Cocktail Chatter

From the Mailbag: ‘The Escondido Surprise’

by Ed Sikov

August 29, 2011

I never hear from readers – the folks Norma Desmond describes in Sunset Boulevard as “those wonderful people out there in the dark.” So I was glad to get a message from “Joey from Denver.” Here’s his note, quoted with his permission:

Dear Ed: I love your column, even though I think you’re a crud for cheating on Dan. How can you risk throwing away a good man for an asshole (literally!)? Anyway, I’m not writing to scold but rather to share a recipe. I call it ‘the Escondido Surprise.’ It’s basically a gimlet with emotional problems.

I’m an IT guy for a financial company in Denver, where I grew up. Fifteen or so years ago, my parents retired to Escondido, California. Escondido’s website describes the place as follows: “Settled in a valley in the coastal mountains of Southern California, Escondido – which means hidden in Spanish – lies 18 miles inland and 100 miles south of Los Angeles. Surrounded by avocado and citrus groves, Escondido is a vibrant community with just the right mix of small town friendliness and big-city buzz.’ I describe it as ‘hell on earth, with a stinking mix of deadly heat and Reagan-worshipping cretins,” but anyway….

I just moved my parents out of their trailer. Neither of them is in good health anymore, and my older sister, Julie, found them a “retirement apartment,” which is to say a one-stop-shopping residence that will see them through daily check-ins by nurses’ aides to hospice care. The Escondido Surprise is the concoction I mixed after shipping my parents along with 12 boxes of clothes, horrible tchotchkes (note: Yiddish for “worthless crap”) and diabetes supplies to Seattle in Julie’s SUV.  It sounds dire, but it’s actually a huge relief to know they’ll have emergency pull-cords in every room.

In the back of a cabinet was a bottle of Beefeater with enough left for one drink. I found a yellow lime on the ground on the side of the trailer, and as I picked it up, I heard Phyl, the newly lonely next-door neighbor, bark, “Take ‘em all, I don’t care!” I grabbed three more and squeezed the juice into a glass with the gin. The stone-like sugar at the bottom of an ancient box wouldn’t kill me, so I smashed it on the counter with my shoe (hygienically wrapped in an unused trash bag) and randomly poured some in the glass. I pried some brownish ice chips off bottom of the freezer and gave it all a couple rounds with my index finger. Surprise! It was delicious – the perfect cocktail with which to say good riddance to Escondido and hello to the next phase of my family’s life.

I don’t know if this is funny or pathetic, but you can use it in your column if you want.

– Your faithful reader, Joey

Well, Joey, New York supermarket limes are green, our icemaker produces clear ice, and our sugar isn’t clumped, but otherwise I duplicated your recipe, and it was terrific. Here’s to you and your folks, Joey. Having gone through this myself, I can tell you: it isn’t pathetic. It’s an act of love.

The Escondido Surprise
Beefeater gin
Fresh or bottled lime juice, to taste
Sugar to taste
Ice, any color
Pour gin over possibly funky ice, add lime juice and sugar, stir with your index finger and drink while pondering your own journey to the grave.

Share on Facebook

Cocktail Chatter

No Sun Up in the Sky: Dark and Stormy

by Ed Sikov

August 15, 2011

“Old Storrrr-my! Old Storrrr-my!” Craig was insufferable. But he was so perfectly Santana that I laughed despite myself. “Shut up!” I begged, but that only spurred him on.

All was not well. Last Sunday afternoon, Sammy blurted out something horrifically specific about my having shtupped Jack Fogg after the four of us – Jack, Sammy, Dan, and me – had spent a perfectly delightful French-sex-farce weekend together during which everyone but Dan knew about mon petit bout a derriere avec Jacques le Brouillard. Well, I suppose it wasn’t so delightful for Dan, who was humiliated. He packed up and left while I was still at the beach and drove home alone. (I respect his rage, and I’m totally at fault and all that, but couldn’t he at least have driven me back to the city?)

“I’m making the cocktails tonight,” Craig said after crowing the final syllable of the wretched “Stormy.” “It’s all the rage. Wanna know what it’s called?” This was obviously a set-up.

“What?” I spat.

“The Dark and Storrrr-my. Old Storrr-my!”

“Piss off,” I snarled and headed upstairs, inwardly marveling at his talent.

