Older is Not Always Wiser.

Burning Man

Ingredients:
1 oz Vodka
I oz Cran-Rasperry Juice
1 oz Mango Juice
Orange Wheel & Pomegranate Seeds, for garnish

Directions:
Combine the vodka, cran-raspberry juice, and mango juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice, and shake. Strain into a martini glass. Drop in a pinch of pomegranate seeds, and then float the orange wheel in the center. Top the orange wheel with another pinch of pomegranate seeds.


The art of making resolutions comes around twice a year. The first is obvious: New Year’s Day where you vow to drink less, exercise more and read the New York Times on Sundays. The second round hits during Wedding Season where you vow to drink less, exercise more and swap out the bitter drunk girl for one who is pleasantly buzzed and open-minded.

Walking to the podium to give my Maid of Honor speech at my sister’s wedding, I felt my resolution hit me in the back. I whipped around without spilling my champagne to find Tony, the thirty-nine year old Italian groomsman, staring back at me. “No matter what you say up there it’s going to be great,” he said with a reassuring smile that took the nervous flush out of my cheeks.

I took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said barely noticing that he was bald, and walked up to the microphone.

Three glasses of champagne later, I couldn’t figure out why I had never noticed Tony before. My mother had been encouraging me to date older men since college for they knew what they wanted. Only I wanted young and unavailable. Dancing to Hall & Oats with Tony the groomsman, I decided to open my mind and become a wedding cliché with a kiss.

Flying back to Los Angeles, I rewarded my responsible decision with a mini-bottle of red wine. Opening a bag of salty peanuts, I wondered if it mattered that my responsible choice was ten years older than me? Of course not. Did it matter that he lived in San Francisco? I don’t think so. Was it a bad sign that he didn’t actually ask for my number? Washing down the peanuts with my mini-wine, I decided the answer was clearly no.

A month later, I was responsibly riding on the back of Tony’s motorcycle through the rainy streets of San Francisco. Holding onto his leather jacket, I couldn’t help but feel I had stepped into a deleted scene from Grease. Only I was Rizzo, not Sandy. As we pulled into the garage of his Victorian walk-up, I decided my mother was right. Older was definitely the way to go.

“You still have roommates?” I asked standing in the entryway to his Pac Heights apartment. My eyes moved from the bicycles hanging on the wall, to a colorful row of helmets, to his sailing gear, and over to his music collection. It was the most spectacular gathering of toys I had seen in years.

“Yeah, two of them,” he said pointing to the back rooms. I stepped back, trying to figure out if we were alone, and bumped into the colorful basket of a bicycle. “That’s my Burning Man bike,” he said referencing the weeklong hippy festival in the Nevada desert. “I’ve gone every year since it started.”

I shook my head, trying to picture my perfectly responsible thirty-nine year old running around the desert, presumably naked. Luckily, he started to fill in the blanks before my visualization went any further. “Last year I rode around in a chariot,” he said with a boyish grin. “I dressed up as Zeus,” he explained handing me a drink. “In a fur vest,” he said completing the picture.

“Fur?” I said moving away from his roommate’s door. “Wasn’t that hot?” I asked clearly missing the bit about the chariot.

Tony quickly assured me that it was faux fur, not that I had asked. For the next twenty minutes, he explained the “Burning Man” appeal was the fact that you could be anyone you wanted to out in the desert. Searching his impressive music collection, I wondered why he couldn’t just be himself?

Heading home after an exhausting toy-filled weekend, I realized my thirty-nine year old Greek God knew exactly what he wanted, which was to ride off into the desert (this year on a giant frog) in order to set the man on fire. In my drunken resolve to make the responsible choice, I ended up choosing the one guy who was still young and unavailable.

Picking up the New York Times, I wondered if there was something to stepping outside of yourself to examine the choices you’ve made. Something more to wearing a fur-vest in the desert. But mostly, I wondered why Zeus had traded in his chariot for a giant frog.

Suggested Number of Drinks:

Who Says You Can't Meet a Man at a Bar?

