Health and Fitness Journal

After a lovely late-night dinner at Carny’s, I had just ordered an after-dinner coffee and éclair when my date Cathy reached into her Louis Vuitton handbag and produced a mysterious-looking bottle of black goo. Before I could say anything to stop her, she had popped out the miniature ancient cork and had taken a quick swig of the vile concoction.

“Cathy! What on Earth…” I stammered. My heart was doing quadruple backflips in my chest. My tongue had dried up and was pasted to the inside of my cheek. I gripped the faux aluminum hand rests of my deck chair and ground my bare feet into the wooden slats of Carny’s soft wood patio.

Had she tried to kill herself? How much time did I have left before the poison ground her system to a crushing halt? My nervous system ran amok with questions.

“Charles, calm down,” Cathy waved me off. “You really don’t know what this is, do you?” She flashed the tiny bottle beneath my nose. Her eyes were wide and inflated with a mixture of cat-like mischief and flirtatious desire. She ran a long-nailed hand through her shoulder-length blond hair and shook it.

To say I was boggled would be a gross understatement.

“Cathy, what is that liquid? Please tell me it’s not poison – or heroin,” I blurted.

“Charles, you really are a museum piece, aren’t you?” she laughed gaily. “You’re always so concerned with your health, I’m surprised you don’t know – it’s balsamic vinegar. Part of the new vinegar craze. All the girls at uni drink it. It’s slimming and packs a kick.”

Vinegar! I knew from my research that pirates had used it for much the same purpose during the early 1800’s. But in 2007? It knocked me for a loop.

When I asked Cathy to try some of it myself she passed the bottle across the table and I took my first sip. It hit me like a cat bite on the thigh. My head snapped back and my feet shot out straight in front of me. My left hand pounded the table. My tongue lapped at my nose. I said: “Arrrrrrr!”

It turns out that, unfortunately for me, I’m one of only about 0.05% of the world’s population who suffer from an extreme form of allergic reaction to balsamic vinegar. After Cathy and Rizot, the main waiter at Carny’s had pumped my stomach, apparently with the help of some locals, I was carried back to my boat. What a night indeed!