We had once thought we might join in the sentimental festivities of Open That Bottle Night, as recommended and advocated by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, the Wall Street Journal wine columnists. It seems like a sweet idea: Uncork a wine that you’ve been saving, one that has a special memory or association for you and however many loved ones you want to include—a special bottle that you’ve put off drinking. Then we thought about it, Aldo and I, and instead we have come up with our own night to be celebrated Feb. 23, which happens to be when John and Dottie indulge in OTBN, an acronym that makes me think of off-track betting. Or we may celebrate it Feb. 24, the same night as the Oscars. Or Feb. 22. We aren’t sentimental about the date. It’s not really material. Not when you’re launching OTCWN:
Open That Can of Worms Night.
How this came to be is that—well, the fact of the matter is that by the time Aldo and I have finished the second half of any bottle, good or bad, we tend to find ourselves in the stark, dark minutes of what Aldo refers to as the Albee Hour. “Albee,” of course, is Edward, the playwright who has such a special talent for mining the cruelty latent in the phrase in vino veritas. I mean, if you hold in your hand a lily—in other words, if you begin the evening in a good, light state of mind—a nice bottle of wine will gild the mood. But if your mental state is more like a dry, irritated weed, a bottle of wine will make it sprout like crabgrass at the height of summer. Your sour mood will deepen with an almost invigorating perversity.
If you recognize this feeling, then you are ready to celebrate Open That Can of Worms Night.
And Aldo and I are always primed! Exhausting the dinner and the wine and not at all calmed by the soft, sudsy slursh of the water in dishwasher, we will embark upon an athletic ping-pong of barbed comments, mostly of the petty accusatory sort.
“This wine isn’t sufficiently chilled.”
“Well, it’s sufficiently uncorked, isn’t it? So what are you complaining about?”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what that means –”
And we’re off! Hence the can of worms or, depending on how vigorously you partake of OTCWN, the Pandora’s box, the closet full of skeletons, the rats in the attic, the mice in the cupboard, the rattle in the carborator, the fly trying to worm its way out of the ointment.
It’s really a simpler concept than John and Dottie’s, which means in a sense that it is also more elegant, more flexible, more distilled. Because, as I mentioned, you can commence with any bottle of wine with any meal on any night and any occasion. But if you aren’t sure you have it in you to really enjoy Open That Can of Worms Night, do this: Choose an evening that follows an unusually bilious day at the office. Uncork a wine you don’t even like (or that was given to you as a gift by someone you despise) and serve with an overcooked piece of meat, an insufficiently filleted salmon, or an undistinguished dollop of goatcheese. It may be as soon as a few sips that you will sense internally the thin, firm pressure of an opener slicing into an aluminum can and that small fizzy outrush of air.
“Remember that dinner in Verona for your birthday—?”
“You’re asking me to remember three things in one sentence—dinner, Verona and birthday. What am I, a goddamn encyclopedia?!”
If you’re truly in the Albee Hour, you may want to have a second bottle and a third and have some guests over and humiliate them and then fight over your child who doesn’t really exist. That, of course, is beyond Open That Can of Worms Night. That’s closer to Open That Vein Night.
Better, though, not to get carried away, dear reader. Never go to bed angry. This is all mere sport, an exercise in venting. “Put a cork in it,” as they say, then put your head to the pillow… and dream of your next Open That Can of Worms Night. It can be in 2009. Or tomorrow.
