FRIENDS, I recently watched Triangle of Sadness, the film by Ruben Östlund in which fifteen minutes of screen time is devoted to rich people vomiting and shitting themselves (it is great, and I wrote an essay about it over at WRITING WITHOUT RULES: DEEP DIVES that you should read). It being the new year and all, all that vomit reminded me of one of my own New Year’s Eve debacles, an evening I’ve dubbed the Bubblegum Disaster.
You may not know this, but there was a moment in my life — brief and anomalous — when I suspected I might be fancy. I was quite young and the world seemed fresh and full of possibilities, and so I thought, why can’t I be the sort of guy who wears tailored suits and smokes European cigarettes and drinks cocktails as opposed to shooting whiskey like an animal.
I’m long disabused of this notion, but for a few short months in my mid-20s it took root. I would be a man of taste and discrimination. Naturally, the main avenue I pursued towards this kind of sophistication involved alcohol, because what better way to sooth the jangled nerves of an urban hillbilly attempting to live above his station? So I pursued cocktails, and threw a series of small-scale parties. The first was a disaster not of my own making: I invited people over for a martini party. I’d put together some simple recipes for various martinis, and we’d all stand around discussing fancy things as we sipped those disgusting, horrible things. But the day of the party I caught a stomach flu or food poisoning or something, and chose to soldier on, with the end result that I spent a great deal of time at my own party lying down in a dark room and praying for death.
Pink Food is Always a Bad Idea
Undeterred, I saw New Year’s Eve as a second chance. Friends were hosting their own party, so I offered to mix up a menu of shots for everyone. The only shot I actually recall was a Bubblegum shot, and the fact that this horror was even on the menu is all you need to know about how things went that evening. Bubblegum shots are what they serve you in hell, and here I was mixing them up in bulk.
The evening ended, of course, in disaster, the sort of damp, colorful disaster that came with a pink tinge. And I learned many lessons: One, shots are stupid. Two, bubblegum shots are poison. And three, I am not fancy in any way.
I went back to imbibing my whiskey straight from the bottle like a frontiersman, and pursued a career exporting authentic urban hillbilly gibberish to the masses as I was always destined to do. I haven’t consumed a beverage that involves more than one ingredient since then, and I have been much happier for it.
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you have a great time — just refuse anything pink.