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Swallow, Swig: A Pickled Romance
Coming To Working at an independent bookstore, I met a man who made me sick. Having been bulimic for years, I have all but utterly desensitized my gag reflex. Yet this man set it off like two fingers once did my virgin throat. To be fair, his being around me similarly made him physically ill. I know this is true since a mutual acquaintance has shared with me that within days of our meeting, he told her I induced in him a nausea that preluded intense stomach discomfort. Then and there, he knew he must ask me out, that we must sit across from one another in some restaurant or other so that there was no place else to direct our attention except to the toxic other. He soon responded as any well-adjusted man would to a woman who fills him with gut-roiling acid and asked if I wanted to have brunch. I refused then and subsequently, because I was scared shitless. Still, he frequently visited during my shift at the shop. I experienced fight-or-flight syndrome as he lingered by the cash register plying me with engaging conversation in a tone so low, I often tuned out what he was saying to consider who he thought would care to eavesdrop on two socially-impaired geeks. While we laughed about our mutual hatred for the Grateful Dead, professed bug-eyed zeal for Truman Capote and Ennio Morricone, tourists in fabric paint fashion interrupted so that I might advise them on finding watery coffee, where to order breaded mozzarella cheesesticks, the best vendor of babydoll tees, and pretty much everything excluding books. Since I refused to make eye contact with him, I heard him whispering at the side of my head, convinced that to meet his gaze would ensure my being seized by the urge to drink floor stripper. On the rare occasions I looked up into his face, I felt a chemistry so visceral I wanted not only to quit the job but heterosexuality altogether, or failing that, deeply gouge my wrists with a spork. I soon responded as any well-adjusted woman would to a man who makes her ill and gave in to one of his invitations. He had charmed me, at least a little bit. He had lured me with his vast knowledge about the Civil War and Pre Raphaelite art, his prodigious library and asparagus with raspberry yogurt sauce, his rural childhood and defiance of it. My Rhett Butler-with-a-big-brain. I envisioned an intellectual pas de deux between peers, a sexual confederacy into dawn's early light. Holding hands down Monument Avenue! Mighty mint juleps! We raised glasses in successive toasts and sighed with relief that, for the most part, each of us remained friends with exes. Past breakups were steps in a delectable recipe for success of this new, exciting union. I gave in to my Southern man who was occasionally gentle. Mint Juleps are best made directly in the glass as opposed to in a shaker, and cracked ice is better than cubes. Pour bourbon directly from the decanter or bottle through the ice. If you're a stickler for tidiness, rub the rim of the bottle with a piece of wax paper. You'll be amazed at how this trick can stop drips when you pour. The next three months were genuine bliss. Even his daunting professional and auto woes seemed surmountable in the face of our companionship. I might have known it couldn't last, except I know it can, and one day, it will. But January began miserably. On New Year's Day, I stood in his kitchen while he watched a film upstairs. I was crying, in the midst of a severe anxiety attack. I didn't want him to know, so I stood in his frigid kitchen dialing everyone I knew back in Norfolk. It felt as if something terrible had let itself quietly into the world, its world, now, though I couldn't have rationally explained the sense of foreboding, of coming sorrow - not to him. I rocked on my heels, reciting the Lord’s Prayer, a Vajyaranic mantra, any goddamned thing that might work. The next several days would be the most violent the city had seen in years. Each morning, the newspaper glared with news of inexplicable and mostly unrelated murders that seemed to be going off like silent grenades across the landscape. As tragedy after another unfolded within Richmond, I looked back on that morning in his kitchen, grateful for most of us being spared, bewildered that so many were not. Both in the community and in our personal life, deterioration and alienation seemed the two lane course. I didn't call him when I wanted to tell him I'd won a prestigious writing contest. When I felt like chortling with laughter, I smiled demurely. When I didn't feel good, I didn't call. When I wanted to reach for his hand, I took calculated breaths. When I wanted to write for hours or at least a couple, I looked at the clutter amassed in front of his computers and the mess obscuring his desks and instead of walking home to my room and books, I poured more wine. When I got restless and irritable because I hadn't written in two days, I got drunk. I emptied myself of my greatest passion in six ounce pours. Sometimes it's fun to experiment, but usually measuring all ingredients as the recipe prescribes is the sure step to a perfect drink. A few common measures: Jigger 1 ounce; Pony 2 ounces; Dash 1/6 ounce; Teaspoon 1/8 ounce The phrase, "come to" is commonly used to refer to emergence from alcoholic stupor. Literally, it means, "to recover consciousness" as in, "The fainting victim came to." There is an additional dual definition, a more interesting connotation derived from nautical terminology, "to bring the bow into the wind," or "to anchor." I've always noted that if one "comes to," she must simultaneously come from. Where has she been? I like the idea of being on a journey, of having traveled and continuing. It fits my generally romantic view of being a drinker. She's a drinker, I say, by way of