Tequila and Tearz

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to do something for this http://hotelgarderobe.blogspot.com/

To mark the end of another project, we set the unrealistic goal of keeping the event going till sunrise. So, I set up a bar serving Tequila Sunrise cocktails. To add to the sickly melancholy, the cocktails would include a single tear. I managed to extract one or two tears from some locals and added them to the mixture. I sold maybe 5 and gave twice as much away. 

Anyway,  we packed up around 2am, and cycled back home feeling like a traveling salesman  with my grenadine substitute, an extra unopened bottle of San Juan and 2 or 3 cartons of orange juice. All to take back to the supermarket the next day and get some money back .

I've never liked tequila anyway, I don’t think it even gets me drunk – I knocked back a few TS's at the event to cope with my fatigue,hangover from the previous night and a general unease at flogging anything to my friends and their friends.

So, I'm edging my way back towards Whitechapel, heavy cartons of OJ in my rucksack. A bottle of something I thought would surfice as grenadine.Its red and gloopy.Cherry cordial. I'm trekking back home. I'm aware that I have my laptop in the rucksack, and that the liquids might be seeping into the computer. I get home and open up the bag. Sure enough , the orange,the grenadine substitute and I guess the San Juan tequila have leaked into the laptop. I panic. I open the laptop and turn it on. It flickers,  and to my surprise the screen has filled with the liquids.. at roughly the same ratio of the tequila sunrise cocktail ! Its swimming behind the screen,like a screensaver or backdrop, or wallpaper or whatever the term is.

I have a habit of pressing , or squeezing laptop/plasma screens. I think I have always does this, even with calculators as a kid, I would like to squeeze ( sometimes with my teeth) any ubiquitous liquid crystal screens I would come across.I do it with my touch-phone. That night watching my best cocktail of the night miraculously form in front of my eyes I couldnt resist and gave the screen a good long squeeze with my thumb and forefinger. Sure enough I got the desired effect. You know, when the illusional space disperses and you're left with a rippling, sort of aura effect where your thumb was. Except this this time, I was being heavy handed and really fucking went for it. Its like when you're on E and you have to really grip something to remind your self of a physicality that the drugs are overriding. Anyway, I wasnt high, just a little tired, drunk and maybe a bit tense. So, I pressed it really hard, near the bottom  of my new orange screen ( complete with red sediment) and let go. Rather than disappearing after a few seconds, the smudgy liquid crystal aura remained.

The other thing about liquid crystal/plasma screens is that they get hot. I could already feel my thighs getting warm from the computer's battery, but placing my hand on the screen I felt the smudgy aura to be even hotter than the rest. I worried that the laptop was fucking up, now that it was full of cocktail, but I was also horrified to feel the smudge getting hotter and hotter, and instead of dispersing which would be the orthodox entropic route it started to increase! Getting larger and hotter by the second, the aura began to blend with the rest of the the cocktail behind the screen.

Of course I was anxious, not just because my laptop was fucked but at the sickly sublime moment that was happening in front of my eyes on the screen. Its about 4.30 am now, and my bedroom is getting lighter. Grey light is coming through the blinds, and I look out at another overcast morning, and then back to my laptop, the smudgy aura reducing, the cherry and OJ getting darker, more blood red really.The mac has done that thing when there has been no activity for a while,and dulled the screen. My fingerprints, and dust are visible so I grab the lid and slam it. Some orange goo oozed from the USB thing.