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The Jamesons Chronicles, Part IV: Walpurgis Eve

Old 03-11-2011, 07:43 AM
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Grievous Angel
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Post The Jamesons Chronicles, Part IV: Walpurgis Eve

Walpurgis Eve
In many ways, the year or so with Drew was one of the best years of my young life. My mother was still alive and had finally found a decent job; I had a boyfriend, and I had been more or less adopted by his wealthy family. I was young and healthy, though Drew and I spent a great deal of time partying, I had not yet fallen into the abyss. I could drink all night and still go to school the next day. Hangovers were little more than an inconvenience; they not yet grown into the impediment they would become.

Money insulates you from the effects of your lifestyle. It would be unfair to say my mother was a poor housekeeper, but I was not unaccustomed to waking up to a house cluttered with beer cans and overflowing ashtrays. At Drew’s, the silent and efficient housekeepers magically kept order, even to point of cleaning up his room. They were devout Latin American Catholics; I used to wonder what they thought when they came across the evidence of our love-making, discarded without a thought on the floor.

A squadron of accountants and advisers kept track of the money; with no jobs to worry about, hangovers could be managed with a Valium and another few hours’ sleep.

His parents invested a lot of time in creative drinking. They had traveled and lived all over the world. Some world travellers collect art, pictures or knick-knacks, they collected alcohol-centered events. I was fascinated by this, my family would make eggnog around Christmas, and no celebration was complete without a drink, but that was the extent of our ritual.

From their time in Sweden, his folks adopted Walpurgis Eve, the day before May 1st. They’d collect old wooden furniture, branches from tree trimming, boxes – anything flammable, and hold a party with a bonfire. They’d work themselves into a frenzy trying to find a Swedish liquor called Akvavik, a word that Drew swore was Swedish for hangover. They’d spend weeks preparing exotic snacks: lutefisk, herring and other things I’d only read about. A child of a family of meat and potato eaters, I found the only way to eat most of this was bracing shots of Akvavik. I was determined to mine his family for every nugget of experience I could. I wanted this lifestyle; but first I had to crack the code. If that meant eating lutefisk, which is prepared using lye and wood ash, so be it.

The Walpurgis Eve party gave way to Cinco de Mayo, which gave Drew an excuse to invite his friends to what became a beer-driven blowout, though as usual, by the time we were able to stir the next day the house and grounds would have been restored to their usual spotless condition.

They celebrated what they called Ghana Day by serving goat, and another assortment of foods, such as Fufu, which is swallowed but not chewed, along with Fante Kenkey, which is a sour fermented corn dish. I dutifully ate all of it, washed down with beer or wine, and eventually stumbled upstairs to Drew’s room.

It seemed to me, then, that there was something here that mitigated the effects of their drinking. Drew and I were young, and while I cannot say I did not feel any impact of my growing fondness for drink, I was able to shake off most of it. I never had a black out, rarely drove and got plenty of exercise. Though his father was not the man he had once been, based on the half hints and degrees in his study, he put up a good front. He was tall and deep chested, and looked quite fit, except for the tendency for his face to flush. His hair was magnificent, a thick silver gray that fell into perfect coif around his chiseled features.

His mother, Felicite, had the means to pay a retinue of hairdressers, makeup artists and tailors. She rarely appeared before noon, and was always perfectly turned out.

My mornings at home were peopled with my pale, coffee-chugging mother and whichever silent raccoon-eyed uncle hadn’t been able to make it home the previous night. They were silent, grouchy, and looked as bad as they felt. They were clearly doing something wrong.

-GA
GreviousAngel is offline  
Old 03-11-2011, 07:58 AM
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great! thanks Angel, i appreciate reading these chapters.
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