It was probably an otherwise normal June day in Florence. Fosco Scarselli was tending bar at the Caffe Casoni on Via Tornabuono. It may have been aperitivo hour, and the place was lively with people who had just finished work. They were sipping aperitivos meant to open up their appetites for the upcoming meals of the evening. Assisting this gustatorial preparation were dishes of small nibbles. Crostini topped with savory chicken liver pâté (crostini di fegatini), tomato and basil (crostini al pomodoro e basilico), or omelettes called frittatas with vegetables, cheese, or the leftover meats from the day before. There may have been Panzanella, a fresh salad, or little pizzas called pizettes, topped with cheese, olives, or anchovies. Or maybe beef or pork meatballs called polpetttine, which were skewered with toothpicks. Among many others, these whetted the appetite of the diners at the Caffe Casoni.

As the diners sipped and reveled in the day’s work being over and its treats just beginning, a man walked through the door. He was well-known, tough, manly, the subject of local gossip. Just like today, he came into the café often and ordered a cocktail, apparently something he could do up to forty times a day. Count Camillo Negroni ordered a very popular drink called the Americano, which was equal parts Campari and vermouth and topped with soda water. Then, before Mr. Scarselli could lift the Campari off the shelf or hoist his vermouth, the count edited his order.

“Fortify it with gin instead of soda water.”

By all accounts (and there aren’t many), Count Camillo Negroni was sort of a badass. He was born into an elite family that had an adventurous streak in them. They were always going off to find wars or expeditions that would lead to them being either honored in some foreign country or dead or, as sort of a silver lining to a bad situation, both at the same time. In the late 1860s, this particular Negroni had gone off to the United States in search of his own adventure. There – traveling from New York and through the west – he had made a name for himself as a partier, a gambler, and a rodeo cowboy. He made and lost fortunes. He spoke with western accented English and used words like ‘Hombre’ and ‘vittles’. Basically he stepped out of the pages of a Larry McMurtry novel right before he gets skinned alive by Comanches. But that didn’t happen on that June day in 1919. That day, he made cocktail history.   

Cocktails have a long history. The ancient Greeks, Romans and Chinese fortified wine with herbs and botanicals. Medieval monks in France, Italy, Spain and Holland developed herbal remedies by infusing botanicals, fruit and herbs infused with alcohol and water, meant to improve the wellbeing of the body and spirit. Aqua Vitae, Chartreuse, Elixir Salutis, Aqua Mirabilis are all herbal medicine boozes that are precursors of the cocktail. In the 18^th century the Americans found that drinking rum on its own ends up with them making romantic passes at their neighbor’s horses and murdering the neighbors. So they added water or juice to it, later they’d add coca cola (which was filled with cocaine, which made the horse romance much more likely). The French started adding water to Absinthe to lessen the possibility of blowing their brains out or lopping off their ears. Spoiler: didn’t always work.

And then there were the Italians. In the late 18^th century, we see the emergence of northern Italy’s café culture in the Piedmont region of Italy, especially Turin. Turin’s cafe culture was booming and in 1786 the creation of vermouth is a game changer. Though vermouth-adjacent concoctions had been curing people of stomach ailments and bad personalities for centuries, now it’s bottled and drank as a cocktail. In the 1860s, Gaspari Campari in Milan invented a bitter, bright red alcohol called Campari. He added this to vermouth and served it as the Milano-Torino (equal parts Campari and vermouth and called thus because of the founding locations of each. Mankind wouldn’t begin creatively naming cocktails for a few years and wouldn’t stop until it got out of hand (I’m looking at you, A Long Comfortable Screw Against A Wall). In the late 19^th century, the Milano-Torino was especially enjoyed by American tourists and thus the name was changed to the Americano. Just as a large coffee would be called an Americano after World War II for the American soldiers who sought something more voluminous akin to the drip coffee in the US. They still call it that in Europe and ordering one still – 80 years later – elicits an eye roll and a whispered epithet. Though, the rolls given the M-1 wielding American GIs who’d just liberated the city were not eye but rather in the hay.  

“I’m going for a run.”

Sometimes the moment words have left my mouth, I understand the magnitude of the mistake I have made. Before I could walk it back, Burke jumped in.

