I need a cold fridge to warm my beloved's heart

Summary: This post has nothing to do with Missing Link. It's a contest entry that I wrote some time ago, originally posted on the VortexDNA blog, in the hopes of winning a Google-branded beer fridge. I publish it here for your entertainment.

I need a cold fridge to warm my beloved’s heart

To many people, a fridge is just a fridge. Some claim a desperate desire for cold martinis. Others yearn for chilly cheese. Mine, however, is a tale that goes far beyond the mundane realities of temperature-controlled foods, back to a time when people communicated by fax and Twitter was just a gleam in e-mail’s eye. It is a love story, a story of grace, a story of bitter loss and, we hope, a story of redemption.

For years, my beloved mate, Michael, had whispered to me the Legend of the Three Boys: not Manny, Moe and Jack, but Ralph, Tom and Kev. Depending on Michael’s mood, his imagination, and his level of inebriation, he might claim that these three boys grew up in the wilds of the Australian outback, on the icy cliffs of Antarctica, in the jungles of Brazil, on the savannahs of Africa. They were invariably orphans, made so by cruel parents who abandoned their babies on a doorstep, loving parents who died an untimely death during an unexpected encounter with a Black Mamba, or indifferent parents, who donated the boys to a church in lieu of a cash tithe.

Regardless.

The three boys endured an upbringing of incredible discipline with the monks high in the Himalayas. They were made to meditate for hours in the lotus position, spines ramrod-straight, necks aching and legs cramping. The Navy SEALs forced them to run for miles after rolling in wet sand, boots and clothes heavy with beach-mud. As they built the pyramids, they were whipped mercilessly for tarrying even a moment in transporting seven-ton blocks of stone from the quarry to the construction site.

And still.

They never faltered for a moment in their studies—their Nobel-prize-winning foster father wouldn’t have it. And so they stayed awake late into the night, eyes bleary and bones screaming for rest, reading literature and physics tomes and economics books. They became experts in history, geography, anthropology, and herbology. They could recite Donne, and Dante, and Darwin.

Yet.

It was their apprenticeship to a brewer that changed their lives forever. And bringing to the equation, as they did, an unflappable determination, an unwavering optimism, an indomitable sense of destiny, it was inevitable that they would take to beer like a stripper to a sugardaddy, like Bill Gates to binary, like a politician to hot air. The Pale Ale they brewed was a nectar of the gods. A whiff of their Wheat Beer would provoke rapture; a sip of it could cure leprosy. And thus Three Boys Brewery was born.

Although.

Nobody could find it. It lived in legends, known only to a select few, rumored of in brothels and speakeasies, handed down patrilinearly. To our generation, it was considered an urban legend, a bedtime story told to small boys to help them dream happy dreams.

And there we enter the story: Michael, filled with longing for the unattainable liquid that flowed with the power and the beauty of the Fountain of Youth; I, with deepest desire to make the grandest gesture possible for my beloved.

I climbed every mountain. I forded every stream. I followed every rainbow. And ultimately, where someone with less ambitious desires might find a pot of gold, I found my own Shangri-La: The Three Boys Brewery.

I purchased a case of finest Pilsner. I wrapped it up and tied it with a bow. And on the holiest day of the year (our anniversary), I presented it to him.

When he opened the box, there was a long moment of silence. He blinked at the shiny bottles uncomprehendingly, until finally a light began to dawn, and he dared to believe it could be true.

Tears welled up in his eyes. “This is a moment I shall never forget,” he vowed. “This is what I love about you. You really listen to me. You really care. You gave me THREE BOYS BEER!”

And here, dear friends, here is where our story should have ended, and wouldn’t it have been a happy one if it had? The sad reality, though, is that stories such as ours rarely terminate so tidily; this one is no different.

With the tenderness of a new father Michael gingerly carried the case of beer to the main refrigerator. With the gentle touch of a geisha he began to put the precious bottles in the door.

But emotion overcame him.

Shaking with ecstasy and twitching with nervousness, his hands slipped on the glass neck of the bottle. In agonizing slow motion, it began to fall, a fall that lasted whole minutes.

Glaciers melted.

Expectant mothers went into labor and birthed babies.

We stood there, frozen, our worst nightmares realized of needing to move desperately yet being unable to do so, as the bottle tumbled inevitably towards the tile floor.

It smashed, of course, irretrievable. Michael let out a wail of agony more piercing than Hillary Clinton at an Iowa caucus.

Since that day, he sits in the kitchen, arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth and gently singing to himself. While I, I scour the mountains and the streams and the rainbows, and reflect on our tragedy, and think to myself what I should have anticipated from the beginning:

If only we had a Google fridge, none of this would have happened.

If you allow us to win the Google fridge, you will not be blithely tossing a stranger a bit of schwag. You will be rekindling in someone the will to live. This is a grave responsibility you have been given, and I urge you not to make light of it.

Please do not turn your backs on us. We need you, now more than ever. It is only through your beneficence that we will be able to experience the glory that is Three Boys Beer.

We extend our gratitude in anticipation; we await word, barely daring to hope against hope, of our success in this matter; we go now, and leave you to your deliberations.

May the spirits of Ralph, Tom and Kev guide you in your task.