Booze 101

On a Saturday afternoon in the middle of the last century, my father granted me the privilege of tagging along while he stepped down the hall to return a jackhammer to our next-door neighbor, Milton B.

—Did you say a jackhammer?

Just to see if you were paying attention. More likely it was a ball-peen hammer or a Philips-head screwdriver.

—You couldn’t make it a keyhole saw, could you?

If you’re fond of those, why not? But the point is Milton B., who kept an assortment of such tools in his broom closet, lived with his wife and two daughters in apartment 8G, while my father, the antithesis of a handyman, lived with his wife and two sons in apartment 8H.

—What if either of them had owed me money? Where would I have sent the bill?

To 77 Thurmond Circle, Bronx, New York. I don’t know how fast Milton would have coughed up, but you can depend on it that my father would have made you wait at least thirty days for your dough.

“As long as you’re here,” Milton greeted him, “what would you say to a cold one?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” my father replied.

—He had a penchant for beer?

If he did, he seldom got to indulge it, because rubbing alcohol was the only kind my mother tolerated in the house.

—She was a teetotaler?

That’s not a word she’d have had in her vocabulary, so let’s just say she was determined to delay as long as possible my exposure to the liquid varieties of vice—with the predictable result that I was instantly fascinated by the thick white foam that bubbled up in the glass Milton filled for my father from a quart bottle of Rheingold.

My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer.

Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.

Unsurprisingly, the paradox at the heart of this double-rhymed koan further intensified my curiosity.

“Can I taste it?” 

When my father hesitated at this innocent request, Milton, a curly-haired furniture salesman, sucked thoughtfully on his pipe and volunteered that he’d heard the surest way to encourage kids to develop an interest in inebriants was to make a big deal of them.

“Not to mention,” he mentioned, “that a little beer is supposed to be good for the health. It’s high in minerals and vitamin E. I read that in the Reader’s Digest.”

“Well, all right,” my father surrendered, “but just one sip.”

You can easily imagine the guffaws that escaped the two of them when I choked and spat the shit back into the glass.

—How old were you?

Around ten, and the experience made such a bad impression on me that it was another seven or eight years before I sampled drink again.

—Who provided it to you this time?

My aunt Billie, my father’s sister.

—Younger or older?

A couple of years younger—which would have made her about forty the night she showed up a good twenty-four hours ahead of schedule at the bungalow I was holed up in at a decaying summer colony just north of the city.

—Why would you have been holed up in a bungalow colony? 

On doctor’s orders. I was recuperating.

—From what?

Neither the doctor nor I could have told you specifically, since not for another thirty years would a name for what ailed me appear in the diagnostic manuals.

—I assume there were symptoms?

Quite a few, which, taken together, equated to a severe reduction in functionality.

—In other words, a kind of breakdown?

I wouldn’t dream of stopping you from drawing your own conclusions on this or any other subject.

—But when you say your aunt showed up ahead of schedule—what exactly does that mean?

That it was a weekday and she usually came up to the bungalow only on weekends.

—So she was staying there, too?

As she had every right to do, since she was splitting the rent with my parents.

—Were you inconvenienced by her unexpected arrival?

She didn’t catch me up to no good with the stunning but very pregnant grass widow over the way, if that’s what you’re implying. 

—Perish the thought.

Besides, I was fond of my aunt and—reclusive though I’d become—I would have been glad enough to see her old Buick convertible bumping along with its top down on the unpaved strip between the two rows of wasp-infested bungalows, if there hadn’t been someone else in the front seat with her—as it turned out, a guy I’d never laid eyes on.

“This is Jerry M.” She could hardly contain her exhilaration. “You’re the first person in the world to know we just got engaged.”

—At forty, your aunt was still single?

Much to the disappointment of the rest of the family, who’d long since given up on her attracting a husband, because she was too much of a firebrand.

—Not for Jerry M., it would seem.

True. Jerry—far from the typical cringing middle-aged bachelor—was as strapping as a longshoreman, with a handshake that could have doubled as a bear trap.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said jovially. “I hear you’re even more of a red than Billie.”

—Your aunt was a red?

In her capacity as a shop steward, the scourge of the bosses at Schocken Electronics, where she worked on the assembly line. 

—You have my permission to describe her.

Five foot six. A hundred and thirty-five pounds.

—Hair?

Short, thick, and dark.

—Eyes?

Flashing and black.

—Face?

Redeemed from mere prettiness by a dramatic scar down one cheek.

—And you?

To describe myself would be redundant, since you’re looking straight at me.

—I meant, was he right? Were you more of a red than your aunt?

At eighteen, you bet I was all for demolishing what passed for civilization, only I wasn’t about to discuss my zeal for anarchy with a total stranger, and would readily have left the two of them alone at our picnic table, if they hadn’t insisted I help them out with the cold cuts they’d brought. They’d also brought vodka, with which they encouraged me to toast their engagement so often that I was feeling distinctly weird by the time Jerry excused himself to check out the nightly high-stakes poker game at the colony clubhouse.

“Jerry likes to gamble,” Billie said indulgently as we watched him saunter off up the strip. “He used to be in the merchant marine, but now he has a butcher shop on Amsterdam Avenue. Will it bother you if we spend the night?”

“Why would it bother me?”

“Your mother wouldn’t like it at all.” 

“I won’t tell her, don’t worry.”

She beamed at me. “You’re the only member of the family who doesn’t disapprove of me. They all treat me like a pariah—and they don’t know the half of it. Can I trust you with a secret?”

“Anything.”

The stars, which had come out while we were polishing off the last of the vodka, were beginning to revolve, much too fast and in what seemed to me to be the wrong direction. I suddenly wanted to lie down, but I stayed put on the bench, in the expectation she was about to come clean and confirm the family’s fears she was a creature of the Kremlin.

“You promise you won’t repeat this?”

“I swear.”

Before leaning into my ear, she glanced warily around. The pregnant babe across the way had disappeared. Presumably, she was putting her two toddlers to bed. Except for the bats, moths, and mosquitoes, we had the vicinity to ourselves.

“I write poetry.”

“What—you, too?”

To celebrate this wonderful coincidence, we went hollering and frolicking up and down the strip, before concluding with a solemn pledge to exchange poems in the morning. Alas, at noon, when I finally regained consciousness, the Buick was long gone, and somehow the subject never came up again.