I’d actually had my first Dark and Stormy during the week at Bar Henry, a wonderful place on Houston Street in the Village. Jon, the hunky bartender (blond, cute, middle-weight wrestler’s body, frat-boy-turned-MBA-turned-chic-bar-investor, tragically straight), talked me into trying one. Made of dark rum and ginger beer, it wasn’t the sort of drink I usually order, but Jon swore by it, and since I was dazzled by the thick tuft of light blond hair poking out of his open collar, I tried one. It was perfect for a night of guilt, shame and solitude – spicy-sweet and refreshing, the ginger beer’s fizz cutting through the dark rum’s thickness.

I returned from my pout before dinner and made my own Dark and Stormy. Or two. Actually, four. I was plastered from the rum and bursting at the seams from all the ginger beer when Dan stomped in. “It’s my house, too,” he said without glancing in my direction and headed for the unoccupied guestroom off the kitchen. We call it the ABD – short for the Ann B. Davis Suite, in honor of Alice from The Brady Bunch, who lived in a similar place. (Question: If the man named Brady was an architect, why did all six kids have to share one bathroom?) He threw his briefcase and backpack on the ABD’s single bed and slammed the door.

Craig made dinner that night – fettucine Alfredo, two loaves of garlic bread, no vegetables and a giant-size bag of Oreos. Paolo and Chipper both gasped at the carbs-‘n’-fat menu but ate their share anyway. Dan was so theatrically wrathful that nobody dared talk. Just as Craig ripped open the Oreos, the sky opened too, and we were pounded by a frighteningly intense shoreline thunderstorm. You know you’re in big trouble when nature itself turns against you in a rage.

The Dark and Stormy

Dark rum

Ginger beer

Lime wedge for garnish (optional)

Pour as much chilled ginger beer as you like into a glass with some ice cubes in it, then float the dark rum on top. Or, if you’re on the outs with your boyfriend, pour a large quantity of dark rum over ice and add a splash of ginger beer to the top.

Share on Facebook

Cocktail Chatter

Repercussions: The Cosmopolitan

by Ed Sikov

August 1, 2011

Before leaving for the July 4th weekend, I had to sit through an afternoon luncheon during which a jackass honoree turned a simple thank you into an interminable Castro-like State of the Planet allocution out from which I finally sneaked. I had to race for the train to Sayville, but by the time the ferry docked at the Pines harbor, the tensions of the city had receded. By dusk, when I finished my weekly Killing Fields war against our rampant poison ivy, I was thoroughly relaxed. (I patrol the place with Round-Up and spit “Die, mother****er, die!” with every satisfying spray).

The front gate opened and in strolled Jack Fogg and Sammy and Dan, who had left work early to surprise me. Surprise doesn’t describe the electric-chair jolt I felt. As you may recall – I sure did – I’d plowed Jack Fogg the last time he was out, and I hadn’t seen him since. Now I had a sudden bad-trip rush. So many questions! Did Sammy know? Would Dan find out? Might it happen again? Could Jack Fogg and I talk our partners into a four-way? Did Jack Fogg remember how he moaned?  I held the Round-Up in front of my jeans.

I hadn’t seen the point of telling Dan about my new familiarity with Jack’s ass. What good would it do? It would just make him sad. Moreover, it wouldn’t help me get any more of Jack’s ass. And how was I supposed to phrase it? “Hey Dan? We’re out of mayo, your Amex bill came, and oh – I forgot to tell you – I screwed Jack Fogg”?

Let promiscuous partners lie – that’s my motto. So lie I did. But it simply didn’t register with me that we’d all be spending a sweltering Fourth of July together. Dan and I would be shirtless in our shorts all day while Jack Fogg would be showing off his fine pecs in Madras trunks and Sammy would be displaying his prize-winning beefsteak in Speedos. The sweat! The testosterone!

While prepping dinner, I squeezed past Jack between the kitchen island and the sink as Jack was fixing his first Madras. My front met his backside and greeted it as an old friend. “Did you tell him?” I asked in a low voice. “Of course!” he replied. “That was the whole point!”

I shrank. “You mean you were just getting back at Sammy for his Chicken Vindaloo?” (Jack had caught him in bed with a young Indian delivery boy.) Jack turned around and pressed me against the counter with his hairy stomach. “No, hot stuff,” he whispered. “But there’s nothing like a vengeance screw. I always tell Sammy and he always makes me pay for it. Everybody gets something, especially me.”

