Nightcap

Last night/tonight/this morning, I decided to take advantage of this cross-country wind/snow/ice maelstrom by making the most of the time I’m spending indoors.

Sorry for all of the slashes, by the way. I promise that I’ll slow down with those. But I’ll never let go of the em-dash. Never.

I decided to do chores and drink some Asti. I did laundry, I did some dishwashing, I did some baking, and I had a wee drink.

The bottle seemed like a Nebuchadnezzar, even though it was probably a Jeroboam.

I feel like I ought to know more about who Jeroboam was, considering that he has so much to offer.

I didn’t overdo it, by the way. I had a rather small glass — but I drank on a mostly empty stomach.

I almost made some Indomie chicken curry noodles, but I realized that I could just eat some of the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I was in the middle of baking. It was a matter of waiting fifteen minutes instead of five minutes, so I braved the moment by thinking about … well, a lot of nothing. As always.

My body was moving faster and faster, getting things done more quickly than I felt like I had any right to. But my brain started moving more and more slowly. I kept walking around and moving, even though I could feel my thoughts sloshing around.

Whenever I drink wine, I feel sleepy and happy — but mostly sleepy. I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced anything quite like I experienced tonight, though. The closest comparison I can make is that I felt similarly lightheaded the last time I donated blood.

I calmed down pretty quickly, but I still felt a weird combination of … euphoria and confusion. Everything was going haywire. I burned my hands while trying to put away glasses that got too hot in the dishwasher, so I decided to just sit quietly and try to collect myself.

I sat on the couch and opened TikTok. I don’t know why I thought this would help. I watched a couple of TikTok lives. One was an older South Korean man who wore a wig and played the recorder. The next one was an older American man who wore a suit and sang Nina Simone songs.

“!” I said, as I watched these two performances. I couldn’t really form long sentences or meaningful words, but I could form !s.

If you want to know what ! sounds like, then imagine a muted hiccup. A hiccup that’s followed by a fuzzy tingle in your consciousness.

My mind began to race and then slow down again. I felt like a laptop with a whirring fan.

I also felt like I was made out of someone else’s secrets. I was just a bundle of bubbles and … even more bubbles.

But I also felt warm and jazzy. I felt like Corporate Memphis. I felt like a saxophone solo.

A saxophone solo followed by seven hours of sleep. And it was amazing.