08 January 2005

Why I don't drink much

"Hearts full of youth, hearts full of truth, six parts gin to one part vermouth." -- Tom Lehrer

I'm not much of a drinker for a bunch of reasons. My usual when going out with friends is to ask for a cup of coffee with a shot of brandy or a "scotch and soda, kinda light on the scotch." And, no, I never ask for the good stuff if they inquire about a brand. I ask for "something cheap that tastes good with a bunch of soda dumped in it." Because it's wrong to pollute good scotch with mixers. I nurse it and then I might have a second, but often my second drink is a cup of coffee. And, of course, the result of asking for a scotch and soda, kinda light on the scotch is that I end up with about 1:1 of scotch and water. (Scotch and water. That's so wrong.) My Mom taught me to mix drinks at about 3:1 where 3 equals mixer and 1 equals booze, by the way.

Anyway, last night David and I went out after seeing a play and I decided to have a scotch and failed to ask them to go light on the scotch. Well, there was actual soda instead of tap water in it (hurray!) so I probably downed it a little more quickly than usual. It was probably about a 4:1.

And then I ordered another. Why? I dunno. Just felt like it. About half way through that one, I cocked my head to the side in response to something David said, and I felt my face go numb and brains slide slightly to the left. David said "What?" and I said "Wheeeeew" with a nice rising then falling pitch. And just enough cresh/decresh for seasoning. "Am I driving us home?" he asked. "Oh, yeah" was the reply.

Now everyone knows the classic stages of drunkenness: happy, horny, depressed. But I seem to have taken a slight detour and found a new stage: tape recorder. David and I had earlier touched on him running lines with me when we got home. He figured that I was now in no state to do that. Ha! I was so! So I started running everybody's lines, picking random scenes. And, I regret to say, acting out some of the blocking in the parking lot. Not my blocking. Mary Ann's blocking. Well, only a little of that because David hustled me into the car at that point. (Thanks, Sweetie!)

A few more "Wheeews," some giggling, a demand for a bedtime story, a large glass of water, and couple of aspirin later, I was sound asleep. No hangover, thank goodness.

Our friends will put up with all kinds of reactions to booze and forgive us. Especially if it makes the kind of story they can embarrass us with later. But no one wants to see Leta's one-tipsy-woman production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. So maybe I'll just have coffee for a while. At least until the show closes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Funny! This reminds me of my mother, who once asked for "Scotch-flavored water" at a wedding. When I teased her about it, she told me once we were out of the bartender's hearing that her first drink had been almost straight scotch. This one, on the other hand, was much more to her liking.