Like most epiphanies that occur in the life of SBG, this one started with drinks. It was December and I was out having “Thank God the Semester Is Over” drinks with my fiction workshop classmates. We sat around the table at a watering hole near campus and I listened as the older, MFA program vets spilled their thoughts on everything to the validity of the degree to writing styles to which contemporary authors were douchebags and bitches. Somehow the conversation got around to alcohol and I did a quick mental sweep of the drinks on the table. I counted one beer, one glass of wine, one gin and tonic, one vodka with light cranberry, and then there was my drink: a tequila sunrise. Something didn’t belong at this table.
Then there was the instance after Christmas, when I met up for drinks with an associate from Cincinatti. A girl who nearly personifies bourgeois (in a fabulous way, though), who pulled up to the bar and ordered a Yuengling. My drink of choice? Some pink concoction that consisted of X-Rated Fusion and some other frothy business. With a flip of her long hair, my drinking partner wrinkled up her nose and said “You’re ordering a girly drink?”
And there it was again. The realization that my liquor palate needs to grow up. Or that I would’ve been better off ordering a glass of wine. (My wine game is more than up to par.)
See here’s the thing about the “girly” drink: they were cute when I was 21 and idolized all things Sex and the City, and needed something that would make me feel sophisticated and womanly while still tasting like juice. In fact, for the longest, I’d been under the impression that all of those other beverages: whiskeys, scotches, and bourbons, were “man drinks.” What’s cute about a girl walking up to the bar for a Maker’s Mark and Ginger Ale?
Then I saw this article about Christina Hendricks (whose “Joan” character on AMC’s Mad Men is what I aspire to be as an office manager, well sans the banging the boss part), discussing her love of a good scotch. Clearly, I had this “man drink” thing all wrong. Like a woman who can intelligently discuss sports, or change a tire, or most other tasks associated with men, a woman who can handle a good bourbon could indeed, be sexy as hell.
So now I’m opening up my palate to new possibilities (possibilities that don’t include vodka or gin as I’m convinced the former is Siberian bear urine and the later feels like razor blades going down my esophagus). I need a few smooth (emphasis on SMOOTH) go-to drinks that won’t make me feel like a spring break co-ed when in the presence of adults. One that matches intriguing conversations about Hemingway and Joan Didion. One that matches my life as a semi-intellectual late 20something.
Any suggestions?
