Beer! Is there any experience men would rather have than drinking
the sudsy stuff until they can’t see straight? I say “men”, because women,
the superior race in all but musculature, tend not to be quite as ready
to celebrate beer 24/365. German men have beer festivals and become
massively blotto in 20 minutes flat. Upmarket men savour their Continental
beers, pretending that getting drunk off their faces isn’t the central point of
what they’re doing.
Throughout my career as a world-class drunk, I hated beer. Couldn’t
stand the taste of the stuff. When forced to drink it, i.e. most nights, I would
take it as cold as possible. The only way to truly kill the taste, however, was
to have another one, which led to all manner of horrors. One day, I stopped
drinking beer altogether, not long after my 21st birthday, and graduated to
spirits, an altogether more sensible approach to the filthy art of drunkenness.
There was only one exception to my subsequent beerlessness, a working
trip to Sydney, Australia. Each night, at 5:01pm, all the men in the office
started drinking Fosters, and we drank and drank and drank and drank and
drank and drank and drank until we all fell down.
And then, one morning in 1986, in New Brunswick, after knocking back
three bottles of Cointreau and subsequently suffering the Saddam Hussein
of all four-day hangovers, I abandoned alcohol completely before it killed
me. Haven’t touched a drop since. Later, I discovered that one doesn’t just
stop drinking. I did, but most people who give up say they find it a huge
struggle and need help. I must have just been lucky.
Sometimes, I miss the first couple of drinks, the ones before the static
kicked in and I went from wallflower to life and soul. Those first two would
loosen me up and make my hellish life seem slightly more tolerable. After
that, all bets were off.
I never miss being drunk off my head, and most definitely don’t miss
beer. For one thing, you don’t buy beer; you rent it. For another, it makes you
fat. What savings I have accumulated amount largely to drinks not drunk,
especially now that a bottle of beer can set you back $10 in the fancier
establishments. Not many of my friends drink anything these days, come to
think of it. As to girlfriends, have you ever tried kissing a drinker if you’re
not one? Urgh.
Back in the day, I would wake up the next morning in gutters, on building
sites and, most famously, stark naked in a total stranger’s back garden. I had
no idea how I’d gotten there. This was in Florida, where I was staying with
friends. I didn’t know their address. When the homeowner whose garden
I had crashed in chased me away, I was completely lost and completely
naked. I wandered around until a friendly fellow who identified with my
predicament lent me some clothes and his phone.
Burr? Brrr. |
