My Friends,
Last night I headed up to my older brother Alex’s place in Orangeville for my first visit since returning home. It was to be a relatively quiet evening, more of a double-date night with our respective girlfriends, but his girlfriend Krystal had gone and sprung for a bus ticket to bring my younger brother Adam home from Montreal, and with the three of us reunited the chances of the evening being quiet diminished. While waiting for Alex to get home from work, Adam and I decided that it had been entirely too long since we had had martinis. Furthermore, in spite of being a prodigious, young alcoholic due to university life, Adam had never tried Tanqueray Gin…
Last night I headed up to my older brother Alex’s place in Orangeville for my first visit since returning home. It was to be a relatively quiet evening, more of a double-date night with our respective girlfriends, but his girlfriend Krystal had gone and sprung for a bus ticket to bring my younger brother Adam home from Montreal, and with the three of us reunited the chances of the evening being quiet diminished. While waiting for Alex to get home from work, Adam and I decided that it had been entirely too long since we had had martinis. Furthermore, in spite of being a prodigious, young alcoholic due to university life, Adam had never tried Tanqueray Gin…
My personal favourite brand
…or even a Gin Martini. These were two oversights I -nay, “we” had to rectify. We stepped out to procure the required spirit. Like a good enabler, Alex already had vermouth and olives on hand.
We returned from our foray, crushed some take-out Chinese and set about finishing the 40oz we had bought. It had been a good year since I’d had a martini but I found my skill in making them hadn’t diminished. That is to say we got smokin’ loaded. Well, maybe not that bad, but I did at one point strip off my shirt and wrestle the dog.
Pictured here when she was a lot easier to wrestle into submission
At some point after I gained new tooth & claw marks all over my body, the girls decided that they weren’t tryin’ to have this nonsense and went to bed. We moved boldly forward committed to our cause. All of us being together we finally took the time to try out the nargile/hookah which my father and I had picked up in Istanbul. It was a good smoke and as we sat in the frigid garage shooting the shit I reminisced fondly about Turkey and all the time I had spent in opium dens hookah lounges.
At some point between the smoking and going to bed I got onto facebook and noticed this picture I had recently been tagged in:
My sixth grade class photo (I’m in the back wearing a dark vest and sweater and a shell necklace with a shark’s tooth on it because that was cool back then apparently). Seeing this photo had taken me back when I was sober but in the sloppy state I was now in I got a little click-happy and began adding all of the former classmates who had been tagged in the picture and who were (through some egregious oversight) not currently on my friends list.
Upon awakening this morning I had an inkling that I might have perpetrated this irresponsible facebookery but it was all a blur. However, when I later checked my email my suspicions were confirmed by two notifications for accepted friend requests. So thanks Grant & Ashlee; apparently you two saw nothing off-putting about an elementary-school classmate drunkenly reaching out to you after midnight. And really, that’s how it should be.
Overall, a good night. Didn’t finish the bottle but caught up with my brothers, had some good laughs and made some new(old) friends.
Stay Thirsty,
-Andre Guantanamo
Write-Errantry 