Liquor is Quicker

"Candy is Dandy but liquor is quicker."
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
"But sex don't rot your teeth."
Anon.

Before launching into this one, in case you didn't read yesterday's Whining About Wine, the same PSA applies herein. Okay? Okay.

After thinking about my experience with wines, it occurred to me that I might as well continue and talk about my experience with distilled beverages. (In case you are unsure of the distinction, all liquors start with a fermentation process. A further process then distills the fermented liquid into a more concentrated - read HIGHER alcohol content - liquor. Science lesson over.) By definition, this also excludes beers and ales. But come on, that can be another day's discussion. (Say! What a splendid idea.) And lest you be concerned that what follows will be a recounting of various drunk, stupid behaviors, that's not the aim. Drunk, stupid behaviors will be in context, much like blood in a Quentin Tarantino movie. There's a lot of it but it's there to make a point. Honest. Oh, and after doing DUI hearings for 20 years and looking back at my own experiences, I have often stated that alcohol really makes you stupid. That's not a value judgment but an empirical observation.

Sad to say that my first real experience with hard liquor occurred at a (Wait for it!) Bat Mitzvah party. (I never really considered that Bat Mitzvah parties contributed to my delinquency but it appears that they have There is a cautionary tale here but for the life of me, I cannot begin to say what the moral is.) How it was that the waiter with the liquor cart was serving the teenagers' table is beyond me but we did live in a more innocent time back in the 60s. Anyway, at the tender age of 15, I ordered a rye and ginger. A cousin of the Bat Mitzvah girl sitting across from me who was at least a couple of years older than me said, "You should try bourbon. It's much better than rye." Now, having already become an aficionado of James Bond novels, I knew that Bond, in the early books, often drank bourbon. So after finishing my R and G my next order was bourbon and soda, just like 007. This individual whose name has been lost to me, if I ever knew it, had just set the pattern for my whiskey consumption for the next 41 years.

My senior year in high school, a group of us decided that we needed to have a drinking party. Why we decided this is also lost to the dim past. Of course, we had the obligatory 18 year old who could buy for us. I even remember where the store was. It was a small liquor store under the 241st Street terminal of the number 2 subway in the Bronx. Anyway, my two or three dollars bought a pint of something called Heaven Hill bourbon. Yeah. Probably named after where they bury you after drinking too much of it. I don't remember much of that night other than deep in the throes of drunken stupidity I called a girl with whom I had recently broken up. I have NO idea what I said to her but I remember making the call, aided and abetted by my equally drunk and stupid pals.

For whatever reason, my freshman year at Syracuse University was mostly wine and beer. I do remember a brief flirtation with Courvoisier VSOP and Napoleon brandy because I was deep in an OC/PR thing about the Napoleonic wars and, besides, it was sooooo sophisticated. It wasn't until I moved into my fraternity my sophomore year that the real college drinking began. In many ways, the memories are kind of like a patchwork quilt: small pieces of stuff, incomplete in many cases, sewn together into one grand tapestry. (Can you mix any MORE metaphors, Mark?) There were the Brandy Alexanders while playing bridge that resulted in some awesomely stupid bids, card play and arguments with my partner. There were more bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and assorted cheap bourbons (Chester Graves and Liquor Square brand to name two. And I suspect that Chester Graves are found on Heaven Hill) than I care to or can remember. There were bottles of pure grain alcohol (198 proof) brought from Atlanta by one of my frat brothers with which we made punch and played the Pass Out board game. There was the night we couldn't get our parking lot plowed so I thought it was a good idea to get plowed. That was a night of Courvoisier followed by shots of Peppermint Schnapps. You know you are toast when you stop tasting the alcohol in the schnapps and just taste the peppermint. (The next morning I woke up in my bed fully clothed, shoes included. Seems that my roommate found me passed out on the floor. He picked me up and his date held up the covers and he slid me under them.) There was the night of way too much bourbon when I was supposedly studying for an Economics 205 exam. I have a faint memory of sitting on the couch between two of my fraternity's Little Sisters, one of whom was in my economics class. The one in my class kept saying that I was going to flunk the exam because I was too drunk but the other said I would be fine because, drunk as I was, I was making sense about the textbook. (I got an A on the exam.) There was a brief flirtation with gin my last semester until she who I loved and ultimately married told me that she could not stand the smell of gin on my breath. Yes, I quickly understood the implications of her not wanting to be near me.

