Libation

I later learned people had a lot of opinions about the kind of people we were, and our so-called lifestyles, a word they thought was so vaguely clever. And the kind of people we were went as guests of a friend to the fancy swim club with a wall around it and a few rules to follow, like you can only eat and drink in the dining area away from the pool under some umbrellas, and booze is allowed of course but only in plastic and cans, no glass, for obvious reasons.

But we were also the kind of people who maybe one time accidentally brought two bottles of prosecco and were immediately told by the old school members you can’t have that in here, it’s a major hazard, so the quickest of us snapped up those bottles, walked straight out front and popped one cork then another right there on the sidewalk. We watched her through a gap in the wall near the corner of the dining area, and we thought she was going to chug it all, but she said, Stop grinning and hand me some cups, dumb asses. We passed one plastic cup after another back and forth through the bars, then she smashed the bottles into a trash can, came back inside, and we all toasted quick thinking and said fuck these fragile assholes as we gulped instead of sipped.

People later called us selfish drunks for breaking the one obvious rule, but they were just mad we had a friend with enough money to afford a membership and probably mad they’d never know what prosecco like that tastes like, freshly shamed, hastily uncorked, passed through iron bars, and slurped with a laugh.