Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [41]
But is there any evidence that drink really does take away the per for mance? That it provokes the desire, taken in the right mea sure, seems unequivocal: “beer goggles,” with their strange illuminating power of augmenting the beauty of whoever is seen through them, are available through the foot of a wineglass, too, and perhaps are even rosier (though again, the effect is attributed to beer as another tribute to the greater delicacy of the wine-bibber).
And the mechanism of these magic glasses is clear, too. Contrary to how it may initially seem, after that first soothing yet invigorating pair of glasses when the company grows more welcoming, the room warmer, and the wits sharper, alcohol is in effect a depressant. Even champagne, twinkling in its flute, hides a blackjack in its innocent pétillance, and in the heel of every fine burgundy lurks a thug with a sock full of wet sand.
We perceive it otherwise because the depressive effects of ethanol seem to work from high to low, in terms of brain function. First to go is that which makes us most human: our finely calibrated tool kit of social inhibitions. Then goes the judgment—just a little but certainly enough—then the volume control and, presently, spleech itselth; the legs wobble, balance fails, the gorge rises. And if all this is not enough (and by this point, as many of us may have experienced in youth, only a direct message from God would be enough) and the victim goes on drinking, eventually consciousness will recede and the sodden cerebellum may decide that breathing itself is no longer worth the effort.
We aren’t concerned with such extremes here. We are not even venturing into the degree of drunkenness that makes so many of our city centers such hells of roaring and midriff after dark. Let us instead stop at the moment when the initial inhibitions have broken down. A man may spy a woman who, his judgment suspended by hock, suddenly appears to him the most beautiful creature he has ever seen. Normally, he would keep his counsel, but he drains another glass and weaves over to her; sober, he might say, “Hello,” but, a little illuminated, he will say meaningfully, “Well, hel-lo,” perhaps even with an invisible exclamation mark and question mark afterward, like this: “Well … hel-lo!?”
What will happen next is equally predictable. He will, unless rebuffed (which he will not be; she too is slightly lit up), bring them more wine; he will also gaze into her eyes. Science has proven this. People under a pleasant degree of intoxication make longer eye contact than the virtuously sober. Science has also proven that if two people of opposite sex (or two of the same sex, if that is their natural inclination) gaze into each other’s eyes for more than about fifty seconds, a powerful and rationally inexplicable sense of attraction forms between them. (This is unlike what happens if you do the same experiment with two heterosexual men: after the same length of time, both report feeling a powerful, yet entirely unprovoked, desire to punch each other on the nose.)
And now the stage is set. Desire has been provoked. A couple more glasses, or, if at dinner, an armagnac for him and a green Chartreuse for her, and the curtain falls on the first act.
The second act takes place in a taxi; then in his, or her, apartment; then in his, or her, bedroom; and is none of our business.
The third act curtain rises upon a man with his head in his hands claiming that he must be tired—he has been working terribly hard recently—and a woman making soothing observations about how it’s all right and not to worry, while the ghost of the