FRIENDOS, I was not always the suave middle-aged man you know and love (er, tolerate?). I was, for a surprisingly long time, an idiot. For example, when I began my legitimate, legal drinking career (in contrast to my illegal minor-league drinking career) I had very little of what you might call taste. Was lite beer involved? So, so much.
Also: Jack and Cokes.
Look, life is a learning exercise. I will not pretend that I came out of the womb understanding music theory and appreciating good whiskey; you have to go through some wrong turns before you figure things out. What’s funny is that when I was young I learned to drink my whiskey straight because it was such a furtive experience — taking the time to mix a cocktail meant more exposure, more chances to get caught. When I found myself of legal age, however, I wasn’t quite ready to start ordering two fingers of rye, mainly because I’d never learned to pace myself. If you handed me two fingers of rye, ten seconds later I had an empty glass and I was ordering another.
So mixing my liquor was a good strategy, and I started drinking Jack and Cokes because they were whiskey-adjacent and sweet, went down easy, but also diluted everything so I didn’t end up on the floor of whatever divey bar I was in.
Usually.
Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day
The scene: I’m probably 25 years old. At the time I worked in publishing, and we had Summer Hours, which were kind of amazing. Every year during the summer you could opt to work an extra hour or two Monday through Thursday and then leave work at 2PM on Friday. It was awesome, and naturally everyone took the opportunity to head to the local dive bar and start their weekend at exactly 2:05PM. So I’m in a shithole bar that was probably called Mickey’s or Danny’s or something like that, drinking my Jack and Coke and bullshitting with my coworkers.
At some point, a few folks ordered a round of drinks but then mysteriously left the bar, so a trio of Jack and Cokes were left on the bar next to us, glistening and paid for. And a co-worker jokingly suggested I drink them quickly before the universe noticed its mistake and took them back. And I thought, gosh it would be hilarious if I did just that so I reached over and shotgunned all three in the space of about a minute.
It was kind of hilarious. For about thirty seconds.
I now suspect I know what it’s like to fall into a coma. As I crawled to the bathroom on what is probably the filthiest floor imaginable, the world receded from me and I swear I saw a shining light and possibly some form of Buddy Jesus grinning down at me, gesturing that my time had come. And I think it was Buddy Jesus holding my hair out of my eyes as I vomited several organs into the scabby toilet in that dive bar.
I emerged bug-eyed, the knees of my trousers damp. I collected my things without a word and walked out of there. My takeaway centered on the coke part of the Jack and Coke, and I swore to only take my liquor neat from that moment on.
Buddy Jesus rode with the bus with me all the way home. That guy is creepy AF.