recommendation. Though bringing the bow into the wind might suggest that the voyage has been righted from previous inefficiency, the phrase hints that going off course temporarily was imperative to the success of the current trip; that erring from the designated course allowed the sailor to note direction of the wind, to determine a course, or simply to allow the weather to shift favorably. One morning in late January, I came to - twice. I had recently been assigned one important freelance assignment I'd worked hard for and was beginning another I'd researched and pitched myself. That morning and afternoon, I had two interviews with community leaders lined up at distant points across the city, both of which I'd have to walk to. They would be followed by a night of waiting tables before returning home late. I hoped he would come to my place to share wine and conversation at the close of one long day and before another of school and more waitressing. Since he had no plans, it was easily feasible. That morning, I showered and dressed quietly as he dozed off and on. I waited for him to offer to visit me, or to invite me to his place. He lay limply in bed. Some ingredients need a firm hand. If your cocktail calls for cream, shake it up! Also shake well drinks containing fruit juices. If your ingredients are clear liquids, however, stirring is key. Don't shake your masterpiece, particularly if any of those clear liquids happen to be soda water, tonic, or ginger ale. Stirring too enthusiastically can zap the fizz. It was eleven in the morning. I finally asked, "Are you coming over tonight?" "I've gotta headache," he answered, and gave a little cough. In a tall glass, muddle several mint leaves in simple syrup. Place several sprigs of mint around the glass and pour in the ice so that the mint sprigs extend beyond the lip of the glass. Pour bourbon through the ice. Top with a bit more simple syrup but don't stir. As I stood in the hallway in my coat and hat, I was pissed off and hurt, but more than either, I was weary. In that minute, I came to and saw the past three weeks clearly. I had been trying to steer clear the very things deep down I wanted to embrace. When I wished to stride headlong into experience and the risk that love demands and sometimes rewards, instead, I had cultivated distance to match his own. When I'd wanted to cry and say, I can't explain it rationally but I feel like hell, I'd stifled sobs and applied lipstick. For twenty one days, I had answered his aloofness with detachment. That morning, I stood there and wondered, Why? When what I wanted was to hear the neural crackle, to be one half the heated transfer of ideas between peers? Why was I accepting and then emulating the passivity and ambivalence of this apparition in the other room? With the purplest prose, julep purists will argue that letting the cocktail sit for a few moments before serving heightens the flavors, but when it's 95 degrees, who wants to wait that long? Love, the kind that looks me in the face, and even if both of us are clueless, or scared, blinks right back, the only kind of love worth having, simply wasn't this hard. I pulled the door behind me and went to my interviews. Crackle, heat. As I left him lying behind upstairs in bed with his headache, I turned into the late January wind and pulled my hat around my ears remembering an anecdote about Mint Juleps my Godfather used to tell: When the day is ripe for evening's dew, pluck the mint gently from its emerald bed. Only the finest sprigs will do. Prepare simple syrup from distilled water and pure cane sugar. Chill it for several hours, and measure out three fingers of fine Kentucky whiskey. Pour the whiskey into a handsome lead crystal cup. Throw out the other ingredients and drink the whiskey. Three Sheets to the Wind That first invasive light gels severely before unwilling, half-opened eyes. The ache is a sieve, and by now, it expertly deters lucidity, which most mornings is nothing I'm afraid of letting go. In my Sophomore year of college I awakened with a boy I could not remember meeting, whose name I might not have known until rolling over to peer at his face -- this stranger -- plumbing every recess of memory I could coax beyond the throb at the back of my head; fragments of experience that resisted seduction. In the shower, screwing up my eyes tight, I snatched at slim images, slivers, really, and struggled to pull them forth like a pawl feebly clambering a ratchet wheel. All I could deliver from the night's inky gestation was a thick Scottish accent. Had that been him? I wondered, as I stood dripping from the shower; swaying, queasy, and studying the lanky youth snore lightly. How did I meet a Scot? I marveled, savoring my alarm. And was he still drunk too? You can tell a lot about a nation from their perception of what we commonly refer to as a "hangover." Portugal juts ostentatiously into the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, the Portuguese cultural identity with the sea. Yet they are as inextricably associated with Port, a fortified wine from the remote vineyards in the country's Douro Valley, as they are with the sea. Port takes its name from the city of Oporto that sits on the 560-mile Rio Douro or "River of Gold." call a hangover "ressaca." The word has nautical connotations, meaning "choppy sea," or more literally, "undertow." Evocative as the image may be, the term "ressaca" alludes to the physical unease that accompanies a hangover. In coining terms for "hangover," other cultures also refer to its physical after effects. The Danes call a hangover "tommermond," which literally means "timber men." Surely, youve awakened some bleak morning with a pounding headache, keenly aware of the gleam and heft of each hammer swinging within your skull. The French, known for their many luscious