A Bottle of Red

I feel like a person who drank too much and went on a public rampage yesterday.

In reality, I had only the smallest sip of red wine. Knowing even as the pungent liquid touched the tip of my tongue, I would find it completely disgusting. Puckering up my face in sensory overload, I squinted against the foul brew and set the glass as far away from me as possible. All the while silently vowing to myself that I will stop trying to be something that I am not -ad nasueam, ad nasueam - and stick with what I know ... Bartles and Jaymes, fruity flavors for the girl who likes her kool-aid with a bit of a kick.

The whole wine issue tends to shock people, and they go all Alice in Wonderland on me, peering down their noses and standing back on their haunches, like the caterpillar on top of his mushroom as he spouts "Who are you?"

Taking in my dark hair and dark eyes, though somewhat pasty complexion - thanks to my Mother's fair skinned muddy mix of ancestry and heritage - they look me up and down, sharing a look of singular disgust on their collective waspish faces.

"And you're supposed to be Italian?" they sneer, amused by their own nastiness. As if my preferring a wine cooler to some uncorked bottle of grapes 80 years past its prime is a crime too detestable to speak of in the upper echelons of their society.

That's when I go for the total shocker, pulling the ace from my sleeve, as I casually say, "I'm not Catholic either."

Holy Mary Mother of God! How can this be so? What sacrilege is this, to have a last name like mine, ending itself in a vowel and not have the good grace to be of the Catholic faith.

But I digress. In fact I digress a lot.

I was talking about what happened yesterday and why it is I shouldn't be let out of the house, let alone set loose on polite society.

I'm convinced it was something in the air yesterday. Or maybe something to do with watching my money flow through my hands like water on the river Kwai. Either way, it was fairly evident that I was in a weird, playful sort of mood, which resulted in me flirting with every male within earshot.

It all started with the guy outside of Barnes and Nobles who I said, if one were to look quick enough, reminded me of Orlando Bloom in his Pirates of the Caribbean phase rather than his kickass blonde elfin archer look from LOTR. My sister Jodi was to quick to point out that one would indeed have to look very quickly to come up with the same assessment.

From there it was over to PetSmart, where I was impressed by the number of live fishes swimming happily in their tanks. And then proceeded to almost take out a full shelf of open topped betas as I was examining what sad creatures they truly are, stuffed into the tiniest plastic cup of water known to man.

It was about this time that I saw it. Two horny little lizards going at it while some guy and a clerk stood nearby discussing his purchasing options.

I looked at Jodi, grinning like a deranged lunatic as I put my hands up in front of my face. "Holy shit. That's a little too animal kingdom for me," I said laughing, drawing the attention of both men, who took note of the in house porno playing out in the lizard cage and my wise deduction that it was incredibly rude to stare.

And then it was off to Best Buy where I proceeded to impress some short little man with curly brown hair, over my excitement of having found West Side Story on DVD for only ten dollars, the last present on my list of got to gets for my nephew.

He was like "Yeah. That's cool man," and for a moment I considered sharing a congratulatory high five in the middle of the aisle with him before moving on.

Jodi and I buzzed over to the mall next where I (a) teased a man with a weird head massaging contraption about the promiscuity of lice, (b) proceeded to have a long conversation with the guy at American Eagle on how he was handling the holiday rush as well as asked him if he would sing Christmas songs on request and (c) made strange clucking noises every time a decent looking fellow passed us by followed by a Mmm hmmm purring at the back of my throat.

But nothing quite compares to my performance at Blockbuster where I accidentally insulted a clerk by saying that I just couldn't understand who would want to sit through 2-1/2 hours of some horse movie. How was I supposed to know that one of his favotire movies was Seabiscuit? And what kind of name is Seabiscuit for a horse anyway?

He of course wanted to know what it was that I had against horses. Besides having been bitten by one once, crying over Black Beauty, and being green-eyed with envy when my two younger sisters got horses after years of my being the only one begging for them, I assured him that there was absolutely no reason for my apparent apathy towards horses. I simply didn't want to watch them on tv.

Trying to distance myself from the conversation, Jodi and I spent the next five minutes looking for a decent movie, with me afraid to make any more comments less I should offend anyone else who proclaimed to have a favorite movie. We finally settled on two things, Bringing Down the House (my choice) and something else (Jodi's choice).

For some strange reason - Friday night - the checkout line was long and wouldn't you know it, the horse loving clerk was hot on my tail to prove his point.

"I bet you didn't like Mr. Ed either," he sneered.

I raised my eyes, meeting his challenge. "I'm not into talking horses," I said.

He seemed taken aback. "Well, what about The Muppets?"

I moved my hand in the motion of a puppet. "Just a hand under a piece of cloth," I said. "Nothing more and nothing less."

From the look on his face I expected him to call me a cruel harlot. "Kermit?" he whispered.

"Puppet," was my reply.

"What about Scooby? Are you going to say Scooby wasn't real now either?"

By now the people in line were starting to stare at both Jodi and I and the Blockbuster freak boy. Some were laughing, while others tried to pass it off as if they weren't listening at all.

"Scooby was a cartoon," I sighed, wondering what it was he was hoping to prove.

He looked at me in disgust. "You probably don't even like animals," he spat, turning his nose up in the air.

And then I said the unthinkable. Carried away on a tangent, I uttered the very words that no single girl of my age and supposed sensibility would ever think to utter in public.

"I have a cat. And she loves me. And when I go home at night, I talk to her all the time," Jodi's eyes bugged out of her head as she listened to me ramble.

"You talk to your cat?" The evil freak boy asked. "What do you talk to your cat about?"

I thought about it for a moment as the entire store waited for my reply. "I can't tell you," I stuttered. "My cat's possessed and she'd kill me if I told you."

Suffice it to say, I will not be going back to Blockbuster anytime soon.