Yeah, everybody but Dan. What would I do about Dan? I spent the weekend worrying and ended up doing nothing but choosing as le cocktail du weekend a little joke only I understood. Sammy with his Vindaloo, WASPy Jack, and two New York Jews, one of whom had a big, hot secret. How terribly cosmopolitan.

The Cosmopolitan

2 parts Absolut Citron
½ part Triple Sec
1 part cranberry Juice
Splash of lime juice

Pour ingredients into an ice-filled shaker. Shake and pour into a cocktail glass. Perch a thin orange slice on the edge of the glass.

Share on Facebook

Kyle, Robbie, Phil Levine and some little wisp of a Thai twink on Phil Levine’s lap were hot in conversation when I arrived on Friday evening. As I walked in I thought I heard Phil Levine say, “…Barry Esai a lot lately. Gets my juices flowin’ know what I mean?”’ “(Something) Barry Esai?” Kyle asked, and Robbie swatted him playfully on the shoulder. “(Something something) at Top of the Harbor… that cute bartender with the nipple ring… Barry Esai!”

“Who’s Barry Esai?” I asked. There was a split second of silence, and then they all burst into humiliating laughter. “Barry Esai!” Phil Levine sang out. “Oh that’s hysterical I’ve got to tell Martin!” He was already speed dialing his cell phone. “It’s me get this Mr. Ed just walked in remember that hunky bartender at Top of the Harbor yeah the one with the pecs and that drink he made me yeah well Ed just asked ‘Who’s ­Barry Esai?!’” He laughed himself into a coughing jag. “Call me later,” he gasped. “I want to try out my new gel dong on you heh heh heh in fact come over now but this time use the Fleet before you leave” and hung up. “Barry Esai!” he boomed and had another coughing fit. The poor Thai kid pouted as he shook violently on Phil Levine’s muscled thighs.

I felt my face get hot. I know I’m hard of hearing and sometimes get things wrong, but this was out of control. “The bartender’s name is Barry Esai? What’s so funny about that?” This produced a whole new round of hilarity.

Kyle came to my rescue. “It’s not the bartender’s name, Ed. It’s an Absolut flavor – Berri Acai.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, because Robbie chimed in, “Berri – like in blueberry – and Acai, that rain forest whatever. That whippin’ hot bartender at Top of the Harbor was making something real good out of it a couple weeks ago. I don’t remember what was in it but it was great.” Just as I stopped feeling like the world’s stupidest primate, he exclaimed, “Barry Esai! Oh man.”

I stomped off to my room. I don’t handle these situations well. Yes, I need hearing aids – yet another step in the demoralizing deterioration of the human body that makes helpless fools of us for most of our lives and ends in the grave. I looked at myself in the mirror and deliberately pulled my T-shirt up so I could wallow in my shame. I stared for at least half a minute and felt my mood sinking further into the quicksand.

“Snap out of it, Belly Boy,” I finally said out loud and let my shirt fall back down. “Go back to the harbor and buy some Barry Esai.” Halfway there I even started singing: “I feel fatty and ratty and tatty – but I’m going to buy me a big peppermint patty – I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!”

The Vodka Tonic

2 oz Absolut Berri Acai or any flavor you’d like, or plain but premium vodka

Tonic water

Fill a tumbler with ice, add the vodka and pour in tonic to taste. Canada Dry and Schweppes each make good tonics, but there’s a new guy on the block – an upscale brand called Q. Perfectly named, it’s also extraordinarily good. Agave, no sugar; authentic quinine, no artificial flavors. We’re here, drink Queer – get juiced with it.

Share on Facebook

It was 2:40 a.m., and I was alone. Dan had flown off again – this time to Tucson and Albuquerque – on a zip-trip for some clinical trials his company was running on an Alzheimer’s drug in which Dan had no confidence. It was a useless trip for a useless drug, and he was miserable about going. I said, “Forget about it.” I ought to know better; of course he didn’t laugh. No, he gave me yet another stern lecture about how Alzheimer’s jokes aren’t funny. “Oh, but they are!” I replied. “As long as you don’t forget them.”

Anyway, I should be used to sleeping alone, given all of Dan’s work travel, but I’m not. I hate it. I don’t sleep well without him.

Mostly I toss and turn and then lurch zombie-like into the kitchen and eat what’s available. I once scarfed down a whole can of Spam during one endless, hungry night. Hey, I always keep it on hand in case of nuclear attack or dirty bomb. I’m patriotically paranoid, so shut up about Spam.

But that night I wasn’t hungry. What I craved was music – one particular song. My iPod was on the nightstand, so I was right on time when I got the earbuds in, found the song and pushed “play”:

“It’s a quateh ta thwee/

Theh’s no one in the pwace/

But you and me.

So set ’em up, Joe/

I gotta wittw stowy/

That you oughta know…”

Yes, it’s the great Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song, “One for My Baby,” as sung in 1959 by the still-a-knockout-at-58 Marlene Dietrich.

Dietrich may be unique in that she appears to be the only Hollywood star to have a classic cocktail named for her. (There are other star-themed cocktails, including the Hi-Ho, named for the Lone Ranger’s rallying cry to his horse – but they’re scarcely classics.) The Marlene has but three ingredients – lots of rye (or Canadian if you must), a touch of orange curacao and a couple dashes of bitters. But like Dietrich and the allure she created by way of lenses and celluloid, her cocktail is much more entrancing than the sum of its parts. The mini-splash of curacao and the even tinier dash of bitters bring out the rye’s gingery quality – a spicy essence rye doesn’t have on its own.

And like Marlene herself, the cocktail is easy to make. Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot) used to get Dietrich going at dinner parties by asking her to talk about her sexual exploits. Well, she’d begin, I did this guy and that gal and this gal and that guy…. Wilder would coax her into revealing extremely intimate details, Marlene was happy to oblige, and the other guests would fall stone silent, too stunned to speak. At which point Wilder, who always had a punchline ready to roll, would ask the table faux-innocently, “Are we boring you?”

So there I was, wistening – er, listening – to Marlene, over and over again, in darkness. Since there was no one in the place but she and me, I made myself a Dietrich and drifted off to sleep as soon as I downed the last spicy drop.

The Marlene Dietrich

3 oz rye (or Canadian)

1/2 tsp of orange curacao

2 dashes of Angostura bitters or to taste

Pour ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice; shake; serve. After midnight, or any time, you can also make it on the rocks, but don’t tell anybody.

Share on Facebook

Here’s some advice: You need a restaurant manager as a close friend. Why? Because when you go to his restaurant, he’ll tell the chef to send out all sorts of delightful little plates of things and an extra dessert or two, none of which you will pay for. You have 10 lawyer friends; they’ll all charge you. Twenty doctors? Not one lousy discount. But one restaurant manager? Suddenly you’re Auntie Mame – “Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!”

Our Fire Island housemates, Ian and Frankie, are both (as Ian put it) “lifers in food service.” Ian’s the quiet one, Frankie the Big Flaming Mary. Dan and I had dinner last week at Frankie’s restaurant, Capryce. We ordered the pumpkin soup; out came peekytoe crab mini-tacos from the chef. Dan ordered the hanger steak, I the paella, but we also got a chef-sent plate of glazed duck, foie gras and Asian-spiced carrots.

Frankie kept coming over to our booth to chat. Capryce was jammed. Hoards jostled in the entryway, but Frankie found in us a rapt audience and casually handed the pesky crowd control problem to his panicking assistant. Frankie was busy telling us about a baroque wedding he and Ian had gone to in Brighton Beach. Once populated mainly by Jewish refugees from WWII, it’s now Moscow on the Atlantic. (Yes, the southern boundary of Brooklyn is the Atlantic Ocean: a real beach, with white sand and surfers. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a hot surfer dude carrying his board on the subway.)

The wedding was an over-the-top spectacle as only Russians think up. The reception began with a dramatic caviar bar; multicolored spotlights hit the different iced bowls of roe while sexy little Russian-American kittens crisscrossed the room with trays of Veuve Cliquot. For the main course, tuxedoed waiters paraded flaming meats around the room on swords before carving and serving them. For dessert there were sharlotkas and zapekankas galore, all a mere prelude to a vast, gaudy wedding cake that featured – Frankie wasn’t kidding and neither am I – a most realistic portrait in icing of Zac Efron. High School Musical was the 19-year-old bride’s favorite film of forever. (Note to self: when gay marriage is legal in N.Y. State, order cake with icing rendering of Janet Leigh being stabbed to death in the shower.)

