Wine is Alcohol

One of the skills I acquired upon joining a big organization was shopping. I became quite adept at knowing what to pick in the supermarket well within a given budget.  I developed good taste in selecting the best of those products for which I had no prior knowledge in my rural upbringing. Among these products of the affluent was wine.

Every end of year before we took the Christmas break, the company threw us a party. The main food which always included a barbecue of some kind was brought in by an external caterer. I was responsible for the rest of the accompaniments and drinks which I bought in the supermarket.  I would get the fruit juices, sodas, beer, and of course the wine. I always bought sweet wine in a five liter cask and put in the fridge to chill at least a day before the party. This was my forte and nobody had ever complained of my choice.

During one December however, I was rather tied up with work for several days before the party and was not available to buy the wine. One of my colleagues – Whose function was actually purchasing – was asked to buy the wine and the rest of the refreshments. He figured it was not a big deal. He reasoned that the best wine must also be the most expensive. That was the biggest mistake he ever made. Unfortunately for us, the mistake would be discovered when it was too late.

The day of the party arrived and we were all excited. There were many errands to run in the morning before the party kicked off in earnest at around 1 p.m. but I made sure all was done. We started with the barbeque which was interesting that year since it was Mongolian. It involved a lot of juggling chunks of flaming steaks on a large wok by a short whiskered chubby chef.  It was quite a feast and went down well with chapatti and lots of different salads.

For obvious reasons, nobody touched any alcohol before the speeches which thankfully came soon after the lunch. The speeches were usually nice since the setting was usually informal, but they never lacked the occasional boring member of senior management. Nevertheless, we got through the session with lots of genuine laughter and applause.

Speeches were followed by a short session of getting gifts. These were all the artifacts and other paraphernalia that the director and other senior staff had received from community members during their field visits. Other gifts had been brought in by staff or visitors coming in from visits abroad. This particular session was fun because it involved drawing out raffle numbers so as to discover what gift one had won.

The last thing before the alcohol was receiving the Christmas shopping vouchers. The usual joke that accompanied this was a request for all married men to ensure that the entire cache was duly delivered to the legal wife and none to the concubine. After this, the drinking could now start. It was at this stage that the senior most staff – and particularly expatriates – politely excused themselves.

I am a teetotaler owing to both principle and religion. However, I always allowed myself the indulgence of two glasses of wine taken over several hours. The reason I did this was because it was always extremely good wine taken into a full stomach. Beyond the slight tipsiness, I never got drunk in all those parties we had at the office – until the fateful year when I didn't get to buy the wine myself.

The group left at the table was smaller than usual that year since most of the staff had coincidentally left for personal commitments. This was fine by me because the most interesting guy was still around. We settled to our drinks and stories. Apart from me and one other colleague, everyone else was taking beer. The two of us had the wine all to ourselves. We needn’t have worried about running out of wine – the wine on the other hand, had plans of its own to run us out of our wits.

I realized that the wine was not all that good when it seemed to disagree with my stomach. Beyond the extreme tipsiness that I had never experienced before (I guess this is what is referred to as drunkenness), I was highly nauseated. At short intervals I had to excuse myself and rush to the washroom when throwing up felt inevitable. Frustratingly, nothing came up even as my visits to the toilet increased. Finally, I decided to wait for the throwing up – in the toilet. I locked myself in, closed the toilet bowl cover, and sat on it. I then leaned back on the cistern and relaxed.

In addition to tipsiness, someone had omitted to remind me that wine also causes extreme drowsiness. Consequently, in my new-found comfort, I drifted off to slumber land. It was very heavy sleep such that I couldn’t hear my colleagues when they came looking for me one and a half hours later. I could hear them calling but I thought it was all in my head. They called me on my cell phone but the ringtone I had then sounded like a song on the radio in my house. When they had almost given up, I woke up – sober, at least for the most part. We had to call it a day and go home. I was fortunate to have my very own “recovery room” in the toilet. My other “wine comrade in arms” was not so lucky. By the time I was discovered in the toilet, he was hopelessly drunk. It took the cab driver who took him home two hours to find his house, and another twenty minutes to drag him out of the car.

Before that day, wine had always seemed rather harmless to me. I had considered it to be more like fruit juice for grownups. On that day, I came to learn, the hard way, that wine is alcohol – and a very potent one at that!