“Great idea! I have to make these recordings for class. And you could pick up your new phone on the way home.”

“Great.”

Burke had wanted me out of the house like a wolf spider since around noon, when I spontaneously began singing things. Not songs. Just things I saw and thought of. She complains, though my rendition of Leftover Pizza to the tune of Zeppelin’s Lemon Song was a leftover slice of genius. Nevertheless, the dog had been barking at me, Burke had moved rooms a number of times. Even the cat, dependent upon me for food and the hygiene of her poop box, was beginning to give me horrifying slit-eyed glares. They wanted me gone. Now I had given them not only the method – painful to me – but they had provided other logical reasoning which was hard to refute. Traitors.

I decided to go to Obora Hvězda – a nearby park that in the 1500s served as the walled game reserve for Ferdinand I. The walls are still there, but the zebras and ostriches are probably (mostly) gone. I had spent many mornings and days walking or jogging there. Sometimes I would go through with the dog and a beer. Recently though, because we have been so busy dealing with buying a flat, I have been neglecting our local park. And since we are moving out in a month or so, I thought I’d better visit it while I can.    

The day was gorgeous. Warm in the sun, cool in the shade. What a day to ruin with a run. I walked to the local park, holding my phone which Spotified a running playlist into my left ear (my only working earbud). I grew jealous of the people walking to the park with picnic baskets, bottles of wine tucked under their arms, or plastic cups of beer in their hands. Why couldn’t I be like them?

The problem is – I have been recently. A lot. A byproduct of the stress and extra hours tacked on to your life when buying a flat is a quick allocation of coping mechanisms. In my case this was beer, pizza, and pickled cheese. Coupled with the fact that the weather is beautiful, and it became all too easy to leave a 41 square meter flat in Palmovka and say “let’s get a beer, shall we? It’s too beautiful outside not to. And we deserve it!” Anyway, “all too easy” became “damned impossible not to” PDQ. And though I have not stopped working out, beer and cheese does to a 48 year old body what air does to a balloon. My pants have grown tighter and the topography of my lower shirts has become unpleasantly hilly. Working out for thirty minutes and running continuously for thirty minutes are two different forms of workout torture. I needed to see how I would do. So this run was to gauge the extent of the damage.

The damage was noted about 41 seconds into the run. I was putting through the shady woods and though my wind held up, there was a notable jiggling in my rear and front tanks that caused me great distress. A distress so great that even the soothing flugelhorn of Chuck Mangione couldn’t cure it. I whimpered and chugged on. Should you wish to understand what two months of pizza and beer do to you, go for a jog. Make sure no people are around to hear your epithets of rage, sadness, and frustration. By the second leg (out of 4) of my first of two loops through the park, I had decided on a full life overhaul. I would never have another donut again. Carbs would only play a role in my life when a student mispronounced the Czech Christmas fish. And I was going to have to say goodbye to beer in lieu of its unappealing sister – wine.

As I work as an editor for academic journals which focus on security studies and international relations, on a daily basis I learn more and more about just how screwed are we here on planet Earth. It’s probably for that reason that I spend the rest of my writing life working for children’s magazines.

In what will be a body blow to those unfortunates who have had to be my science teachers throughout my life, it seems that I have fallen into writing about science. I think it’s the mental breakdown that I have to do in order to understand the science myself that allows me to convey it to kids in a somewhat reasonable way. (I thought osmosis was a mystery novelist.) In my research, I occasionally come across information that freaks me the hell out.

This weekend I learned that Earth has a second moon. A mini moon. A quasi-satellite. No matter what you call it, it orbits Earth and I don’t like it. It’s between 130 and 330 meters in diameter. Its name is Kamoʻoalewa because it was named by Hawaiians, who spotted it while looking up and thanking their gods for universal healthcare, perfect weather, and an endless supply of ‘I got lei’d in Hawaii’ jokes. It has been in our orbit for 500 years. Kamoʻoalewa is one of five extra moons the Earth has. I hate them all.

Raccoons are very smart. Too smart. And they can pick locks. Not simple locks, but complex lock systems, one of whose best qualities is the ability to keep me safe from ultra-smart raccoons. Now, included among the things that I worry about each night as I lie in bed will be the faulty veracity of my front door’s lock, home invasion by a smart raccoon, and then losing in chess to a raccoon.