“And the whole time… What?… I’ll be back.” Frankie flew off like a hyper parakeet. He returned minutes later. “Sister Rose Gertrude – that’s what I call Carl, the sous chef – set the kitchen on fire. He’s an ex-Marine. Anyway, there were bottles of frozen flavored vodka on each table, and the first table that finished one got some weird Russian prize. Everybody was snockered. Huh? Gotta go. Don’t order the shortcake – it’s poo-sniggles.”

For once, my mind wasn’t on dessert. I was contemplating frozen vodka. I work too hard mixing drinks, I concluded. Guests arrive, I’m making a three-course dinner, and suddenly I’m fielding cocktail orders and getting multiple shakers going. What’s wrong with me? From now on we’ll have Absolut Peppar in the freezer, and if somebody wants a drink, I’ll say “We’re having La-Z-Boys.” “What’s that?” “It’s a classic Russian cocktail enjoyed by czars and Bolsheviki alike. There’s a bottle of flavored Absolut in the freezer. Help yourself. Budem zdorovy!”

Lenivbli Malioik, or The La-Z-Boy

Stick a bottle of flavored Absolut in the freezer. Serve.

Share on Facebook

“So, mutatis mutandis, the LGBT community…” Ted was lecturing about marriage equality from his podium on our living room couch.

“What?” I blurted. Cocktail “hour” was pushing 90 minutes. I should have served the lamb stew and couscous already, but I couldn’t get out of the chair.

“The gay community must shift its praxis from the dystopic to the….”

“No, before that. You said ‘mucous mucandies.’ What the hell does that mean?”

“You have a Ph.D. and you don’t know what mutatis mutandis means?” He was appalled.

“Fuck you,” I explained.

We’ve been doing this for years. We’re all academics or ex-academics. Dan has three degrees – B.A., MBA, and Ph.D. – all from Harvard.  I have a Ph.D. from Columbia; Ted has one from Princeton and teaches at NYU; his partner, Eric, has an M.F.A. from Columbia and taught at Wellesley but now writes screenplays that actually get made into movies. You may have caught the farcical Brainiacs on cable; Eric wrote it. This dinner party demonstrated where he got his material.

We were flying on Aviations. I was in avast liquor emporium on the Upper East Side last week – I rarely go up there, since I’m deathly allergic to cashmere sweaters and simple strands of pearls – and saw Creme de Violette on the shelf with a little printed recipe for the Aviation. Maraschino, was nearby. I bought both.

By Maraschino, I don’t mean the syrup in which innocent cherries are drowned in artificially flavored, carcinogenically colored sugar water so children can have their first drug rushes. I mean the clear cherry liqueur, which Italians make from Marasca cherries and their crushed pits. Et la Creme de Violette? Yes, it’s really made from violets and thus wins the title of The Gayest Liqueur Ever, there being no Creme de Pansy.

I played around with the recipes I found online at the marvelous blog www.sippetysup.com, where I learned that the drink has the reputation of being a 1930s cocktail, but it actually dates from 1916, when only a few people ever saw an airplane, let alone flew in one. In those days, flying into the sky in a technological wonder seemed miraculous. The Aviation celebrates that magic. It has by far the loveliest color of any cocktail I’ve ever seen – watercolor-pale lavender. And it’s extraordinarily luscious. Now that air travel is like taking the bus, except that the bus is on time, the aeroplanes’s early thrill is long gone. Unless, of course, you make yourself and your smarty-pants friends Aviations, in which case you’ll all quickly be even higher than your IQs.

The Aviation (a variation on the classic)

Note: Martini glasses are much larger now than they were in the early 20th century. This recipe fills one 2011 glass or two old-style glasses.

Half-cup of Beefeater gin

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon Maraschino

1-and-a-half teaspoon Creme de Violette

Half-teaspoon “really” simple syrup – mix equal parts sugar and water in a jar and shake until the sugar dissolves

Chill the martini glass(es).

Put all ingredients into a cocktail shaker and chill in the freezer for five or 10 minutes.

Take glass(es) and shaker out, add a few ice cubes to the shaker, and shake as though your life depended on it. Strain into the frosty glass(es) and hope that a few shards of ice rise to the top.

Share on Facebook

I Get What I Deserve: The Hot Toddy

by Ed Sikov

“I’b biserable,” I shnuffled from my sickroom-sweaty side of the bed. Dan didn’t answer. “I’b biserable!” I shouted, then broke into a coughing fit of such violent proportions that, well, I’ll spare you the details – not that I don’t want to describe my mucus with the vividness and color one associates with a great travelogue or restaurant review, but it would be edited out anyway on grounds of revulsion. Dan came rushing in from the living room. I was wiping something yellowy-chartreuse from my upper lip. “You’re a mess, honey,” he said, quoting Dietrich in Touch of Evil.