wine regions, have countless terms for a hangover. The most commonly used is "la gueule de bois," which translates into "wooden mouth." Although the French are known for their white wines, the tannins in red wine are most likely to lead to a morning-after of dry mouthed chagrin. A few nations associate hangovers with animals. While their relationship isn't always clear, a little imagination unveils the wag behind the misery. The Slovaks call a hangover "opica," which literally means, "monkey," and to suffer a hangover is to "have a monkey," or "mat opicu." Germans complain about "der Kater," or "the tomcat." This is likely short for "der Katzenjammer" which means "the wailing of the tomcats." Dragging lipstick across my ashen lips downturned in the disgrace of another morning after, I can tell you: kittens howl too. Italians aren't known to be fussy. Not surprisingly, the most common way to share your pain is to admit that you are suffering "postumi di una sbornia," which simply means, "consequences of drunkenness." There is no direct translation of the word "hangover" in Italian language. Later, I would find out my companion's accent had been fake. I could not remember if I'd been as duplicitous as to feign a more interesting persona than the one thrumming dully behind my forehead, but I suspected that I probably had, so I shrugged off his speciousness and made us breakfast. With last night's booze absorbing in eggs over easy and buttery toast, we stepped gingerly together out my university apartment door agreeing that post-breakfast, we felt much better. The Northern Irish rely on hearty "Ulster Fries" to treat their suffering after a night of indulgence. Named for the region from which it emerged, this dish is sometimes referred to as "a heart attack on a plate." Made up of fried eggs, bacon, beef or pork sausage, tomato, mushrooms, and both potato and soda breads, it comes loaded with plenty of carbohydrates, which drunks often crave after of night of boozing because it boosts their blood sugar levels. Looking down at my plate in any late night greasy spoon or bleary morning Cafe, I've often wondered what sends us flying from one remedy to another seeking to heighten our experience. Lifting another forkful of eggs through one of these contemplative mornings, I have often recalled the night before: several pitchers of beer with friends at some dive college bar in Norfolk, relaxation, emancipation, then the wish to further elevate the hilarity or the release of the evening. And the prodding by friends on whom I practiced my own encouragement that we go to one more bar, order one more round. Is it a continuation of the same push for more that sends us to various hangover cures; hungering for stasis and balance after we so eagerly sought a way out of ourselves; a careening flight to extremes as quickly as possible, in what to sober onlookers looks like derangement? Nautical terms seem to turn up throughout alcohol lore and jargon. The phrase three sheets to the wind traces its first usage to 1821. Sheet refers to a rope on a sailboat. To have a sheet loose in the wind is bad seamanship, but it won’t render the vessel unmanageable. One sheet to the wind is a rarely-used phrase meaning half-drunk. But to have three ropes loose means the boat is out of control. No matter how many or how skilled the sailors, for all the good they can do, there's no one onboard. I am not proud of my high speed antics that night behind the university on the gravel back roads of Norfolk Southern Railroad. At the time, only the single yellow light blinking silently off and then on at the dispatcher's tiny office, witnessed our idiocy. But now, squinting beneath my Geo Prizm, the stranger and I tried to cobble together the events of a night neither of us could have recounted under intense hypnosis or aided by lips loosed with sodium pentothal. In the fading afternoon sun, we tried to trace the intoxicated racecourse of the night before, each of us uncertain how much we should admit to the other we could not remember. Oh, that's right, I said with false certainty fingering a receipt from a bar I'd never heard of. I chewed on my lip, and noticed a long shallow cut on the back of my hand. Examining the tar encrusted flinty gravel stuck to the fenders, he said in his real voice, Umm, yeah, that probably came from... and stopped, no doubt searching his soggy memory for some quivering image. Bent in unison beneath the bumper we stared at knotted weeds wedged between its sections as if they were flora retrieved from terra Venus. What the fuck? Although at that late hour, the roads beside the Elizabeth River had been empty of railroad traffic and everything else except the occasional rumbling of engines, the boom of coal sliding down conveyer belts into railway cars, and the infrequent sonorous moan of Naval ships passing into Air Station waters, our breakneck drive -- our sanity -- had been deranged. Disgraced now in the hardened face of morning, we knew it. Neither of us said a word, but returned to the cavernous deep of my cheap student housing. It was dank and perpetually dark, but it always had beer in the clanking fridge and a bottle of Jagermeister in an otherwise empty freezer. From that moment forward, it also usually had Phillip, and we would date exclusively for three years. Works Cited Partridge, Eric. Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1977. Waterfield, Cesca Janece. The Hangover: What it is and How to Avoid It. 8 July 2002. 17 Jan 2006 Waterfield, Cesca Janece. There's an Amazing Bartender in Your Home: Easy Tips for Home Mixology." 11 August 2002. 17 Jan 2006 http://www.bellaonline.com> Waterfield, Cesca Janece. Summertime and the Living is Easy. 17 Nov. 2002 17 Jan 2006 http://www.bellaonline.com>
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