More Pepper, Please
More Pepper, Please
Drink Up, Hero
December 11, 2018
Bloody Christmas
It is two weeks before Christmas and the happy man stuffs his hands into his pockets and shuffles through the night cold to the liquor store.
He steps in and instantly knows that he has not missed this place at all. How long has it been? Two years? Three? It’s a sad place. People are buying beer, gin, and wine.
He walks up and down the aisles looking at the impossibly large varieties of alcohol. He thinks maybe he’ll just buy Beer Nuts but doesn’t even see them.
Then he finds what he came for, the Bloody Mary mix.
He carries the bottle to the counter and, like every time he has ever been in a liquor store, he feels as if he’s going to get caught. But he’s 49 now and hasn’t been asked for his ID probably since he was 30.
And Bloody Mary mix doesn’t even have alcohol. But it still tastes so adult.
The man behind the counter almost seems happy to see him and is very friendly and he is thinking that it’s because he must be the best-dressed, most genteel looking customer of the night.
Or maybe the guy behind the counter is just a nice guy.
He buys his bottle and gets in his car and drives home and pours the Bloody Mary mix into a Christmas glass full of ice and he adds pepper and it’s Christmas, baby, it’s Christmas even if the music is only in his heart and the lights have long faded from everyone’s eyes. --TK
Tuesday, December 11, 2018