Liquid Sexy

Next Wednesday, the international holiday of problem drinkers will once again descend upon the world. I don't really want to get into the uncomfortable racial stereotyping of an Irish celebration necessarily involving large amounts of liquor, but I will say this: Whiskey-making cultures have a right to drink in vast quantities. While I appreciate cold martinis, sensual liqueurs and woefully misunderstood glasses of tequila, my liver and I know that whiskey will forever be king of all potables. Complex but not pretentious, heavy but not filling, tough but refined, whiskey is a drinker's drink. And sure, I'll admit that if I had my choice of whiskeys, I wouldn't go for Irish varieties first. For the record, it's third in line behind scotch and bourbon. I still respect the Irish stuff and I plan on elevating it to the status of a ritual libation come St. Patrick's Day.

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haunts those who use Mr & Mrs TIndividual tastes being what they are, there's at least one person in the world who is happy to drink even the most ridiculously specialized item at the liquor store. Every super-sweet liqueur, weird flavored vodka and mysterious packaged mixer has a fan, but dedicated drinkers are still allowed to be snobs about the stuff they wouldn't let within a hundred feet of their own bars. So, if any of the following things are divine nectar according to your unique palate, I sincerely apologize.

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My grandmother used to tell me, "Michael, getting old is a bitch." She never really elaborated on exactly why, but I imagine it has something to do with aches, medication, diet restrictions and lost beauty. It didn't occur to me until recently that one of the worst parts of growing older is that there aren't as many new experiences out there. Sure, there are more unique experiences available for any one life to cover them all so it's not like we have to actually worry about running out of stuff to do, but then again not everything is appealing to everybody. I doubt I'll ever skydive or run a marathon, but there may come a day when a drink a glass of rice schnapps fermented in a bottle with the penis of a rhinoceros. I love bourbon now at my tender, inexperienced age, but come some curious night in my personal autumn I might just thirst after something different.

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In the middle ages in Europe when local economies were driven as much by barter as by hard currency, food found its way into the wages of everyday laborers as much, if not more often, than precious metals. Some fiefdoms ended up having to deal with drunk workers because many of them were paid in high-quantity spirits like beer. After all, alcohol kept for a long time and could be parceled out in discreet packages like bottles, bags and jugs. For your average feudal worker, an ale today had more value than a coin to be spent tomorrow. And why not get a little sloshed when there's wood to be cut and fields to be plowed? An alcohol buzz is distracting, pleasantly or otherwise. Though we today aren't permitted to drink on the job, there are plenty of us who would gladly take the opportunity to do so.

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We're all unique little snowflakes. Bear with me here. When in comes to the way our bodies handle mind-altering chemicals, there's a lot to consider before we can really judge just how we'll react or who we'll become when the chemicals get to altering. There are real, scientifically observed, physiological reasons why one guy is a sloppy drunk, one guy is an angry drunk and another guy is a fun drunk. Alcohol, unlike most drugs, gets into the body in a wide variety of states with little to no concern for the individual attributes of that body. Here's a little bit of a primer on why we are who we are when we drink and how to judge (roughly) what kind of drunk we want to be.

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the first sip is great
the first glass is delicious
the last is regret

Liquid culture fascinates me. You can tell a lot about a person by how they drink, and I really mean that. Not just what they drink, but when, where, why and by which means. For example, you'll never meet someone who both only likes super-sweet drinks and is also a respectable adult.

All kidding aside, human beings have a real connection to ethanol. It has long been a source of everything from religious inspiration to rights of passage. Though roughly a billion or so members of our species forbid the stuff, the other five usually find a way to have a very complicated relationship with alcohol. Unlike most other recreational drugs, we drink for a wider variety of reasons than the high, or addiction, or pain relief. Drinking, like the great human experiences of love and wanderlust, is strange and irrational. Mine is a complex question with as many answers as there are barstools in the world. Why do we drink?

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Ask any of my friends or close relatives and they'll tell you that I'm one vodka-soaked olive short of a total lush. Or alternately, ask any of the sworn enemies I've collected from a solid year of making fun of people on the Internet and they'll tell you I'm an inveterate drunk. Though there's likely more than a kernel of truth to these accusations, I'm a writer, it's part and parcel to the profession and has been since Homer. All the same, us varsity-level drinkers get to be smug around the holiday season as the more responsible folks start indulging for the usual reasons people drink during yuletide festivities. I've never been one to join in on the absurd sloshing about of Christmas and New Years, but there are a few drinks I enjoy exclusively in the month of December. These are my cold weather drinks.

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There are a few hallmarks of culinary snobbery that are near universal. For instance, the baffling number of forks at a full table setting. While it actually is pretty absurd to dedicate an entire fork to, say, shrimp, other dining particulars aren't so baseless. One I'm particularly interested in defending is the careful pairing of drinks to certain kinds of food. By no means do I believe that these are hard and fast rules, but they are good suggestions that, at best, are intended to make the dining experience more pleasant.

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There's a psychosomatic effect by which the body rejects substances or experiences that at one time resulted in an extremely negative experience. In layman's terms, it's the mechanism by which we learn to never again drink the substance that resulted in our very first hangover. I've heard several generations of drinkers tell similar stories about the ill effects of Southern Comfort, a liqueur sweet enough to entice novice drinkers into familiar territory, but also brutal enough to push many of them away from the hard stuff for a long time. While I personally never much enjoyed SoCo, I had a much crueler first hangover experience that, several years later, I am still coming to reconcile.

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