If you’re reading today’s newsletter, you might want to stop and listen to the audio version instead. You’ll immediately notice something different about my voice. Namely, that it’s not mine. My wife Lola has graciously volunteered to be this issue’s guest narrator. This marked vocal improvement was brought about by pride and wine. Deep into this story, when cognitive skills and self-control had both grown somewhat questionable, the topic of conversation turned to how bad I am at reading my own newsletters. Everyone said that literally anyone, up to and including a soulless robot, could put more emotion and enthusiasm into the narration than I do. I tried to defend myself, but after that much riesling, my counter-argument was basically quacking like a duck. It only takes a few bottles for my inner mallard to come out. The debate ended when Lola said narrating couldn’t be that hard, and I told her to prove it. She agreed. The morning after, she pretended not to remember any of this and tried to back out. It was the right move. There’s no faster way to ruin yourself socially or professionally than being associated with me. Nonetheless, a challenge is a challenge, and I refused to let her renege. She now has to read this email word for word with no ad-libbing, no matter what I write. It’s her chance to tell you all in her own voice how amazing and hilarious and handsome I am. I’ll stop there so Lola’s first ever narration doesn’t end in my divorce.
The night that spiraled out of control started out harmlessly enough. Of course it was all my idea. We had Thanksgiving Day completely free. We were doing the big holiday meal with my parents Saturday and Lola’s family Sunday. That left Thursday and Friday unbooked. I decided to fill them with my two favorite things: board games and alcohol. And friends, I guess. Sadly, board games don’t yet play themselves. When I planned and executed a wine tour earlier this year, I was the designated driver. This time, I would be a fully participating member rather than a glorified chaperone. With the critical mass now on the side of Team Irresponsible, things seemed poised to go off the rails. And they did, quickly and with style.
The plan was to go through the bottles one-by-one, splitting each one four ways among our group. Our partners in crime were Lila and Peter. You might remember them from the bonus newsletter a few weeks ago where I explained how I accidentally brought them together by nearly ruining Peter’s life. If you missed that one, don’t feel bad. Like most people who know me in real life, Lila absolutely refuses to become a paid subscriber as a matter of principle. Despite the fact that we’ve exchanged hundreds of dollars in food at various gatherings over the last year, she’ll die before she gives me five dollars for my words. That’s fine with me. Since she’ll never see the bonus newsletter, I can say whatever I want about her on the other side of the paywall. That’s why her love story featured corporate sabotage and frequent raptor attacks. It was basically a word-for-word ripoff of Jurassic Park.
Obviously anyone who hangs out with a guy who frequently and gleefully slanders them doesn’t have good judgment. It wasn’t surprising, then, when Peter and Lila agreed to the crucial portion of my plan. We’d bring at least three bottles of wine per person and split each one four ways, working through them one by one until we killed them all. That way we’d all get to experience a variety of complex flavors from the nation’s top vintners. Not really. It was just a way to get messed up without feeling guilty about it. It doesn’t matter if you can no longer walk in a straight line; you’re still classy as long as you can put your pinky up.
Our bad decisions all in one row.
In hindsight, it’s clear I don’t understand wine. I don’t mean I lack a comprehension of its subtleties and flavors. That’s a given. To me, it’s all basically just angry grape juice. What I actually mean is I didn’t understand how badly wine can and will mess you up. And by you, I mean me. Usually, I sip on vodka. Its flavors range between bad water and worse water. There’s no danger I’ll ever chug it too fast because it’s an unpleasant experience from the moment it hits my tongue to the point it burns out of my system an hour later. I like my poisons to taste like poison, thank you very much. Wine doesn’t have that safety feature. While it’s often not good (especially the red), it’s also not bad enough to protect me. It’s very easy to drink a lot of it, especially when imbibing with three other people sharing the same bottle. It doesn’t have as much alcohol per ounce as vodka, but it makes up for it by being dangerously palatable. Wine might be the most destructive substance on earth. Well, the most destructive substance after kinetic sand. That stuff will never come out of our carpet.
