Absinthe Makes the Heart Fonder

Pam had actually never seen the insides of this room before, with everything decorated in full Art Nouveau style, every piece antique and precious to me, except for my desktop computer where I did my writing. I've tried writing from a laptop, but it just doesn't work for me. I need a full-sized screen and keyboard to bring my inspirations out. Now that my Shangri-La was open for her inspection, she insisted upon the complete tour.

"The art posters on the wall are all originals, 1880's to early 1910's, mostly all French or Swiss liquor advertising, except for the small Toulouse Lautrec charcoal study above my desk." I didn't bother to tell her that this was a real, entirely authentic original work and not a modern print or even a vintage reproduction. It portrayed a man sitting at a café table in front of a bottle with green pencil coloration fills. The work's title, 'The Absinthe Drinker' made this one of the highlights of my shrine to the La Fée Verte. It had cost me several months pay, but since I didn't do much else with my salary, it made for a most pleasant and crowning figure piece within this holy cathedral to the Green Fairy.

"This one, the girl holding the glass while not wearing much very... I suppose that's your favorite?"

"It's my rarest one. That's a very famous and iconic 1896 advertisement for Absinthe Robette and is regarded as an artistic masterpiece. I paid too much for it at a French auction, but it's an original in almost perfect condition and not one of the 1898 2^nd printings or later reprints. My favorite actually is the one with the cat drinking next to it; it's for Absinthe Bourgeois, called 'Chat Noir'. That one is a later reprinting, but still antique. It's one of the single most desired of the original advertising posters and when I find a first printing, it will be outrageously expensive."

"It does fit the room. Is everything here devoted to absinthe? What is absinthe anyway? Didn't they make it illegal because it drove the drinker insane?"

"Yes and no. Absinthe was banned virtually everywhere in Europe by the start of World War One. The EU legalized it again back in the 1980's and it's even legal again to buy now in the US. The drink was no more dangerous than any other alcohol, except when demand began to exceed supply in France; bootleggers, like during prohibition here, made their product illegally from industrial alcohol. That, more than anything else, was responsible for driving people mad."

"So, what's the big deal about it then?"

"It's the history, and for me especially it's the relationship absinthe has with great art and authors. It was the drink of the Impressionist artists and the Post-Impressionists as well....Toulouse Lautrec, Degas, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh.... all of the culture and decadence of Paris in the Belle Epoque. It was the muse of many writers such as Edgar Alan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelly (she wrote Frankenstein while drinking Absinthe), and later in the twentieth century, Earnest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham and Jack London all worshiped at the altar of the Green Fairy too. It gave them inspiration and clarity."

"Or rather it got them insanely shit-faced drunk!" Pam giggled.

"Well... and that too," I admitted.

"Most of the posters seem to feature women, rather happy ones at that!"

"During this time period, absinthe was directly and uniquely advertised at and for women. Bars or saloons had always been a male dominated establishments, but the absinthe cafes and clubs promoted 'drinking equality' for women, alcoholic if not quite sexual liberation previously unknown to European women. It was the drink of the working-class guys and gals, and especially the bourgeois."

"Even more popular than wine?"

"Much more so, at least for awhile. Absinthe gives you a different sort of drunk, mostly due to the herbal additives with combined local herbs, wormwood, anise, fennel and hyssop among others, in an alcohol base. It's the wormwood, or rather the chemical thujone, the psychoactive stimulant it contains, which alters, usually benevolently, your cognitive thought. The wonderful contradictions of absinthe make it a unique drinking experience! It has a high alcohol content, which you know is generally a depressant, relaxes inhibitions and promotes creativity, but with the powerful herbal stimulants, your brain can process these new thoughts and ideas rationally with an unusual level of lucidity, and for me sets free my mind to write, with clarity and a forcefulness of vision that it would otherwise never have had before."

"You're a writer? So am I! What do you write?" She exclaimed. Now that we apparently had something in common, the opportunities to interrogate me, about both my writing and the Green Fairy were irresistible.

"Take the chair there and sit, and if you'll share a glass with me, I'll tell you anything else you want to know... no matter how embarrassing."

