The Grand Nobility Of Highball Crystal
Americans have a monopoly on alcoholism. The members of every other nationality simply drink too much. They may overindulge, but we Yanks, have the high ground. It is not in our ability to walk about with a stomach full of gut rot, but instead in the how and why we drink, as if the world is ending, as for many of us, it is. Life is but a beautiful fucking disaster and might be spent in the gutter of the nearest bar, foreign or domestic. Time spent on barstools spending money we do not have, squandering life amidst the persistent dwindle of moments that could be more stable, yet we evade like a deer avoids a bear or the antelope eludes the cheetah. No, we are the kings and queens of this disaster, the grand nobility of highball crystal. There is a way that the American alcoholic imbibes that is exclusive to our way of life and entirely in our nature.
When I was a youth, my fellow countrymen and I would often joke how, while entirely functional at the time, we drank like the wasted Southerner gripping bottles of Jim, Jack, or Johnnie more often than he fills a cup of water at the sink or juice from the fridge. No, we are different, and it is a difference not to be lionized or sanctified but rather one to be accepted and practiced like the dancer measures steps or the pianist studies sheet music. The overwhelming urge for one more glass or pull straight from the bottle, an incessant siren song from black and white labels, of which the entire ancestry of a single patriarchal family who has gladly blinded generations since before the country's founding is proudly proclaimed on the left flank with portraits included. A flaunt of prestige as the level of liquid drains behind their faces, faces of a family tree whose heritage I know better than my own.
I read an article that said the Fins are the happiest members sharing in the disaster, and it's an award I would gladly give up if it were ever placed on us. What great painting or statue was ever crafted by an artist in a state of happiness? Happiness: a hollow word and hollow virtue. What great music was ever made in a state of bliss? What great urge to create came from contentedness and complacency? None, for Yanks, we thrive in the muck, in the absolute disgust of swamp moss and dark water. We are home in our discontent and dirt, our putrid sense of self-worth and belonging, all fabricated from the disconnected culture and vacuous vanity. I cradle a double of dark water distilled by one of the families drowning the downtrodden and discontented. I think of doing something else that may not exist, something I'm not sure I would know even if it smacked me in the face and turned me on my ear. I'm on the covered patio of The Bastard sucking cigarettes and feeling sorry for myself. I think I'll continue to take the punches like I take the hangovers, in stride and on the prowl for the next fix of fire water.
By all accounts and controversy, I should walk home and pontificate about the moments I felt inspired to change, as if the antidote to the disaster is abstinence and seeing single. But, no, I'd rather sit and torture myself among the accouterments of Bulleit bourbon and Camel Blues, the rain and heat lamps. My pace lags, and I'm beginning to lose steam as my vision doubles. The cold creeps in through thinly layered plastic, and Reykjavikian wind tunnels burst through, meeting my bones with such contempt I assume it wants me dead. It is all a fucking disaster, but a beautiful one at that. A beauty that may seem perverse to describe but a beauty I see, nonetheless.
In this disaster, this beautiful fucking disaster is a concept confounded when contemplated, a concept met with evidence of heavy drinking, proof of a self-perpetuated hardship brought on by the self that is not only welcomed but demanded. A mistake made in denial, allowing others to tell you who you are without first deciding for yourself. I know who I am and lay it down on pages for all to see and pass whatever judgments they deem appropriate and proclaim their descriptions as if the mystery is solved in them any more than in me. We are all a great mystery, a mystery not meant to be solved, no antidote for the disaster. Take amoxicillin for your chlamydia but keep your life prescriptions to yourself.
We are cursed in the beauty of our mysteries, so distraught in our disaster that advice is far simpler to give than it is to take. Why? Because the mystery you so easily cracked in others is thriving, festering inside of yourself, and you have no hope, no medication, no answer for it, so you turn against it, resorting to self-deprecation made in jest to soften the hard truth, the blistering truth that turns your soul to mush. To behold it and stare straight into its face would land you on a barstool beside me, cradling doubles and sucking down cigarettes.
Cover art: Harry McCormick - Interior Bar Scene
