many wardrobes removed from shirttail-relation-seventh-cousin-thrice-removed Moe, so as to be virtually unrecognizable. But for that familiar glint in the eye, slur in the speech, tangle in the tongue one is left with after each encounter.

Which might also describe the aftermath of an encounter with Mr. Clooney. Or so I would imagine.

Epilogue

Awhile back, in an effort to purge and cleanse and start anew — it's Leap Year! — we had a new kitchen floor put in.

In preparation for this momentous event, the refrigerator needed to be moved. There were actual lifeforms growing underneath it, some of whom I recognized from high school ... but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Before moving the thing, we decided to clean it — Leap Year! — and in so doing, we also decided to throw out everything but the bare essentials.

All this purging and anewing and leaping ahead took half a day. When we were done, I took a photo. I've been using it on my desktop. Some people call it wallpaper. I call it background.