Rum Tasting

[Martin Hash]

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The resort where my wife, Gwynne, and I lived for a year on the Caribbean island of Grenada during Medical school had free Rum Tasting every week on Wednesday evening. I would rush back from class at 5 pm, meet Gwynne at our room and hurry over because if no one was there by 5:10, they canceled it, and we were often the only ones. Of course, the demonstrators knew us personally after a few months, and we would talk whenever they saw us around the island, not something most staff did with guests. I didn't like to get drunk much during medical school, I just didn't have the bandwidth to compete against kids, and lots of students failed out, but I would allow myself a nice buzz on Wednesdays.

I didn't know much about rum before living on Grenada, but I know the myriad flavors now. Grenada used to be the nutmeg growing capital of the planet until a hurricane wiped them out, but they still grow enough to infuse their rum, and they're known for it. Gwynne doesn't like nutmeg but I sure do; I'll take the cinnamon flavor too, another island specialty, and of course, anything with mango in it. My goodness, I didn't know there were so many varieties of mango, or that they were so good.

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We would invite other students who were our friends to Rum Tasting with us, usually couples, and because everybody got infused with alcohol, things got a little loose, especially with perfect weather, beautiful sunsets, and glimmering white sand beaches such that people would really let their hair down... And sometimes their clothes. Gwynne was born conservative and except for marrying me, she stayed that way. She was extremely attractive when we were young, so had lots of attention from men, but I never worried about it, being both too busy with my own young-man's stuff, plus her being a natural prude. No, it only got dicey when our kids left home, and so did we; 9 years traveling and living around the world, that's when the bees really buzzed around the flower. What made it more bizarre was that the people interested in her were invariably younger and female. That was actually something Gwynne was used to since she played women's sports in college but now she was an old woman.

There were some awkward moments when people had to be told to put their clothes back on. For example, after a great deal of rum “tasting,” the wife of the friends we had invited lost her clothes in the surf, at which time her focus shifted to Gwynne. Her husband was nowhere to be found but considering the amount of rum consumed, nobody was really paying attention. I ended up carrying his wife into our room and laying her naked and passed out on our bed. Just about that time the owner of the resort, who we knew pretty well from previous rum tasting episodes, knocked on the door asking if we knew anybody passed out down at the beach? Ah-ha, so that's where he was! I went down and muscled the guy back to our room and dropped him on the floor. Gwynne and I slept on the couch. There was still nakedness in the morning but I pretended we have young naked girls in our room all the time. Eventually, they left. Gwynne and I just looked at each other for a moment.
“No Rum Tasting next week,” she said, simply.

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