GOOD SPIRITS

by Cynthia MacGregor

Some folks can hardly beer the thought of drinking, while others make rum in their schedules to stop and sip a couple every night. The average person has a strong preference for one or another brand of booze—if you ask most any person what brandy likes, he’s bound to have an answer. And if he has to drink some other kind, it makes his evening go all a-rye and his disposition turn sour.

What makes a person like a particular alcoholic drink over another? I’m martini bit suspicious that it’s an inherited characteristic—in other words, it’s in your gins. My mother was a scotch drinker, and so am I. I don't care for beer at all. It’s not just the gastric eruptions after drinking beer—quite apart from all the bourbon you do, I never even cared for the taste of the stuff. It’s ale I can do to take a tiny sip.

Many people hate it when they can’t get their favorite drink, or their favorite brand. They’ll grouse and wine about it. This may be okay behavior in a bar, but it’s hardly mannerly in someone’s home. It’s far cooler to be polite to your host, who after all is trying to be cordial to you.

Booze makes people behave in odd ways. I’ve even heard of women getting down on the living room floor and wrestling after losing their inhibitions to inebriation. “I can liquor with one hand tied behind my back.” “No, you’ll be the lickee. I’ll be the liqueur—just watch!”

I haven’t a moment’s stout that alcohol does strange things to people. I recently got bock from a trip up north, where I spent an evening in the company of a woman I’d never met before. Right before my eyes, I saw this woman change character completely as soon as her husband porter a drink. She was insufferable—oh, how I missed my far-off foam in Florida right then.

I should have stopped at my friend’s house nearby before the visit—he’s scotch just the thing to show someone how booze changes them—a videocamera, to re-cordial last few minutes sober and your subsequent behavior as you imbibe. By the time the evening was over, this woman had spilled peanuts all over the rug and broken a glass anisette of dishes.

The last I saw of her, she was out on the street, having a conversation with an orange traffic cone. She was talking to it a mile a minute and really believed it was not only answering her but outtalking her by a mile. When I walked over to her, she said to me, in absolute amazement, “Just listen to that cognac!”

If that woman had seen the way she carried on, the visible tape recorded proof, she would have really been hurting. I mean, it would have caused her real pain, not just champagne.