I like beer. Unfortunately, beer views me as a ship to whom they may barnacle and stay on for a number of months or years. A Saturday night of beers can mean tighter pants on Monday. It’s very distressing. Something had to be done.
If I could just take a moment to bemoan the unfairness of age. At 22, I could drink 20 beers a week and still maintain a good weight. At 29, oh maybe the pounds were there because of beer, but I could go for a light jog three or four times a week and my pants would fit again. It was like a magic trick. Even in my early 30s beer was a manageable friend and foe.
But somewhere in the 4 decade this changed. In this decade I overhauled my lifestyle. Cooking involved buying ingredients and making things rather than opening packages and adding water. I began working out instead of relying on a morning sprint to a tram with half of a hotdog sticking out of my mouth. I relegated beer to once a week – any other night I wanted a drink it had to be wine. Despite all the wine, and the vast sadness that comes along with it, I began feeling much better, could pee without sweating, and clothing starting fitting better. Buttons on pants exploded less and less.
For a time, things were good. But in the later part of that 4 decade, I noticed that despite my better habits, weight loved me. it crawled from near and far to attach itself to my behind. And it would sit there. The sad realization was that it was mostly due to beer. But it wasn’t too bad yet.
Then came the 5 decade. The early part of the 5 decade has been notable for a number of reasons. I can’t sleep past 6 am. If I am called to a task after 6 pm, I treat it with the open hostility it deserves. I almost put things in vessels where they don’t belong – egg in a toaster, milk in the closet, dog food in the freezer. And then there’s the open-water attack on my waistline. At the front line of this is beer.
Isn’t it ironic that a thing you worship your whole life comes back to kick you in the chubby shins? It’s like Jesus coming down on Judgement Day and giving wet willies and titty twisters to all of his followers. This is beer. I have always enjoyed it, but it treats me like a dog. I am in an abusive relationship. I show love. Beer shows me a scale and laughs.
What to do?
Enter TV. The people in the shows I watch seem to drink a lot (for accuracy, remove ‘seem to’). They sip on beers and wine, sure. But they really drink whiskey. Jay Pritchitt on Modern Family, Frasier Crane, Don Draper all spend a lot of time sipping or gulping whiskey. And in particular, the whiskey and soda.
Hm, I said. A quick peruse to my new advisor ChatGPT told me that the 90 calories in a whiskey soda is clearly less than the 200+ brought in by each beer. I wanted to try that. I asked for it in Czech a few times and it more or less worked out. Was the taste of beer there? No. Did I feel like a Mad Man? A little.
The real test came a week ago when I met a friend online. He’s a man who loves to bend his elbow and I had prepped for the evening by having soda water, whiskey, and ginger ale on hand. This was great, I thought. I drank my drinks, punctuated occasionally by the occasional Becherovka. The drinks tasted good. Not the stale tepid that a beer can get after a while in an open can. This was great.
Perhaps the greatest invention in modern drinking is the video call. When it’s time to say good night, you hit a button and you are fifteen feet from your fridge. Perhaps more importantly, you are one foot for your bed and not a city away from your bed. I pushed the button and laid down, content with the swimmy feeling that Don Draper’s drink had brought me and its lower calorie count.
In the morning, I was greeted and reminded of another joy that comes in decade 5: the mindbogglingly bad hangover. At some point, my body and brain conspired to get me to stop drinking by bringing on powerful hangovers that the better part of a week. The whiskey soda version was as powerful as Obi Wan Kenobi in death and I spent the morning and early afternoon moaning into a pillow, watching TV, and closing my eyes whenever they drank.
So, whiskey and soda wasn’t the cure-all I had hoped it would be. But I’ve been reading some of the Russian short story writers recently. Maybe it’s time to explore the world of vodka.