A different version of me exists in every single person who knows me or who has ever known me. I need to contact these people and make sure we all get on the same page about which version of me we all have. And I wonder if any of those people’s versions of me is the one who still wears size 34 waist pants.

We supposedly walk past 36 murderers in our lifetimes. To mitigate my rather strong feelings on this factoid, I am planning to walk along a maximum security prison during yard time. I should be able to stack the deck that way. If you want to log a few murderers for you, DM me.  

Should the male worker bee ejaculate during very hot weather, his penis will explode, fly off his body, and kill him. I repeat: if a male worker bee ejaculates when it’s hot, his penis explodes, flies off his body, and kills him. This is like the three worst things that can happen to a guy all in succession and taking place immediately after the best thing that can happen to a guy. This doesn’t help me personally unless said worker bee is in my hallway shtupping a raccoon who was unlocking my door during a heatwave.   

There’s a book called the Voynich Manuscript that nobody can translate. By studying word and letter patterns, linguists have determined that it is written in a real language, but other patterns of the language differentiate it from all known Indo-European languages. Moreover, the book is filled with unusual illustrations, mostly of plants that can’t be identified, women who are naked, and mystical animals. This book has been carbon-dated to between 1404 and 1438 and given the visual content, sounds like it may be about spring break during the Crusades.

I hope this list has given you pause as it has me. If you have any freaky factoids feel free to share them. Any new moons are not welcome.

At 6 am on Sunday, while I was lying in bed reviewing in a dream a class I had taught the day before, dozens of old friends were actually enjoying their lives about 4,500 miles west. The pub where we had all worked and where we had all met and became friends has become another victim in the current trend of sky-high rents. And so, another little guy bites the dust. But to us, a living landmark and this place with so much history is disappearing, her space on Oakland Avenue no doubt to be quickly filled with a Costa Coffee or a Sbarro.

Friday night, however, many generations of its employees – current, former and former former – got together to send her off. With booze. So it was a wake, but it was an Irish wake.

At 6 am, my phone sprang to life. And whoever chose the ringtone for Facebook Messenger should be forced to enjoy it as his alarm for two decades. Once my heart stopped palpitating, I ran in the bedroom, Burke pretending to be asleep lest she be pressed into service to walk the dog, the dog awake and wondering what all this noise was at 6 am and whether it meant food.

It was the gang from the bar. It was midnight there, so they were not only in a different time zone, they had been drinking for 8 hours so they were on a different planet of existence. The conversation was fast and loud and I got a little dizzy from the phone being spun around and different cherry-red faces of old friends saying hi. There was nudity and there were epithets. I loved it all. When they got off a few minutes later, I was sent sprawling down a rabbit hole of nostalgia. And I tortured Burke with it for the rest of the day.

The pub in all its forms – the corner pub, the local pub, the dive – are such important places for a local culture. People meet and talk, they socialize, they make new friends, they lose friends, they move on, they bring out hairbrained ideas in the only place they’d find an audience for it. Doctor Alexander Hamilton travelled through the colonies that would become the United States in 1744 and found the pub and the inn and tavern to be the place where ideas bounded and meetings of the mind bloomed over rum and game pies. In taverns he found a microcosm of America – charming, interesting folks, great conversationalists, and buffoonish, boorish drunks (I paraphrase his summary: the colonies are a great place, all people here are the same everywhere and awesome, except for Boston, which is full of assholes.)

In early spring of 1996, I went for a job interview at a restaurant pub opening in Oakland, Pittsburgh. Though freshly 21, I had been visiting the pubs in Oakland and beyond since about 4 years earlier on a series of fake IDs and inside men who’d let me, a 5’6, 130 pound (well, until my sophomore year Cambrian explosion), peach faced fool walk through the door with a nod and an extended two-eyed wink.  

Oakland was rife with bars. Zelda’s, CJ Barney’s, Peter’s Pub, in a pinch down the road there was Babylon and Denny’s. The as-of-yet opened pub I walked up to on that afternoon had been another: Caleco’s. A lean orange cartoon cat slinked up its narrow sign from at least 1992 to around 1994. We used to go there to see a friend’s band and though they had a particular attachment to Rush that I could do without, I would go to support my friend the drummer, drink warm beer, and ogle the singer whose physical beauty made her Geddy Lee voice bearable.

