Blame It on the Purple Midget

I think I put into one of the installments of "100 Things About Me" that I don't drink.

Unfortunately, after working most of yesterday on a project that would have been done four weeks ago (no weekend hours required) if most of the key people in my department with were not brain damaged, I found myself inexplicably craving alcohol.

I wondered if this might, perhaps, be a sign of delayed-onset normality. Normal people like a drink after a hard day, right? One says, "I need a drink," and one has the drink, and then one achieves what I have heard referred to as a "buzz" or "glow," or one "mellows out."

Now I have never (in answer to your question, Ms. Newton-John) been mellow, and last night I thought it might be time to try.

By coincidence, it was also Prince Night at this club in Boystown called Berlin.

Berlin is a place I'd never have set foot in before I met Chris. I hate bars, for one thing. I'm shy under any circumstances, and in a place where I can't make myself heard over the music I'm reduced to invisibility. Not a recipe for happiness.

But Berlin has a monthly event devoted to the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and one of the side-effects of dating a devotée is that I've gone along for the ride once or twice. My acquaintance with Prince is limited mostly to "Darling Nicky"* and "Raspberry Beret" (which were banned at my Catholic school, and therefore played incessantly by my classmates). Nonetheless, I like Chris's friends, the music is growing on me, and I feel honor-bound to support the artistic endeavors of other Very Short Men.

Chris ordered me a rum and pineapple juice, after double-checking to make sure I wasn't kidding. I'd had one once a long time ago, in Ogunquit, on an afternoon when Mr. Ex got so insufferably drunk the only way I could cope was to go along with him. I remembered the taste was nice, but forgot that about a quarter-glass had turned my knees into room-temperature gelatin.

Last night, I drank half the glass. I hear I was fun to dance with.

This morning, the sound of my eyes blinking is making me wince.

If there's a silver lining to the cloud, it's the knowledge that my incipient normality was only an illusion.

*I always wondered how exactly one did that with a magazine? And what magazine was it? Cat Fancy? Better Homes and Gardens?