Pam seated herself at the French golden oak round table in front of the empty reservoir glass and spoon, originally intended for my pleasure, now awaiting hers. I gathered up a second chair for the other side of the table and quickly selected another vintage glass and spoon for my own service. She reached out for the Daum decanter, but I abruptly stayed her hand.

"No, wait! Let me serve you. There are important crucial rites and formalities that must be observed." I beseeched her, as her hand returned to her side and she began to more closely inspect all of my gathered absinthe paraphernalia.

"Please do, but I probably won't like the taste. I hate the flavor of almost all hard alcohol. It just doesn't suit my tastes, so I mostly drink wine... even while I write, but I can't say that it blesses my clarity or vision very much."

"This will be either a very sweet or very bitter taste, depending upon how much sugar one uses and the licorice taste is one that takes getting used to, admittedly... at least at first. Will you promise to be patient and try at least two glasses with me?"

"Two? That much? I don't normally drink that much." The sideways glance she then gave while looking away from me suggested otherwise, but it certainly wasn't my place to discuss or criticize other people's drinking habits.

"Back in the day, most imbibers would drink at least ten glasses, if not many more. You won't be getting immediately drunk, and the overall affect does take a certain amount of intake and time to properly develop, so please trust me."

"Alright, if you insist." She was none too certain about this, but her curiosity was still fully in charge and had mostly overwhelmed her innate shyness. Undoubtedly, some logical part of her brain was telling her that I was a dangerous alcoholic and drug fiend, now out to poison and corrupt her... undoubtedly for sordid debauchment purposes later, but her courage (and her curiosity) was holding steady.

"There are rituals to drinking absinthe, important ones that must be followed if the La Fée Verte, the Green Fairy is to be properly respected, summoned and worshiped. The rituals are all French, and extremely elaborate and very socially important... much like the famous Japanese Tea Ceremony. The original Greek word for absinthe translates into "undrinkable", so at least at first for starters, your drink needs to be diluted and sweetened to make it palatable. I like a bit of bitterness myself, but for starters you should take at least one sugar cube in your drink."

I cradled the Daum decanter of absinthe in my hand and like a good French café waiter poured exactly three ounces into her empty glass, pre-marked already accurately by the design of the glass to accept this exact correct amount of the liquor. I then paused to allow my guest to examine the coloration of the liquid, its bright emerald green, almost glowing florescent color and also, it's absolute perfection of clarity with utterly no sediment at the bottom at all. This Czech brand of absinthe was top shelf, perhaps the best over the counter brand available and my usual tipple. Its innate concentration of 10 milligrams of thujone per kilogram is less than 20% of what vintage concentrations of the chemical would have been in the past, but this amount is dictated by the EU's current legal limit, and also US law. Fortunately, thujone oil, along with other traditional herbs customarily infused in vintage absinthes, is quite legal to buy... unless it is to be used as a food additive, which this was not! I'd earlier prepared this additional infusion into the absinthe and allowed it to steep during the two weeks I'd been off at work. Now this enhanced concoction was pure to the original vintage specifications... and entirely suitable to my drinking preference.

Next, I placed the absinthe spoon over her partially filled glass and unwrapped a sugar cube from its paper and placed it onto the center of the spoon, right over the slotted openings of the center of the utensil so that it was centered over the glass.

"Here is where the sugar is added and infused into the absinthe slowly, by a very slow flow of the ice water directly over the sugar cube. Watch as it melts slowly and flows with the water into the glass and combines with the drink. Get ready to watch it begin to change color!"

The pure alcohol of the absinthe began to blend with cold ice water from the tap of the fountain, very slowly, barely more than a trickle and the mixture below began to become cloudy. The color was still green but it became increasingly translucent, in a green milky sort of way as I doubled the contents of the glass, now diluting the absinthe by exactly half.

"Some people eager to show off sometimes dip their sugar cubes in absinthe first and then light them on fire, before pouring the water. This gives a little of a caramel taste to the drink, for those that like that sort of thing, but I think it detracts myself," I commented, completing the last few measured drops of ice water onto the spoon to make sure that all of the sugar had been melted and had flowed into the glass. "The French name for the clouding effect is called la louche and occurs because the herbal oils within the absinthe are not soluble in water. Now, give the glass a gentle spin with the spoon and drink like you dripped—slowly, like you were a famous authoress of the Belle Epoque!"