So as I walked into the restaurant, still in the far-off-sound-of-saw, plastic tarp, wooden beam, and sawdusty era of its reconstruction, I felt like an old timer. I was one of the ones who knew what things had been around before the things that were there now. I was greeted by a guy who looked like Ned Flanders – pushbroom mustache, light blue in-too-good-condition jeans, belt up to the nipples of his forest green golf shirt, glasses whose wide, circular rims pegged them as leftovers of a late 1980s fashion sense. (A decade later my wire rims would be pegged as a leftover of a mid-1990s fashion sense.)

“Vic. Hi.” He told me about the place. “A west coast bar food with a twist.” Stuck out in my head – or it does now, since I heard or said it about 659 times in the following 3 years. As I tried to figure out what that meant, Vic caught me off-guard.

“Tell me a funny story about yourself.”

I panicked and told him an embarrassing story of a graphic nature. Correction: the most embarrassing story of a graphic nature. Vic stared.

“OK, you’re hired. As long as you come back Wednesday and tell that story to Mike. He’s one of the owners.”

We were given T-shirts: Shocks and Struts or Shut up and Drink. The staff became instant friends. Like every bar on earth, characters became famous. Jimmie Kuhl. JC. Sam. Nikki. I’d work there for about 6 months. You see, before I was the paragon of responsibility I am now, little things like ‘showing up to work’ used to be a problem, made worse by not informing anyone about it. These are called ‘no call, no shows’ and after three such of these occasions, I was let released into the wilds of working at other bars. This was like being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, with no west coast bar food and no twist. After a three year statute of limitations, I was hired back.

History has told us of the importance of the pub in a sociological kind of way. The first pubs (called tabernae or taverns) popped up along the Roman road network to cater to travellers. They were places to offer drink, food, and company. Stories were told, news was shared, gossip was enjoyed. The Bubonic Plague gave rise to the British pub, which started in people’s homes. The current day British pub still has all the hallmarks of this transition of home to pub – fireplaces, cozy chairs, intimate atmosphere, comfort food, throwdown fistfights three times a week, the police. Home. We about-to-be-Americans brought this overseas to the New World.

It’s a peaceful morning. The sun casts wide beams across my bed. I – terrified of heat – spend the time in my living room, which is in the shade at this time of day. (Later on I’ll migrate to the shady bedroom when the sun makes it way to the living room. There’s a solid chance I’m Dracula). I sip my coffee (no blood).

The peace of the morning is destroyed when my dog realizes that my cat has gone almost an entire 45 minute period without being tortured by a dog. To rectify such a crime against canine, Maisy the Shih tzu springs off the bed, runs to the cushions where the cat enjoys a deep sleep in a position impossible but permanently envied by humankind, she jumps up and buries her nose in the cat’s face. The cat, whose makeup is about 30% fur, 30% ears, 20% razor sharp bits, and 10% deranged war criminal reacts in the way you might imagine given that description.

Despite my pleas for peace, a scuffle ensues. The cat makes horrible yowls, hisses, and guttural warnings. The dog barks once or twice and like the soldiers do to Sergeants Elias and Barnes, Burke and I pull them apart and calm things down. Burke takes the dog into the living room and I soothe the cat’s fur which is now reaching towards the ceiling. I offer her ham, the only known sedative for my cat, and she sniffs it and allows me to pick her up. While perched on my shoulder, she meows into my face. It’s not aggressive, but as if she’s trying to tell me something. I put her down and she disappears into the flat somewhere.

Later, I notice the dog looking from room to room. She stomps in, looks around, comes out, repeats in the next room. She gets on the bed and snuffles through the blankets. It’s then I realize – she’s looking for the cat.

At first I don’t really care. If anything I feel for the cat. But when the dog’s search ends in frustration, I can’t help but notice. Why can’t the dog find the cat? What the dog lacks in sight and personal hygiene regimen, she makes up for in an amazingly strong nose. She should be able to sniff out the cat with no problem. I am now worried. Did the cat escape? We’ve not left the house, so it’s unlikely she’s outside, unless she’s learned to push a stool to the door, stand on it, turn the key, open the door, move the stool away from the door, and then leave while shutting the door, then this isn’t an option. But it’s happened before.