“Da-a-an?” I cooed.

“I know that tone,” he said warily. “What do you want now?”

“A hod doddy.”

“A what?”

“A hod doddy!” I said before expelling more green stuff from my lungs.

“Oh, a hot toddy. I have no idea how to make one. You’re the cocktails guy.”

I wasn’t fond of this aspect of Dan’s personality – the willful ignorance of domestic tasks. Three Harvard degrees, a job that demands brilliance, research grants so plentiful that they remind me of The Producers (50 percent of his time gets charged to this grant, 30 percent to that one, 40 percent to another, a little 20 percent grant to top it off….). And he can’t sew on a button, locate a colander, or bake be a dabbed hod doddy!

“Neber mide,” I said. I wrapped myself in a heavy hooded robe that made me look like a Trappist, shuffled into the kitchen, rooted through the liquor cabinet, and promptly knocked over the bottle of herb-infused Absolut I’d made in the fall. “Shid!” I cried after the glass shattered on the merciless tiles. What was left of my Scarborough Fairs spread quickly across the floor. Dan, contrite at forcing me to make my own drink, kindly offered to clean up the mess. When I returned to the kitchen, the only remnant of my delightful autumn tincture was the faint aroma of rosemary.

“Dis id de way de world will end – not wid a whimper but wid a hideous and defeadig crash,” I  said sadly and snottily. I found the bourbon and gripped it like a barbell dangling over my head.

You can make a hot toddy out of practically any liquor, but the darker ones – whiskey, bourbon, scotch, brandy – are the classics. You can also use hot tea as a base. But I like cocktails to be cocktails and tea and coffee to be just tea and coffee. (There will be no Irish Coffee column, for instance, because it’s repugnant.) And I only drink hot toddies when I’m sick. The combination of those good old-fashioned cold fighters, honey and lemon, with a scientifically proven germ killer, bourbon, works best for me when I’m hacking up thick, slippery blobs of sputum that look like somebody made Jello out of thin, rotten pea soup and…. oh, right. Forget it.

The hot toddy

Boil 1/4 to 1/3 cups of water. Into a mug or heatproof glass, pour enough honey to coat the bottom. Add 1 or 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, and give it a stir. Pour in the amount of bourbon  you think will kill enough germs to make the drink seem healthy. (Most recipes call for two tablespoons, but that’s like taking an antibiotic for which the bacteria is thoroughly resistant.) Pour in the boiling water, stir, and enjoy the drink’s curative effects.

Share on Facebook

The Old Fashioned

by Ed Sikov

February 14, 2011

After that spirit-killing dinner with Craig and his – gag – new boyfriend, Kyle (my perfect Kyle, with his gymnast’s ass and a treasure trail that brings tears to my eyes), Dan and I barely spoke. I guess I’d been kind of a jerk. Dan steamed, then sounded off: “I knew we were in for it when you started tossing frisee leaves in Craig’s face.” “Oh, that,” I said dismissively. “I was just being playful.” “Not when you started with the lardons. You’re lucky Craig is in love. He might have crushed you. And your grand finale – oh, brother!”

Actually I was rather proud of forcing our server, Rolf, to listen to me sing “Springtime for Hitler” before I would leave. So what if the manager tried to throw me out? He didn’t succeed. Turns out I’m a pretty good wrestler.

Dan left for the office early Sunday morning. I knew he’d stay out past midnight. His parting words were, “You’re an old-fashioned asshole.”

Analyzing this dark pronouncement consumed the morning. My conclusion: I was somehow a sexually constipated Puritan for finding the image of 32-year-old Kyle suffocating in 55-year-old Craig’s ripples of fat to be nausea inducing. I was a Sex Fascist for seeing their wildly lopsided affair as an affront to time-honored notions of Right and Wrong, the moral cornerstones of civilization. And didn’t Darwin write something about natural selection and the reason why young, lean, heartthrob orangutans never mate with the aged and obese?

“Old-fashioned asshole,” I repeated. Was I? Didn’t a man have the right to be revolted by his friend’s sexual satisfaction? Was I misguided in planning to forbid Kyle to explore his formerly secret desire for chubbies by tying him to his bed spread-eagled, tightening the knots, ripping open his T-shirt and….