"Very definitely a drink for the hipsters! I swear there was smug superiority demonstrated in every single step taken!" she laughed, as she took her very first slight tentative sip.

"Like I said, drinking absinthe has a ritual! And not just all smugness either. This ritual when performed at the Parisian café is what really came to be known as l'heure verte, the green hour. And yes, the great masses of the unwashed will watch us hipster elite performing this ritual in envy and before long they'll all want in and wish to join us too! Maybe a few of them can write as well, or can discover their own Muse through the Green Fairy... now sip your drink and tell me what you think."

"Very licorice, but not badly so, in a good sort of girly way, just like nibbling on a rope of candy on a nice summer's day while on a swing, floating through the air. Smooth, but rather sweet. Maybe less sugar next time, like yours?"

I was preparing my own glass now, with less than a half of a cube of sugar to sweeten it.

"I like my drinks just like I do my women, perfectly aged and a little bitter!" I laughed. For a moment I thought I might have offended her, but she smiled and took a longer sip of her drink.

"As for me, I like my men just like Kleenex, soft, sturdy but disposable," she laughed.

"Very bitter indeed! Did I mention that Dorothy Parker, the famous writer of infamous and profound wit and snark loved absinthe too? Now tell me about your writing, and I'll tell you about mine!"

****************************

For the next three hours, we enjoyed the ritual and shared our l'heure verte about eight more times, that is I think I was just starting to prepare our tenth glass when she lit the literary bombshell under me. I had been discussed the historical murder-mystery novel that I had been writing off and on for the last two years and she in turn had told me about her own novel in the works, a paranormal romance about a mortal detective and coroner in a world ruled by vampires. Both of our ideas sounded good to the other, and we were feeling positively chummy, and not a little under the influence of the fairy.

I wasn't drunk yet and Pam wasn't noticeably slurring her words either, but stimulated she was, talking with exuberant enthusiasm about our shared literary craft, when the bombshell hit.

"But, just to get started... learning my craft, and so on... I started writing stories for an online erotic web site." Oops. I think she realized after the fact that this was being perhaps a bit too forthcoming, but it was my turn to meet her advancement into friendly territory.

"Uhhh... so did I. I write those sorts of stories on my laptop, when I'm off away from home after work and bored and sometimes lonely. I think I've written at least fifty stories, and maybe only about half of them suck."

"What site?" she enquired with insistence and having nothing left to fear, I told her... and then she told me she wrote for that same site, and another alternate place that I was familiar with. Then she told me her author alias, and I gave her mine. We knew of each other.... and had both already 'Favorited' each other's stories!

"I liked 'Gray Swampy Nights of Passion' the best of your stories," she admitted, while logging into her author account on my computer to show me the review of the story that she had written for the tale. "It was about two people, a man and woman that don't like each other much who are then trapped together in a Rangoon hotel room for three days and nights, stuck with each other, until they end up in bed together."

"You didn't find the anal scene too... extreme? Some women don't like that sort of thing, especially while being held down tightly by their hair."

"No nastier than my story 'Fevered Buns of Desire' was, about the girl who could orgasm only after being spanking," she proclaimed. I didn't remember that story of hers but I'd read it before and gave it a perfect grading score. I looked it up and started reading the story out loud while Pam took the honors of performing the ritual and refilling our near empty glasses. If she was at all ashamed to be exuberantly drunk at a friend's house while he read aloud her ode to the joys of rough anal sex (after a firm belt whipping of the heroine's lovely ass) she didn't show it.

A bit drunk and festive, if not entirely hallucinatory yet, I slapped her ass rather boldly, to which she didn't object to, even when I left it there, bolding fondling her jeans covered ass. She then kissed me, as much in a joking humor as from any actual romantic intent, but it sufficed... more than adequately. A few minutes later her skirt was on the floor and I was unfettering her bra to reveal a nice pair of breasts that were in no way a disappointment to hold, lick and nibble upon. Five minutes later we were in bed together, recreating several scenes from both 'Gray Swampy Nights' and 'Fevered Buns'.

"I've been missing you lately, while you've been gone off at work." Pam admitted, briefly taking her mouth off of my swollen cock to give the tip a healthy swirling lick.

