The Forgotten Code
One of the
great difficulties of being a proper drunkard in
this day and age is knowing what to drink and when.
There was a time, or so my elders tell me, when
such choices were strictly regulated and common
knowledge to anyone who’d spent more than
a week ensconced in the Society of Drinkers.
For example, it was once
accepted by both the wino in the gutter and the
millionaire in the country club that a man could
not drink a gin and tonic during winter time. The
combination was strictly a summer drink and it was
at the peril of your perceived masculinity that
you would pop into your local and ask for one in
December. Regardless of how hot it was.
The bar itself could be engulfed in flames and no
man trapped inside would dare pair the words together.
It was also
universally accepted that you either had to speak
with a foreign accent or have served overseas, preferably
in one of the larger, more prestigious wars, to
indulge in a beer you couldn’t look through and see
the bartender smiling at you from across the bar.
If you couldn’t see him smiling, he was undoubtedly
glaring because you were drinking a dark beer without
benefit of accent or scar tissue. If you wanted
to drink a Guinness without being shunned by your
peers, you had to do it at home, hidden from even
your family, haunted by the secret shame of being
a traitor to your country and its magnificent breweries.
And you
certainly couldn’t
order a drink with an umbrella or any garnish gaudier
than a lime unless you were standing within 50 feet
of an ocean or tiki statue. And even then you felt
slightly less than a man. And if you ordered a shot,
it consisted of exactly one hard alcohol. One.
If your shot came with more than one ingredient,
it was your duty to upbraid the bartender for serving
you what was obviously an iceless cocktail in a
child’s glass.
Sadly, the Rules were at
some point chucked aside in favor of a freewheeling
brand of alcoholic anarchy that leaves many imbibers
woefully confused. First the microbrew revolution
made a shambles of the beer regs. Once every beer
in America tasted and looked exactly the
same and you couldn’t go wrong no matter what
you ordered. Now, however, there are light beers,
ice beers, fruit ales, Zima and other assaults on
our collective masculinity.
Part of
the blame also lays squarely upon the shoulders
of certain types of bars. You know the ones I’m
talking about: those neon Barbie houses boasting
menus of over 100 different types of martinis when
in fact they have exactly two (vodka and gin) and 98
impostors. Thanks to these audacious con men, there
are now roughly 20 million deluded yuppies who believe
they are about to enjoy a martini when they order
something rainbow-hued, sickeningly sweet and with
an obscene half a banana sticking out of it.
Liquor companies must also share the blame. While
humanity once only required exactly five types of
spirits (gin, vodka, whiskey, rum and tequila) to
get loaded, we are now faced with a ever growing
tidal wave of fruit-flavored, double-infused, triple-filtered,
cross-blended, small-batch, boutique and limited-edition
variations to choose from.
It’s no wonder organizations like MADD are
able to make off with our rights with impunity — we
drunks are too busy trying to figure out what to
get hammered on to notice.
Frank Kelly Rich