Drunk Shakespeare

Ingredients:
2 oz Irish Whiskey
½ oz Amaretto
Splash of Cream
2 Maraschino Cherries, for garnish

Directions:
Fill a lowball glass with ice. Combine the Irish whiskey, Amaretto, and splash of cream in the glass. Stir. Garnish with 2 maraschino cherries.


Walking into an Irish bar at ten o’clock in the morning I knew my mother was going to drink me under the table. Eleven years of mother-daughter drinking had set the precedent. What I didn’t know heading into Tom Bergin’s, still drunk from the night before, was that the main objective of my mother’s trip to Los Angeles wasn’t to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as formerly believed. It was to find me a man!

Inside the dimly lit bar, my mother ordered two Irish Car Bombs and sat us next to the bartender. She always sat next to the bartender because it gave her the geographic advantage of meeting everyone in a ten-stool radius. Unfortunately, the “everyone” in this situation consisted of an eighty-year-old man already deep into the barrel, and a bald Leprechaun.

“Maybe you should try wearing dresses,” my mother said as if the pantsuit was responsible for the gaping hole in my dating life. “You’ve got nice legs,” she said leaning in to suggest a private conversation. “And a great ass,” she yelled as the music stopped.

My eyes burned into the bottom of my drink as I tried to work out just whom she wanted to inform about my ass. I swiveled around on my barstool. The car bomb flipped in my stomach as three bloated middle-aged men walked through the door. My mother smiled in their direction until they felt obligated to sit next to us. They ordered three pints of green beer. I ordered a shot.

Before long, the bar was heaving with enough day-drinkers that my mother tumbled away from the middle-aged men she deemed “fixer uppers,” and into a drunken sea of green. For the next forty-five minutes, she worked the room like the patron saint, and then returned triumphant!

His name was Dan and, according to my mother, was twenty-nine, single and questionably employed. He wore thick-rimmed glasses (more James Dean than Urkel), and had a smile just crooked enough to add character to his Bold and the Beautiful good looks. My quick math suggested he was a 7 out of 10, the highest rating all day (fine, all year).
Now above the line of desperation [5 and under], I decided it was time to celebrate. I stood, straightening my shirt to hide the fat-tire that had formed around my single waist, and ordered another TUD (totally unnecessary drink).

Slowly, the crowd started to melt away until all I could see was an old-fashioned boy from Kansas City and his amazingly white teeth. I swung like a hyperactive kid off his every word until I started to get seasick. I steadied myself on the bar but he never stopped talking. Three stools down, my mother lifted her glass in our direction. She was hopeful; I was fading; and Dan was apparently very thirsty. He downed his Scotch on the rocks, and then planted a kiss on my cheek.

This was all the encouragement my mother needed to start planning our wedding. She slid back down the bar, grabbed her future son-in-law by the hands, and invited him back to my apartment for corn beef and cabbage. My eyes shot open. I fumbled, trying to explain he couldn’t leave his friends, only to learn he didn’t have any. He was here alone.

Stepping into the sunset, the noise from the bar softened. The world slowed down. Everything slowed down aside from Kansas City, who twirled in our direction reciting a botched monologue from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Off our bewildered looks, he explained he was a thespian.

I shook my head, “You didn’t mention you were an actor.” Dan threw his hands up in dramatic fashion and made an invisible feather over his head as if it were sticking out of a hat. Thespian, he corrected.

My mother whistled for a cab, as I looked sideways at the man she wanted me to marry. Dan bounced over to us with child-like energy, and quickly dipped below the line of desperation. He opened the backdoor to the cab, and whispered, “I like you, Linda.” My mother stopped. I looked up. Who the hell was Linda?

Fifteen minutes later, Dan spun around my apartment as if doing so would erase the Scotch from his mind. My aunt and two cousins arrived for dinner, wondering who the strange man was in my living room. Before they could ask, Dan started to laugh, as if to some private joke, and then threw a Kaiser roll across the room. Calmly, my mother placed her hand on my shoulder and whispered, “At least we know what we don’t want.”

Suggested Number of Drinks: