"Red wine on paint", 2008.

I am as accident-prone and as unable to tolerate wine as a 4 year-old. The only way I even got into kindergarten was sleeping my way in. I won the Best Napper award in Pre-K!

So, I have had bad experiences with red wine in the past. But typically this involves over-ingestion and embarrassing dancing. For example, the night this picture was taken. The look of drunken pain on my face pretty much sums it up:


I inflicted that pain, in vomit form, all over Richard's flat in the 15th arrondissement, and about 12 pairs of shoes. Sorry, guys.

Tonight though, red wine and I had an even more unfortunate encounter.

It had been a bad day. I had to investigate my visa status, and visit the bank. Both involved kowtowing to mean French bureaucrats. Who eat puppies. Lest we forget.

Coming home in a storm, I decide I could use some red wine, pick up the bottle of Bourgeuil, and realise I don't have a corkscrew. And neither does the flat I'm staying in.

Building up steam, I decide to take a small knife, and start jabbing it into the cork.
"This is a bad idea," I think. I keep going.

No, no. I'll ask the neighbors for one. Sure, my next door neighbor tends to fall asleep with the door open, passed out onto his bed (I'm convinced he's a heroin addict, after watching too much Intervention). So, I knock on his door.

"Hi, it's your neighbor!"

"No."

(I pause). "It's your neighbor who lives next door?"

(he pauses, realising you can't deny fact. Although I think he's trying)

He says he doesn't have a corkscrew. What kind of French person DOESN'T HAVE A CORKSCREW. Creepy motherf**** I think, and go back the 1/2 step to my apartment.

I pick up the knife, then go for the carving fork. This seems like an excellent improvement over the paring knife.

So I'm pushing desperately when all of a sudden, the cork gives, and out comes a GEYSER of red wine, all over my face, my Reiss sweater, and, most unfortunately of all, the wall of my friend's flat.

It wasn't just a spill. At least I don't have to re-paint my friend's kitchen for just a measly spill. This was a work to make Pollack jealous. I can't wait until I'm famous. I can just see the interview:

"Well my inspiration really was my frustration. Not merely my own, but society's frustration with its own bureaucratic constraints. What this red wine-on-paint study really represents is the brutal force we have in all of us; the violence of life."

I'm half-laughing, half-crying when I hear a knock on the door. It's my neighbor.

"I found a corkscrew."