TMI Questions: Eat! Drink! Be Mary!

“If that’s all there is, my friends…. then let’s keep dancing.  Break out the booze.  Let’s have a ball!” – ‘Is That All There Is?’ by Peggy Lee

I don’t drink like I used to.  Something about booze, theatre, and delusional behavior used to fit like hand in glove, but no more.  A little bit of all three still echo about my life, but for the most part, when it comes to theatre and delusions, I have forsaken them. 

But booze!  NEVAH!

That said, I now limit my intake to once or twice a month and typically have no more than one martini or a glass of wine – with food.  Yeah, it’s not like the old days (I don’t remember too much about them, but the slurry details still haunt my brain on occasion).  And, of course, there are those I knew back then whom I run into every once in a while and they just love reminding me all about my bad old self (bitches).

Yes, I gave that life up, just as I continue to give up so many of the things I enjoy as I get older (smarter).   Still, sometimes the stars align, the moon shines brightly, and my liver will cry out to be bathed in the elixir wrought by the heavens.  And I, being merely human, will bow to its will and seek the sustenance and satisfaction that can only be found in a martini glass.

TMI QUESTIONS

Questions designed to reveal Too Much Information

Link: http://tmiquestions.blogspot.com/

Eat! Drink! Be Mary!

Cocktails at brunch: Bloody Mary or Mimosa?

Do I have a penis? 

Bloodies, of course.  I love all the spices found in the mix; the spicier, the better. I love that you get a bunch of stuff with it (pepperoncini, celery, olives, cheese chunks, shrimp… yes, yes, yes!  Pile it on.)  I love that it technically could count towards my vegetables for the day and I love that certain brunch places have little bars where you can make your own.  So, here’s my twist on this… I drink gin, so I have gin Bloodies.  Sometimes the bar will carry Boodles Gin… so that makes it…. A Boodles Bloody!

Mimosas are for men who see no problem wearing a pink Polo shirt in public.  Mimosas are what the clichéd gay male characters on bad television sitcoms drink. Mimosas are sweet (champagne makes me gag). So give me your bloodiest bloody and save the sweet stuff for that poof with the boy band hair sitting at the next table. 

Do you have a favorite food/drink pairing?

A Boodles Gin Martini, up, olives, side of ice, paired with Schindler Nachos (House-made Tortilla Chips, Melted Cheese, Tomatoes, Green Onions, Black Beans and Salsa with Guacamole and Sour Cream) at Eli’s, downtown Minneapolis. The mixture of ice cold gin and spicy hot goodness?  While many things have hit the back of my throat, nothing hits it quite like this amazing combo.  

Beer? Wine? or Cocktails? Why?

Cocktails.  But nothing fancy.  No mix (calories), juice on occasion, but never, ever soda pop. 

Beer – causes bloat and belly. 

Wine – occasionally with food, but many are too sweet for my taste. 

And those horrible premixed concoctions and hybrid beer things?  Absolut(e) abominations.  Go suck on a wine cooler, you amateurs. Leave the real drinking to the grown-ups.

Red wine or white wine?

White, these days.  I love red wine, but it does not love me.  The sulfites give me headaches.

So many whites are so sweet.  A total turn off.  I like light hints of fruit and a nice, broad finish.

I can’t open bottles of wine.  Discovering this was the end of my career as a waiter.

Tell me about the hard stuff.

I was at the prairie, sunning as usual and wandered into the woods where I came upon… whah?  Oh!  Yes!  Booze, angel?  Yes?  Well, you said ‘hard stuff’ and of course my mind went…

You meant booze. 

As previously stated… I love gin; ‘twas mother’s milk to me. The finest martini I ever had was mixed by a former friend of mine in Miami – Boodles Gin with orange blossom water (at least that’s what I think it was).  It was heavenly and every martini since?  While it always does the trick (so to speak), they have paled in comparison to that magnificent gin-induced moment.

Oh… and note to ALL BARTENDERS and BAR OWNERS – Martinis must be served in a classic, stemmed martini glass.  Anything else robs the drink of its beauty and dignity.  And if there are two things that always result when drinking martinis it is beauty (everyone looks better and so do I) and dignity (as I fall off my barstool, crawl toward the door, and pour myself next to the curb as I flail about attempting to wave down a cab). 

Cigars?

Only if vomiting is the desired result. 

Though I recently discovered that it is possible to give head and get fucked by a dude smoking a stogie in the great outdoors, provided that there is a slight breeze.  But indoors?  Forget it.  Being around it is like being sealed in an airtight coffin.

I did a show once where I had to smoke one.  Like an idiot I actually tried smoking it.  I’d get so dizzy and lightheaded I would have to sit down and put my head between my knees.  After that, I learned to just hold it and occasionally chew on the end of it. Ah, yes… ACTING!

Honestly?  I’ve never understood the attraction.  I see pics of leather doms smoking them and I think… wow, that is hot. 

But the reality of it?  Eh. Pass.

When was the last time you were hung-over? Worst hangover?

Last time I was hung-over was on a Monday after a Sunday night out with a couple of friends of mine.  That was like six years ago.  It was summer.  We hit every gay bar downtown and I had a drink at every one of them.  It was one of those evenings where caution was thrown to the wind, as the company (and peer pressure) simply proved to be too much.  I remember laughing a lot, getting hit on occasionally but never taking it seriously, and almost not getting into the last bar we hopped.  We were a trio of magnificent bastards (eh - more likely, in reality, we were merely three rather tragic, pathetic homo alkies).

