Of course there was booze involved

When you're in the wine business, one tends to drink. Usually quite a bit. Drinking happens at work when salesmen bring you samples, maybe even a winemaker comes with them. You talk wine, you drink wine. There are trade tastings, which can be bacchanalian affairs with tables full of wine, all of it for free.

At work, I drank. At home, I drank. Socially, I drank.

One thing my wife and I did in that small apartment was throw a good party. Again, it was great that our downstairs neighbor slept like the dead.

And we were also invited out for the occasional party. This particular one was at the rented house of my wife's colleagues.



I'm still trying to remember exactly when it happened. I was working in a wine shop, but can't remember which one. All I know is I got seriously drunk and I started talking out of both sides of my ass.

This part is not my story to tell, so I'll omit those details. It was about an incident that happened to my wife at her work. It involved a hearing that became very Kafkaesque. My wife's accuser may also have put some offensive graffiti in the hallway of our apartment building. The outcome was not favorable toward my wife.

This did not happen to me. But it felt as it did the way my wife battered me with every single detail of every step of the process. The same way she would hammer me with every single detail of a person who cut her off in traffic, who gave her slow service in line, anywhere. The moment I stepped into the apartment, or the car, I would be hammered with her anger, with every outrage she had. This went on for a long time. And it got to me, what happened to her made me very irate, especially with all the crazy shit I was dealing with at my job. I could barely get a word in.

So at the party we were talking about their work, it was always about their work. Little else existed outside of their work. I found that one of the important faculty where my wife worked was there, and I called him over and probably said some very disparaging things about his workplace, the fascist judicial system they had in place, and academia in general. To the person's credit, they walked away from a drunk idiot. I deserved to be punched out. Hell, do not even remember the person's name.

An embarrassing moment in a lengthening line of embarrassing incidents caused by my drinking. Had to call the hosts the next day and apologize. One of my wife's friends called my behavior "magnificent" then changed the verdict to "rude and arrogant" after my wife moved out. We were not invited out much after this particular night.