For days we drank wine that we could only open by pushing the corks down into the necks of the bottles. It became a funny but somewhat self-consciously bohemian ritual. A corkscrew was not, after all, beyond our means. We simply liked the sense of inevitability that came with obliterating any possibility of recorking the bottle. Each demanded to be consumed in its entirety, and we willingly succumbed to their exhortations to excess.