OK, I had lost my mind.

But wait a sec. Dan was pulling an abandonment trip on me, so I might as well embrace my sudden-onset derangement. I’d spend the day drinking Old Fashioneds! Maybe I’d get drunk enough to moon the neighbors and explore the “asshole” aspect, too. That’ll show ‘em. Literally.

Life lesson: When you have your first drink before noon, you’ll be hammered by 2 and dysfunctional by dinner. Around 7 I phoned for Chinese delivery, but I couldn’t form the words “Hui Guo Rou,” so I switched the order to five eggrolls and hung up. Apparently I provided neither my name nor address. Two hours passed. I ended up eating a can of artichoke hearts, some half-thawed pea soup, and three granola bars. Chewing one is the last thing I remember.

In the morning, Dan sternly informed me that he found me lying naked on the bedroom floor near the windows with my Calvins around my ankles and, nearby, an otherwise empty glass with a desiccated orange slice at the bottom. What was Craig doing with Kyle while I was pressing my hairy rump against a 12th-floor window in pointless protest of their ludicrous, hideous affair? I can’t bear to think about it. I think about it constantly.

The Old Fashioned

Put an orange slice in the bottom of a glass, add a bit of Really Simple Syrup*, and muddle (press the orange with the back of a fork). Pour in some bourbon, whiskey or rye; add a few drops of bitters. Stir. Add ice. Serve. Forget the cherries unless you’re under 12.

*Really Simple Syrup: add equal amounts of sugar and water to a jar. Shake.

Share on Facebook

The Virtue of Pricey Liquor

by Ed Sikov

January 31, 2011

“You drink too much.” This was Dan’s opener at dinner the night after I passed out from too many Old Fashioneds. I reacted with instant hostility, since I’d spent the afternoon making his favorites: braised pork shoulder with parsnips and white wine; brussels sprouts slaw; and a tarte tatin.

But before I sniped back something harsh – like “piss off” – I considered his point of view. It’s painful to admit it: he was right.

“It’s an occupational hazard,” I attempted. “I have a column to write.”

“That’s a lame excuse, and you know it. It was terrifying to find you like that – unconscious on the floor!” “People are said to be ‘asleep’ at night – not ‘unconscious,’” I replied with futile indignation, since I had been, in fact, unconscious.

“All right,” I sighed as I placed the platter of aromatic pork in front of him like an offering to an angry deity – Athena, say, the goddess of both warfare and reason. “I’ll cut back,” I promised.

“Way back,” he ordered from Olympus as he skewered a large chunk of moist pork, a slab of cooked meat to which I humiliatingly related.

And so I offer this column on single-malt scotch. Since they’re what my great aunt called “dear,” meaning costly, you’re a fool to gulp it. Even I, a professional drinker, can only have one shot a night. So I drink less. Bank-breaking liquor: a solution to Dan’s concern.

For many of us, scotch is an acquired taste. I nearly spat out my first sip. Then again I was 10 at the time. Rum tasted good then, and so did bourbon. But scotch tasted like somebody set fire to my mother’s burlap sack of peat moss and somehow made rotten moonshine out of the smoke.

I grew up. Now I love the intensely smoky, peaty kind of scotch that you can only get in single malts. Given the choice, most poor suckers go for the bland over the exceptional or unusual, so blended scotches dominate, though they all taste basically the same. But single malts vary greatly. I’m the kind of guy who goes for ultra-spicy food, high-cocoa dark chocolate, and certain out-there sexual practices which shall go unelaborated, so I prefer single malts that are heavily smoky, or peaty, or both.

Oban and Talisker are great single malts, but this time I opted for Tormore. I chose it because the liquor store guy boasted that his Tormore was a single-cask, special reserve made solely for his emporium. That brought out the essential snob in me, so I bought it. At home, alone with (as Gollum would say) “my precious” (Dan had flown off to Toronto for meeting of his medical geek society) I sipped my single shot – neat, of course – for about an hour and a half. Tormore’s first taste is a sharp alcohol tang, which turns into a rich smoke in the mouth before softening. It finishes as though you had just smoked a rare cigar. Perfection.

Tormore Single Malt scotch

Face facts: Unless you live in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Boston, you’ll have to order most small-distillery single malts online. If your state forbids such imports, move. You never liked it there anyway, did you? The Puritanical bastards!

Share on Facebook