So I got this bottle of la Grande Dame Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin at the duty-free shop
in Heathrow Airport around 1994 or 1995. It cost me, at the going exchange rate,
about $60 and I thought to myself these bitches really know how to rape a guy
when he’s at the most vulnerable.
You see it’s always been my theory that at any duty-free
store you always pay more than what it would cost at the store on the local High St
including the taxes. But I was at the point where I figured I could spend my
pounds sterling there or wait until I got back to the States and go to the
James Cook, Sam Cook, Harry Cook or whatever the name of the exchange bureau
was called then and convert the money into dollars at a rate that would even
make a loan shark or a fence blush with shame.
Not being a real champagne drinker, although if I had a
choice the cheaper yellow label version of Cliquot has always been my favorite, I always
thought that I would save my French import via London for a special occasion. I
didn’t know what that occasion would be, but it would have to be a small one
because there are only so many people you can share one bottle with.
But somehow
that occasion has never really happened or at least never thought of until it
was well after and done with. I mean sure, there has been the birth of this
relative or that. There have been the times that I got together with this
person or thanked God that I didn’t, but I never thought to reach under the
bed, my storage cellar, to celebrate the event. And now that I find on the
internet that the going price for an ’89 Grand Dame is around $360 I realize, sad
thing, I’m not sure if I ever will crack
the bottle open.
I’ve been having the weirdest dreams recently, all of which
have been apocalyptic in nature with me ending up running from something. I may
have to change my movie watching to romantic comedies or something instead of
the teenage Armageddon types that I like to go for. So with that kind of foreboding
and the long dead Mayans telling us that the end of the world will be on Friday,
I’m sort of thinking about my bottle now.
I know I won’t open the Grande Dame on Thursday because that
would be just silly, nothing’s happening. But if on Friday there are
earthquakes or erupting volcanoes or an invasion from Mars I somehow don’t see
myself saying, “Time for the bubbly,” either. But since like TS Elliot I see my world ending, "not with a bang but a whimper," that's probably not worth thinking about.
I wish I had spent that $60 on something else; I would have
more than used, lost or broken it by now. All I actually do know is that by next week, I'll still be staring at the bottle and still wondering when.
