As I woke up last (not the recently-occurred, but the one before) Sunday morning, a funny question occurred to me. Probably because of the absinthe Saturday night. Never again, my green fairy.

When I got home after 6 hours of class Saturday afternoon, my flatmate and a friend were hanging out at our house after shopping for the latter's brother's wedding. In all they had purchased 8 beers and 4 items of clothing: pink shirt, pink and brown tie, brown suit. It was a prolongued source of jokes but they did in fact look good together. So there we were, shooting the breeze, joined for an hour by Cecile, when the boys have the brilliant idea of going out that night.

Not long before midnight we three finally find ourselves shepherded by Arnaud into a Goth(ic) bar on Oberkampf, a street in the 11th arrondisement full of bars and clubs and cafes. The "ic" on the end of that description is necessary because it's not the Goth of black lipstick, black combat boot, black-shadowed eyes who love Metallica and Manson. It's Gothic as in menu of medieval-style game and dried fruits. Arnaud has dragged us here for my first taste of the fabled absinthe.

Alas, absinthe in veritas does not have the magical Tinkerbell glow of Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. It mostly smells (and tastes) like anise and licorice, and we mostly just slumped at the bar geeking out on the displayed absinthe-brewing apparatus and other gothic paraphernalia on display as we slowly sipped our celandon drinks.

The rest of the night was good stuff, though. We sat in a Brazilian-themed bar for another hour and Paul took advantage of his faster-flowing native French to order me a VILE glass of turpentine. Its place in front of me was soon replaced by a virgin colada and it took all three of us screwing our faces up, taking the teeniest sips, to finish the tiny clear glass. I never got its name. Afterward we popped into a club for a couple of hours. French guys, or at least Paul and Arnaud, have not the American compunction about plantonic dancing with each other and goofing around with them was a really good time. When the music turned from electronica and classic rock to banging hip hop, we finally staggering home exhausted.

Whew. Anyway. Back to you from the digression: here's your pop quiz: if you were a musical key, what would you be?

My first impulse is that I'm definitely a major key, not a minor one; something with a few accidentals but not too many. The key of A major seems about right until I think about it some more and it gets a patina of diva-esque flightyness. I think I like flats. Perhaps A flat major — what do you think? Does it fit? What would you be?