We kicked off our Thanksgiving Board Game and Wine Extravaganza at 10 a.m. sharp. Lola and I managed to get dressed and ready for the day approximately thirty seconds before Lila and Peter showed up. We were off to a good start. In theory, by sleeping in and being lazy for the first portion of the day, Lola and I should have been better rested and more focused. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Our first challenge was Pandemic Season Two, a legacy board game. The “legacy” part means the consequences from one game stick with you into the next as you follow a continuous story arc. We tear up cards, apply stickers, and draw on the board to make lasting changes that could help or hurt our chances of victory days or weeks down the road. It made sense to deal with such a high stakes game when our sobriety was at its highest. In reality, we didn’t need wine to be unfocused. It was a holiday, and, after a voluntary separation due to a covid close contact, we hadn’t seen each other in over a week. We apparently had much to catch up on in our completely uneventful lives. We talked about everything but saving the world, which was our one and only job in Pandemic Season Two. Peter, who likes that game series more than the rest of us, silently seethed as the rest of us nonchalantly let our imaginary board game people run out of supplies and get massacred by an untreatable plague. We were so bad at running the world that we could have passed for real politicians. This newsletter is my official announcement that I’m running for office. My only qualification is prior experience. I wiped out everyone once, and I can do it again.
I made Italian beef for lunch. Well, it was supposed to be for lunch. I only had to push one button, and I still did it wrong. I put ten pounds of chuck roast in the crockpot at 8 a.m.. It was still mostly uncooked by noon. Calling an audible, I dug out half-empty bags of chicken nuggets that had probably been in our freezer since the last Ice Age. The freezer burn paired excellently with six dollar grocery store pinot grigio. Its region of origin was the bottom shelf. After lunch, we kept playing the same game of Pandemic. Normally, we can make it through one scenario in about an hour, but this time, the first one took us four. When our first session of it finally ended midafternoon, Peter tried to discuss the pros and cons and various post-game upgrades. The rest of us were having none of it. We were definitely no longer qualified to do something as important as put stickers on the board. Peter gave up and pulled out the only thing he thought might be able to hold our interest.
That thing was Viticulture, a game about making wine. Given our rapidly growing collection of empty bottles, it seemed like an excellent choice. Once again, it was not. Pretending to make wine is very different from drinking it. Only one of those things actually interested us. Once again, a one-hour game took us four. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened by the end of it, but I think Lola won. Peter, who was the most coherent of any of us, came in dead last by the largest margin ever. Then again, maybe I’m misinterpreting his level of sobriety. He’s perpetually stoic. His reactions to winning the lottery or finding out that his house got crushed by an asteroid would both be a shrug. The one thing he truly cares about is food. Before he came over on Thanksgiving, he spent hours assembling a homemade lasagna from scratch. Unlike me, he timed it correctly. He put it in the oven at our house at some point during our year-long game of Viticulture. It was ready at precisely 6 p.m., right around when my ten pounds of Italian beef were finally done. For dinner, we now had a trillion available calories per person. We might have broken every holiday tradition that afternoon, but we were finally doing Thanksgiving right.
For the last few years, I’ve been on a mostly low carb diet. There’s nothing magical about it. A calorie is a calorie, as much as I don’t want it to be. The basic laws of thermodynamics will be my arch nemesis until the day I die. The one thing eating low carb has done for me is keep me away from the stuff I can’t stop eating, namely bread, pasta, and candy. It might not be possible to fatally overdose on spaghetti, but if anyone could come close, it would be me. On Thanksgiving, though, I’d already fallen off the wagon by drinking wine all day. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a little bit of pasta. To me, that’s like saying it’s probably okay to do just a little bit of heroin. Once I took that first hit, it was all over. I attacked that lasagna like I was Garfield. Before long, my blood type was ricotta. I was just getting warmed up.
Remember how I helped the kids collect fifty pounds of Halloween candy? It was our crowning achievement but also a looming health crisis. The kids ate a fair portion of it, and we gave even more of it away by setting it out every time people came over. Well, there was still quite a bit of it left. Note the past tense there. Hopped up on wine and lasagna, I went in for the kill. It was the first time in literally years that I’d had chocolate. I went berserk. I was like a wolverine in a henhouse. Wrappers flew everywhere. Butterfinger. Reese’s. Hundred Grand. All fell before my onslaught. It was an unprecedented level of candy carnage. Everyone stared in horror. “Don’t look at me!” I shouted as I inhaled yet another Twix. I gained three pounds in a single day. You might think that was just water from carbing up, but half a week later, the weight is still there. All I can say is I tasted rock bottom and it was delicious. Never again.
That was the end of our evening. After you’ve seen a grown man eat his body weight in Twizzlers, there’s nothing left to do but go your separate ways. I slept like a baby and woke up without even a hint of a hangover, probably because I was still riding a sugar high. It will take another week for my readings on the glycemic index to return to normal. In the meantime, I think I’m done with wine forever. It’s the gateway drug to fun, which clearly I can’t handle. From now on, I’ll stick to bottom-shelf vodka and board games like a responsible adult. My parents would be so proud.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.
James
Lola Narrates