They found his head in a driver's wheel, but his body it never was found

[sovay]

I miss being able to drink. I don't mean it jokily, because of the pandemic. I mean that it took me years to discover that I did not categorically dislike the taste of alcohol—what it turns out I like are red wines so tannic they could do you like Tollund Man, whiskies that taste like those same peatlands set on fire, and a broad variety of cocktails so long as they aren't sticky, with a particular fondness for rum and absinthe and a particular revulsion for fernet and a semi-aesthetic non-ironic fascination with tiki drinks—and whenever I had to fill out those medical questionnaires that ask about drinks/drugs/cigarettes I truthfully reported "one to two drinks every two to three months" and in November I had the stupidly novelistic experience of being told by a doctor to cut it out completely for the sake of not dying. (I was also told to cut out coffee, which was no loss, and chocolate, which immediately complicated my relationship with the number of desserts I could order in restaurants.) Of course it's all academic at the moment, since I don't care that Massachusetts has its reported COVID-19 deaths down to zero, I don't consider it safe or ethical to walk into a bar like the setup of a joke whose punch lines number in the hundreds of thousands, I don't even know if any of the places I liked to order drinks are going to survive this never inevitable catastrophe of incompetence and cruelty handwaved as cold equations, but it's been more than six months and I don't know if I'll ever have the option again. I like having options. I drank more ceremonially than socially, but a person has anniversaries. My very first job as a professional storyteller, I was paid in whiskey. Being paid in mocktails wouldn't feel quite the same.

Comments

[sovay]

So I'm hopeful that when restaurants reopen, you will be pleasantly surprised.

I appreciate it! I should have been clearer, except I was complaining to the internet last thing before bed: it's not that I always favored chocolate (my dessert tastes actually run toward things like fruits and caramels), it's that all of a sudden I discovered how many desserts have chocolate in them. I hadn't noticed when I didn't have to avoid it.

I do miss chocolate chip cookies, though. I make them with white chocolate chips now, but it's not the same.

Still, ugh to restrictions on somebody who tends to enjoy the fullness of life in ways that are varied and admirable.

Thank you.