(Andrew Scrivani, daiquiri; Mike Mergen, beer; Andrew Scrivani, gin and tonic; Evan
Sung, vodka with cranberry juice, all for The New York Times)Which one would you order? My first drink — if you don’t count my childhood best friend mixing together a little of everything from her parent’s liquor cabinet and daring me to drink it — was a strawberry daiquiri. I was 16 years old and at a bar called Amberjacks in New Orleans. The bar was a local favorite of friends I’d met doing summer stock in Maine. Of course, these friends were older and I was mooning over one of them, a guy who was doing dinner theatre in Metairie and who lived with a ferret. In retrospect, it’s no wonder I felt the need to drink. I pined uselessly after Gary while a strange Russian woman named Laneshka kept lurching into him and putting her hand on his knee. I thought I was terribly sophisticated, as 16-year-old girls drinking fruity, frothy drinks often do.
If I had my druthers, I would probably drink strawberry daiquiris all the time. But I don’t. Sure, they’re delicious. But the strawberry daiquiri is a youthful drink, the drink of a girl on spring break in Cabo. Much like skinny jeans and Flashdance tops, I can’t pull it off anymore. These days, I am compelled by circumstances to act my age and order a nice Bordeaux and pretend I know what I’m talking about.
What we choose to drink can reveal more about us than, say, our astrological sign or whether we prefer Elvis or the Beatles.
If I had to guess, I’d say that many of us aren’t drinking what we’d truly like to drink. A friend of mine frequently orders Pimms to remind people of her stints abroad, though I suspect she longs for vodka tonic. And in my household, in addition to my unrequited predilection for Drinks With Umbrellas, I recently learned that my husband hated the taste of beer in high school and so insisted on White Mountain, a “malternative” beverage. And by insisted I mean that he forced the kid with the fake ID to not only risk his neck buying beer but also his reputation by adding a case of White Mountain with nary a teenage girl in sight. My husband also sometimes pours himself a glass of apple juice and nurses it, pretending it’s whiskey. (I’m not sure why. Actually, I’m not sure why he even admitted that to me.) And yet the Macallan nestles up against the Hendricks in our liquor cabinet.
What are we all trying to prove? Clearly we should hop on the nearest jet ski and propel ourselves to a swim-up bar. But what we choose to drink can reveal more about us than, say, our astrological sign or whether we prefer Elvis or the Beatles. What a tense moment, to be the first to order a drink with a group of people you haven’t hung out with before. Do you order a beer to let them know you’re easygoing? Do you order champagne to convey that you’re the fun, sassy type who likes to celebrate ordinary moments? Do you order scotch to let them know that you might start to get kind of intense in a couple hours? Do you order a Merlot, as if “Sideways” taught you nothing? The pressure.
Sure, these are ridiculous generalizations, but people buy into them. Drink choice is used as a nifty device in film and television all the time to let us know exactly what we should think about a character. The amount of scotch the female characters on “Damages” put away every week is staggering. Every sip reminds us that these women, every single vengeful one of them, means business. If they were drinking Mudslides, I don’t think I’d be convinced. You don’t see a lot of scotch on network television, where wine seems to be the more socially acceptable vice. Rarely is there a scene on “Brothers & Sisters” in which the siblings aren’t gesticulating with wine glasses. This makes the family artsy and cultured. If they were waving martini glasses around, we would judge them more harshly.
My first writing job was for the show “Dawson’s Creek.” Back then, before the WB was the CW, the standard rule was that teens could only drink on television if we showed “consequences.” Consequences usually meant vomiting, driving a car through a house, or kissing your best friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend/mother. If it was a sweeps episode, we probably employed all of the above, though vomiting was the trusty go-to. Somewhere along the way, I think the rule of consequences was thrown out the window, because almost every episode of “Gossip Girl” involves a teenage character sidling up to a ritzy bar and ordering a martini, and the only consequence seems to be more brightly colored tights and ascots.
Actors, at least from my small experience in working with them, put a great deal of thought into this. I once had a lengthy discussion over drink choice with an actress — much to the dismay of the television crew who watched the minutes tick by as she and I debated the message conveyed by a wine spritzer versus a Manhattan. I had written a scene with her ordering a wine spritzer. Her character was a bit of a lightweight and a kook, and the thought of her saying “Gimme a wine spritzer” amused me. The actress informed me that the choice of a wine spritzer for her character was woefully “on the nose” and that it would be much more interesting if she ordered a Manhattan. I fought for the spritzer and she glumly sipped it. But it was too late. The fizz was gone.
Facebook, in one of its daily attempts to suck all traces of productivity out of our lives, recently offered a “What Kind of Alcoholic Drink Are You?” quiz. In the interest of this piece, I took the quiz (as did my 13-year-old niece. Fantastic.). Apparently I am a margarita (as is my niece) because “your [sic] fun and nice. You like to stay home and rest as much as you like partys. [sic]”
Perhaps English was not the quiz maker’s first language, but he hit on something. By golly, I do like to stay home and rest as much as I like partys! And I do enjoy the frothiness of a margarita. Despite the fact that I always order them on the rocks, in my heart I want them blended. Life is hard enough these days. Must we really have things on the rocks as well? I think we should relax into drinks with syrupy bits of fruit bobbing around in them and give ourselves a break. I’ll be at the swim-up bar, dodging judgment.
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