Cheap Wine Pairs Well With Shame

I don’t drink alcohol anymore. I had to give it up because I discovered I was allergic to it. Every time I drank, I broke out – in handcuffs.

But it was a different story when I was young and living hardscrabble hand-to-mouth as a hungry college dropout in New Orleans. Back then I was – ahem – shall we say enthusiastic about the stuff.

My good friend Martha, who unlike me had actually graduated, stopped by the Saturday Flea Market on Decatur Street one bright morning, and hugged me. “I’m giving a little party tonight. Won’t you come? Just a few of the graduate students. BYOB.”

Picking at the corner of the ripped blanket with the tattered household items and trash pile finds that served as my booth, I said “Sure! Sounds cool!”

I had to buy something that my $6.75 profit that day would cover. In the back of the liquor store was a dusty bottle of Italian Lambrusco. Cheap, sweet, red imported wine. I’d had it before. Like grown-up Kool Aid, but the lithographed Renaissance painting on the bottle was beautiful.

At the party, it was obvious that everyone was doing a lot better than me. Their nice clothes and good haircuts really drove it home. I set my wine down gingerly among the other bottles on the table – Hennessy, Stoli, Jack Black, scotches I’d never heard of. And slunk away to the other side of the room.

One of Martha’s more current friends picked up my bottle like it was a dirty diaper and said: “Hey! Who brought this junk?” They all got a good laugh out of that one. I pretended to laugh too. Mortified, I kissed my beautiful Martha on the cheek. “Gotta go. Love you.”

Walking back through the damp Louisiana dark to the seedier part of town, something was coming clear to me, something I’d begun to suspect for some time, even at the wise old age of 22: wherever my path in life was taking me, it was probably not going to lead to the right side of the tracks.