"I've been thinking about you too lately, well... for at least the last year or so anyway. Absence does seem to make the heart grow fonder."

"Or perhaps instead, it's absinthe making our hearts grow fonder! You didn't tell me that the stuff is an aphrodisiac! I've never been this drunk and horny before in my entire life! I just want to fuck and be fucked, hard! Give it to me hard, right in my cunt and if you can make me cum with just your cock inside me, I'll let you screw my ass next afterwards, after spanking it good and hard first!"

"It's a deal!" Being possessed fully of the spirit of the Green Fairy herself, I pounded into her for hours, first while she was on her back with her legs arched upon my shoulders as high and tightly as they would go, and after she squirmed and squealed (and came, repeatedly), I continued driving into her while she crouched upon all fours, with her ass now increasingly up into the air, daring and desiring for me to possess it. She'd never allowed her ex-husband to fuck it and I was the first guest to be allowed this deep intimate pleasure and she found it at least as enjoyable as the fantasies that she had written about.

Since both of us were rather creative sorts of people, and rather filled with clarity of purpose and no small amount of inspiration, the remainder of the evening (and early and later hours of the morning) consisted of the production of an entirely new and original erotic drama, with two very cooperative and willing co-authors.

************************

I woke up in bed alone about mid morning and assumed that my night guest had gone back home either for some real sleep or perhaps out of a sense of regret. Our relationship had exploded in a single night of passion together and I wasn't entirely sure what the remnants of the 'friendship' were going to be like in the morning. She'd have regrets, certainly, which would probably lead to apologies on my part and a lot of awkwardness when our paths crossed in the elevator or the laundry room in the future.

But, I needn't have worried. I found Pam frantically typing away on my computer, still naked and quite still flying under the wings of the Green Fairy. I'd remembered that I'd had to open another bottle of absinthe late last night before things became too delightfully carnal. I'd thought a good half of the bottle should still remain, but it too was now empty.

My lover had seen La Fée Verte in all of her wonderful glory, I could see it plainly in her eyes, having been to that wonderful and yet breathtakingly terrible place myself quite often enough. She'd travelled past any stages of fear, regret or even mundane hallucination and had reach that rarified summit of divine inspiration where the Green Fairy reveals her most profound and inspired secrets and blessings, gifting you with vision, and if you're divinely fortunate, a glimpse of your very heart's desire.

"I've never written while this inspired in my entire life!" Pam exclaimed as she leaned to the side of my typing chair far over enough for me to kiss her and also caress a soft bare breast. She grasped my stiffening penis with her left hand and stroked it a few times and took it for a long happy moment into her mouth, slowly sucking its entire length until my entire shaft was fully in her mouth and even at the entrance to her throat. She sucked me in and out again a few more times as I thickened into a full erection and she with some reluctance took me out of her mouth and kissed my cockhead.

"That stuff got me drunk alright, nearly entirely out of my head... but also at the same time I was... and still am, clear-headed! When it started to fade on me earlier this morning, I conducted the ritual again and resummoned the Green Fairy and she returned! I should be writing complete and utter deranged crap, like unintelligible ravings on the wall done with crayons, but I'm not. No madness, just drunken clarity between me and my muse, like I've never felt it before."

"Shall I find a fresh bottle for us? I feel moderately inspired to write myself and I think there's room on the desk for us both to write, and worship La Fée Verte together. Shall we?"

"Please! And this time, at the end of the ritual, I want to jerk you off, to make you cum inside of my glass, so that I can drink of the fairy... and of you, at the same time."

Now this was something different! I opened a fresh bottle and performed the ritual and Pam took my cock once more into my mouth to suck me and also firmly tug my shaft with both hands to coax my load of semen out into her glass, to add its new milkiness to the cloudy green swirls of the absinthe. It didn't take me long to ejaculate and as I began to do so, her tongue swirled across the upper crown of my cockhead as she milked my load into her drink. With a smile and slight stir of her glass with the spoon, she slowly consumed this holy elixir slowly but steadily until the last drops had passed between her lips. Then in something of a religious ecstasy, she kissed my mouth deeply so that we could share the last bits of the holy drink together and then, as our tongues parted she once again took my cock back deeply into her mouth, keeping it there, sucking hard and fervently until awhile later another load of my semen discharged into her mouth.