After dinner Burke brings up the Astral Plane. I ask many questions and she answers them. I will provide a summary now so that you too do not require an aspirin. The Astral Plane is something like an invisible realm between the physical world and a spiritual realm. This is the hunting blind from which our guardian angels watch over us – some of them are drinking, evidently, and some of them are not. (Mine’s in recovery, I think). I believe it is where Elvis lives and where Bigfoot hangs out just after he’s stomped into someone’s campsite. This plane has been postulated since before Plato and its existence is part of the mythology of dozens of cultures. Not coincidentally, most of these cultures have comedic queries regarding the mystical whereabouts of a sock’s lost matching sister.

Only occasionally are we are allowed to project into this plane and it’s done through intense meditation, hallucinogens, lucid dreams, or when our favorite sports team wins a game simultaneous to the pizza guy’s arrival. When we pass through into this world we apparently come through the Astral Plane – a uterus having exclusive through-way rights. And we evidently pass through it again on our way out of this world – hopefully the tunnel which leads to the light doesn’t require a toll.

And it’s where my cat goes when she’s hiding from my dog. Of course I consider this dribble, but after a couple of post dinner Scotches, I get to thinking. My cat is 15 years old and should have died a number of times, but she always seems to manage to eke it out. She leaps up on tables like a ninja, she can disappear for hours on end and then appear out of nowhere .005 seconds after a package of ham is opened. It only makes sense. Also, she seems to notice things around the flats we’ve lived in that I couldn’t see. Often behind me. And seconds before I was thinking of getting into bed.

At Scotch #3 I begin a search of her hideouts: the hallway scarf box, under the blankets on the bed, the chair in the office, in a pile of recently laundered clothing. Nothing. I naturally decide on a fourth Scotch and then fall into a deep sleep.

That’s where I find her. Or rather, she finds me. My flat’s Astral Plane looks just like my flat only the floors are cleaner and all the plants are alive. The moonlight and the shadows switch spots here, but it’s somehow still darkish. My cat walks around it on hindlegs. Columbo is on TV there. I make a note of this, as I gather it’s her favorite show. She points towards my couch, where I take a seat. She sits on the armchair. I await whatever wisdom she will impart that she has gathered through the ages.

“More ham.”

I am surprised, but not as surprised as the fact that she’s got Elvis’s voice.  

The place is small. Really small. We’re in the kitchen-living room-wardrobe-closet-TV room. Burke is holding the dog, who is breathing on my neck. I am counting the flat owner’s nose hairs. Her husband is trying to turn around, but gets caught and breaks into tears. He raises his elbows and manages it. I can actively see him decide against a glass of water. I feel like I’m at the buffet table at an orgy. The realtor raises her hand and presses a portfolio to my midsection. The dog snorts.  

“Shall we go to the kitchen?”

She speaks in Czech so it takes me the requisite 21 seconds to understand. She turns to the left. “Here we are.”

The owners squeeze past us and go out onto the balcony. I think the woman is having a panic attack, but it turns out she’s just drinking.

Last Sunday, feeling that the weekend was getting away from us and trying to avoid that from happening, Burke and I harnessed the dog and went out for a walk. That walk ended up in (aka was aimed at) a pub. Pretty soon we were sipping pivos and chatting and having a grand ole time. Occasionally, I’d glimpse my watch and grumble about the inexorably slow march forward of time and let out a whimper.

Each day of the week brings with it a specific feel towards drinking. Friday and Saturday almost invite it. Thursday is easy enough to sway to a drink (it’s almost Friday, after all). Wednesday and Tuesday are fun on occasion, if only for the novelty of it, and especially if it occurs during sunlight hours. Oh I got drunk on a Tuesday. But Sunday is always a tricky day on which to decide for beers. Sundays are days for laundry and a lounge on the couch or a walk in the park. They’re for getting in bed early and reading until you doze off. But should one decision be made or should one little occurrence occur, then Sunday can just as easily be spent sipping pivos and arguing against that nasty old time bandit, who kidnaps your free time so easily and leaves you on Monday morning walking into work with a confused look on your face and a note in the back of your head to read up on how time moves faster as we age.

