Drinking vermouth with Bob

 

Bob Dylan and I got together to drink vermouth. "I can't be drinking so much anymore. I'm in my eighties now." Bob said. "So let's taste vermouths."

"That's still drinking, I'm pretty sure." I replied.

Bob shrugged and sort of waved, like, why worry about these insignificant details.

So, sure, we can drink vermouth. Bob is off soon on a big tour of Europe, and, like he said, he's in his eighties. Who knows if we'll ever go out drinking together again!

Not that I told him this. He does not look kindly upon sentimentality. I merely ordered us a couple of Antica Formula Vermouths, by Carpano. This is not the vermouth you found in the back of your parents' liquor cabinet.

"This is not the vermouth you found in the back of your parents' liquor cabinet." I commented, sipping delicately.

Bob made no response. He doesn't respond during the first drink. He only gestures during the second. And he can do anything from grunting to becoming loquacious during the third. 

For our second vermouth we had Mancino Rosso Amaranto Vermouth. I've never even seen this one before. They charged us a lot for it. It was pretty good though.

"This is pretty good." I said.

"If you like oregano." Bob observed. 

I guess I was wrong. Bob does talk during the second drink, but only about oregano.

"I like oregano." I said.

Bob made some kind of body language that suggested there are certainly worse things than oregano, and he took another sip.

"I listened to a podcast about your Christian years." I told Bob.

"Why would you do that?" Bob asked.

"I thought they were leftists. I love leftist podcasts."

"The left is always doomed." Bob said. "They either lose and are destroyed, or they win and move to the right."

"You're no longer a Christian and now you're an anarchist."

"Is that what the podcast said?" Bob asked with a stirring interest.

"No." I replied. "They said you absorbed the fevered Christianity into your geniusy maw and carried on with it all now as a part of you. And that as far as motivation you currently love your audience and have wearily given yourself to them."

Bob expressed a kingly touch of disdain at the idea.

"A winks as good as a nod to a blind man." I said. 

We were now on our fifth vermouth. This one was a bit like what you found in the back of your parents' liquor cabinet. "I'm going back to the Caprano." I added.

Bob gestured that he would prefer to do that as well.

"What were we talking about?" Bob asked.

"Your revolutionary ideas." I replied.

"I'm a rich man." Dylan said.

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." I quoted. It's my go-to New Testament quote.

Bob chuckled and smiled a tiny bit despite himself.

By the sixth drink he always starts to like me.