There was the semester where my roommate got screwed over by the girl he was dating and started drinking. Believing that no one should drink alone, I drank along with him. About the time he was pulling out of his nosedive, the same thing happened to me. He believed that no one should drink alone so he drank with me. That entire semester came back to us over a period of years in small bits and pieces, literally. One thin memory I do have is of the night we ran out of everything else to drink except for his bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Now, I loathe blended scotch. But I was sufficiently drunk to just not care about the taste and we polished off that bottle, too. (Gradewise, that semester was bad for him. He was taking Organic Chemistry and some other hard courses. I, on the other hand, was taking two Public Affairs, two Religion courses and Air Force ROTC. I think he wound up with a 1.6. I wound up with a 3.5.)

Much of the drinking behavior abated after I began steadily dating the woman who is now my wife. There were, however, several significant oopsies along the way. The Little Sisters of my fraternity (of whom she was one) would throw a 5 AM TGIF party once a semester. Because it would have been difficult for her to get out of bed at 5 AM without my knowing it, I was the frat brother in on the secret planning. At the one I most clearly remember (remember being a relative term) they made punch bowls full of Bloody Marys, Mai-Tais and Whiskey Sours. My frat big brother never made it to a class that day thanks to alcohol poisoning. I went to my AFROTC class (Friday being uniform day) and got into trouble with my teacher the major. When he asked if i was drunk at that hour (that hour being 10 AM) I told him that I was drunk by 7 AM. He then reported me to the colonel, a good ol' boy from North Carolina with thousands of flying hours in bombers. He really liked me because he knew I wanted to fly bombers, too. He asked me about what had happened so I told him the truth. He looked at me, winked and said, "Real fine. Keep up the good work."

An interesting thing occurred when I became a commissioned officer in the Air Force. I have often commented that I learned to drink in university and learned how to not drink in the Air Force. I looked around and saw the amount of alcohol consumption and the number of alcoholics and made a pledge to myself and my wife that I would not be one of them.

In the early 80s, thanks to the influence of some friends, I got into skiing and Mexican food. Where the two of them intersect is right inside a Margarita. (I am also a huge fan of Jimmy Buffett and if you can't figure that one out, email me and I'll explain the relationship.) The night I finished the bar exam, my friend John picked me up and he and my friend Rich took me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant with specific instructions to be sure I got drunk. Four or five large Margaritas later, my blood alcohol probably said DRUNK but I was so wired from taking the exam that I barely felt the effects. How sad is that? (No, I didn't drive, John drove me home. And I did pass the bar exam.)

The intervening years were mainly Jack Daniels whenever I felt the need to drink. On the rocks, by the way, no mixers. A couple of years ago, my friend Steve offered me some really expensive single-malt scotch. I demurred because I never liked scotch. He pushed me to try it anyway. Surprisingly, I found it to be pretty good. Two years ago, a bunch of the guys associated with our dance school went up to New Hampshire to play cards, smoke cigars, drink heavily and generally behave badly. Of course we stopped at the state liquor store just across the NH border to stock up. As was my habit, I bought Jack Daniels (Green label, too!!). While we were playing cards, Steve offered me some of the Irish whiskey he had bought. By that time I was half in the bag anyway, so I figured, why not. When it vaporized in my mouth and slid down my gullet with the gentlest of after-burn and kick, I knew this was a relationship that I had to pursue. A few weeks later, my wife went to Florida to be with her mother who was having surgery. She was there a few weeks and on one Saturday night, bored and lonely (always a good combination for alcohol consumption), I went to a liquor store and bought a pint of Jameson to take for a test drive (not literally, gang). Suffice it to say, I have abandoned the corn mashes and bourbons. Aside from my love for all things Irish (okay, almost everything, and if you are wondering about the not so much part, email me), Irish whiskey is wonderful. One of the things I like best besides the taste is the fact that it gets me buzzed long before it causes me to fall asleep (due to interaction with a medication I take). Irish whiskey. German wine. A combination with which I can live happily ever after.