And so, after going out drinking, we went in drinking too. When I woke up Monday morning mouth filled with cotton, brain tinged with a drop of regret, I was greeted with the clear signs of afterparty. Two bottles of wine, glasses, an empty bag of chips. The shell of late night Oreos and pretzels. A vague memory of hitting the shop across the street. Billy Joel frozen on the screen within YouTube. Wikipedia on my computer screen, no doubt settling some late night bet (yes, Ty Burrell owns a pub in Utah). And what else did I see? A ghost. Before I needed confirmation, the ghost meowed at me.

It was time to face facts: someone in my house has a drinking problem. And that someone is my cat.

It’s not unheard of. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that animals around the globe thoroughly enjoy alcohol. Tree shrews have a noted enjoyment of alcohol. Each autumn moose in Sweden get shitty on fermenting apples. Macaques drink alcohol whenever they can get their hands on it. And the Bohemian waxwing eats berries specifically from the Rowan tree because it gives them a buzz. Evidence not only suggests that animals like alcohol, since they get it from fruit in nature that naturally ferments itself, it’s likely they’ve been getting tipsy for about 20 million years longer than we have. They’re seasoned veterans.

My cat is one of them. Though she doesn’t wait around for fruit to become fermented, she only needs to wait until I crack something open late at night and then pass out before I finish it. I have awoken to her dabbing a paw into the puddles at the bottom of pint glasses, brandy snifters, and wine orbs. At other times I wake up after a night out on the armchair or on the floor and the cat is sniffing my breath and licking her lips. Or if I can’t sleep and I pour myself a tumbler of bourbon to nudge me towards nighty nights, guess who is standing on the table waiting and thumping her tail against the cutting board? Yep. Cat. What a lush.

But it could be worse. The moose in Sweden totally overdo it on fermented apples and for the exasperated Swede the autumn is a time of lifting drunk moose out of trees and pulling them off their crushed porches. The Bohemian waxwing gets so drunk that a number of them immediately fly into buildings and this is not an unusual way for them to perish. Plus, they’re not Bohemian for nothing. The macaque is a notorious drunk, sometimes they’ll do it all day. The ones who live alone (I guess in captivity) drink much more than the others. The ones who have had a long day (for a monkey I guess this means a day of learning sign language and not being able to fling your feces) drink much more. The macaque might be our closest relative when it comes to booze.  

If anything alcohol makes my cat more pleasant. She meows less and she gets all sappy. She rubs her face against me and purrs, the drunken feline version of ‘I love you man’. Then she curls up in the scarf box and sleeps peacefully for hours. But boy is she in a mood if you reach for a scarf before she’s ready to get up.

I guess the worst thing about famous ships is that we only ever hear about the ones that ended up on the bottom of some body of water. We know the Lusitania and the Terror and the Edmund Fitzgerald. Nobody is reading a history book about the passengers who had a week-long binge fest on the Mauretania and who all ended up in New York a week later with dyspepsia and a negligible hangover. No, we hear about the ones that went down, the ones that were blown up, or the ones that burned on Lake Erie. If your name is somehow connected to a ship, there’s a solid chance you died on it.

There is of course the mother of them all, the one that hit the iceberg. There’s nothing much to tell you about the Titanic that James Cameron didn’t already show you. And he had Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to help him out, not to mention that Celine Dion. You know it hit an iceberg, you could probably guess that around 1500 people died, and you’ve maybe heard some tidbits like they’d skimped on lifeboats and they sent out the wrong distress signal. (The signal they sent actually said ‘steer clear’, which might be the exact opposite of what you want to do when your boat is sinking in the Atlantic.) You’ve heard the folkloric stories of men bravely staying aboard, other guys dressing as women to get on lifeboats, the band playing until the ship went under. You may have heard bittersweet stories such as Ida Strauss almost getting on a lifeboat, but in the end deciding to perish with her husband, Macy’s owner Isidor Straus. They lay in bed together until the sea swallowed them. Then there’s the myths and legends, the heroic Newfoundland dog, the premonitions, the mystery ship nearby, the captain was drunk (no evidence for this, but it was 1912 and he was a sailor, so it’s a natural assumption). A book regales the ‘true’ story of a pig that lived through the Titanic, but as far as the evidence shows, the only pig on board was on first class dinnerplates.