WORST HANGOVER… New Year’s Eve 1990

I had just returned to college for the umpteenth time and was doing really, really well (3.96).  In my philosophy class I met this hard-faced, athletic lesbian who thought I was hitting on her when I tried to chat her up.  We ended up being best friends for the next six years.  We even dissected a baby pig together (it was already infused with formaldehyde). 

I had never gone out on New Year’s Eve, so she and her socialite girlfriend promised me the night of my life.  There were several gay bars in St. Paul at the time and that is where we focused our activities.  We were cabbing it, with me planning on sleeping over at her girlfriend’s loft. 

The evening started out sweet.  We sat at the giant bar in the first club we hit and older men kept buying me drinks – which I kept accepting.  I would go over and chat with them a bit and they would pay me a compliment, then I would beg off because I was “with friends’.  Stupidly, I drank the drinks. 

The evening ended with the three of us three-sheets to the wind at some breakfast place.  Apparently I had run into someone I used to work with in a previous life and he had invited himself along for the rest of my night, hoping, I think, to get in my pants.  The idea did not totally seem like a bad one, until I ate and sobered up a bit.  We got back to the girlfriend’s loft and the dude was waiting for something to happen.  I pulled my friend aside, told her I was going into the bathroom, where she was to come in about five minutes, then return to tell my potential-new-boyfriend that I was horribly sick, pour him into a cab, and bid him adieu. 

Yeah, shitty thing to do right?  Well, I paid for it the next morning when I woke after noon, really did get horribly sick, and then proceeded to feel like the sky was falling on my head for the rest of the day.  Instant karma?  You better believe it.

Best hangover cure.

I have a friend who swears that if you beat off right away in the morning, it will cure your hangover.  He didn’t believe it was true, until another friend of his convinced him to try it.  He claims it worked.  Something about the endorphins released?  No, I have not tried it.

My cure?  The Joan Crawford Rise ‘N Shine.  See the opening credit sequence of ‘Mommie Dearest’ for details.  Joan swore by it (and AT everyone else). And DON’T skimp on the ice. 

I actually used to hold my face in there until I couldn’t feel it. 

Of course, this may also bring on a seizure, so… well, forewarned, pilgrims.

Craziest/baddest thing you did when you had too much? Did you remember it or did your friends inform you? Make it a fun one!

Oh, dear.

Theatre, booze, delusions. 

When inebriated I would frequently bed the actresses I was working with (thus the delusions).  That might explain my turning into a near-teetotaler. 

Remember that actress from that horrendous production of ‘Piaf’ that I foisted unto the world which I mentioned last week?  Several years before that debacle, she and I were touring buddies in a really cool, well-received, outdoor production of ‘A Midsummers Night’s Dream’. The thing took up my whole summer and I got to visit cities I’d never heard of before.

I did not direct, but choreographed all of Oberon and Titania’s and the faeries’ scenes, to the music of David Bowie’s ‘Low’ – something that got us a bit of press at the time. I played Demetrius to my future Edith’s, Hermia.  It was a Mutt n’ Jeff pairing, at best, but we made it work.  We had chemistry.  The costumes were little more than napkins, leaving nothing to the imagination and it was a highly sexualized production.

We went out drinking after every performance. 

Once back home in Minneapolis, we decided to celebrate by visiting some dive bar on the West Bank.  We all sat at the bar and this woman introduced me to White Russians.  What a mistake!  I fell in love with them, because they were smoky tasting and smooth as silk. “I can’t believe there is booze in here!’, I kept exclaiming.  I had at least five and possibly (probably) more.  Needless to say, not having eaten, we were SMASHED.  We got ejected from the bar and ended up sitting curbside where I and my beloved Hermia proceeded to torridly make-out like a couple of total goons, much to the odd delight of the rest of the cast (except for Oberon, who had a thing for me – one night I was helping out with costumes - a copper-piped horse’s head, some African themed jute collar – yadda, yadda, yadda, I ended up fucking his brains out). 

Well, the downside of making out with this woman?  She was married.  And while we ended up in the backseat of someone’s car, where we dry-humped each other to the point of frantic ecstasy, something in the back of my mind kept bringing to mind her husband (a brilliant guitarist who looked like a cute Ric Ocasek and was hung like a horse), so we did not do the actual deed. Whew!

Eight years later, she visited me at my thrift/antique shop in South Minneapolis  - me, believing I had convinced her to play the title character in a production of ‘Agnes of God’ I wanted to mount.  But, no… she was there to make amends, apologizing for something I barely remembered.  But she remembered.  And it bothered her a great deal. 

She was sort of born again, in the program, and sober.  I told her she had nothing to apologize for and we parted. It was bittersweet and the last time I saw her. 

Bonus

Are you a cheap date? How many drinks does it take you get you into bed?

I am not cheap… I’m easy.

How many drinks… none, depending on the dude. 

Have I made that mistake?  Drinking until that someone who’s been hitting on you all evening finally wins you over?  That only happened once, in my first year of ‘gay-bardom’, when it was all new and I was fresh meat.  This dude with a big bushy black mustache, who sort of reminded me of that cartoon dog ‘Droopy’ ended up taking me home.  Once there, we got naked and… I proceeded to vomit, hanging over the foot of his bed.  Served both of us right. 

Oddly enough, he still wanted to date me. 

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen, trust me.

Well, here’s to the good old, bad old days.

Cheer’s dears!

Drinking Again by Bette Midler

One For My Baby by Bette Midler