Turn of the Corkscrew

Saturday night Leslie came over and we watched a marathon of My So-Called Life on DVD. She went to open a bottle of wine during a break and the top of the corkscrew broke off. All that was left was a nub. Leslie pronounced it "fucked" and put the bottle of wine back in the fridge.

But then, something strange happened. The DNA I inherited from my father refused to let me rest until I got that cork out of that bottle. By god! We were going to drink this bottle of wine!

First, I called my father. Now, my dad thinks he's pretty handy, and he is, but he's also that sort of handy that is kinda scary? You know the one. I assured Leslie that if there was ANYTHING my father was gonna be good at, it was finding out a way to drink. Alas, he was already at a bar and was no help to me. He kept yelling at me over the music.

WHAT? PLIERS? WHAT FOR? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE MUSIC. WINE? WHAT?

Finally I hung up and started to search for my own set of pliers. I knew I had them from an art project I'd done a few years ago with wire. It took me a while, but I found them.

America! Fuck Yeah!

I took the pliers into the kitchen and started to work on trying to pull the corkscrew out.

I also want to stop here to tell you that Leslie did NOT believe in me at this point. She really didn't. She'll tell you she did but she DID NOT EITHER. I could see it in her jaded, dead eyes.

This just made me want to get the wine bottle open even more.

At first, I'll admit, it was rough going. Then I pulled the cork out about 1/2 inch, at which point Leslie said if I could get the cork out I'd be her hero.

America! Fuck yeah!

I reached a point where it was impossible to go any further. I tried pulling out the cork with a wrench. Yeah! I said a wrench! Desperate times, people. They call for the desperate measures.

The wrench did not work. So then I untwisted the corkscrew out of the cork. We decided we could cut the cork off and then maybe somehow knock the rest of it back down into the wine bottle. I couldn't really find a knife because we were laughing so hard, so Leslie just bit it off.

I don't have normal tools like those really cool single gals with the pink toolboxes. We improvised. I found a meat tenderizer and some sort of attachment to my mixer to use as a chisel to try to knock the cork back down into the bottle. We couldn't find a good spot to try to hammer it back in, so Leslie ends up on her knees in my kitchen with the wine bottle in front of her, and I can't tell you how much we looked like cavemen. Just like idiotic William Sonoma cavemen with kitchen tools, hacking away at that sad little cork.

Finally we realized that this wasn't going to work, so I screwed the corkscrew back into the (shorter) cork and tried to pull it back out with the pliers. It took a while (because every time I got somewhere, I'd sing "America! Fuck yeah!" and that would start us laughing again) Plus, Leslie was terrified I was going to jab myself in the eye with the broken end of the corkscrew, or stab my hand with the pliers. She made me use a potholder to hold the bottle, which did not give me a good grip, but it was really nice that she didn't want me to stab myself.

I worked at it, and finally, there was this triumphant sounding "pop" and the cork was free!

America! Fuck yeah!

I usually don't like wine, but it was the best glass of wine I'd had in a while. I drank it out of a Solo cup, like all the really fancy people do it.

We were standing on my porch later, congratulating ourselves for a job well done, and making fun of ourselves because we're stupid and could've ended up with stitches. But we didn't!

Single girls! Fuck yeah!

I told her later that the same mindset I had about that cork was the one I have about Vin Diesel, and I didn't know why people kept thinking I was just joking around about him. Eventually, I will pop that man's cork. And like the cork, I will keep him as a trophy.

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