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The first alcoholic drink I remember having was communion wine at church. Walking down the thin red carpet in the cathedral with my hands folded in front of me I would review the appropriate procedure over and over in my head. Listen. Reply. Sip. Return to seat.
Taking communion was standard, something almost everybody over the age of 8 did. Yet taking a sip of wine was this strange optional extra stop after the host, an opportunity to be even more religious or perhaps just wash down the wafer stuck to the roof of your mouth with some holy rotgut.
Arriving at the designated volunteer holding the metal chalice, I would listen as they said “The Blood of Christ.” I would then reply “Amen” before they tipped the cup down to me, still holding on so I could drink only a small amount of Christ’s blood. As though if left unattended I would have chugged the wine, jumped on the altar and started shredding air guitar to “Here I Am Lord.”
Of course, I knew we weren’t actually consuming the body or the blood of Christ, they were mere stand-ins, symbols of our faith. However, in retrospect, the wine was much more intimidating than the host. Not only because I was underage, but also because the host didn’t really look like a body part. It was a small circular wafer. Nothing really “body like” about it.
The wine, on the other hand, looked like blood. When I was too young to receive communion I would sit in my seat during the ceremony while the rest of my family went up. I can’t imagine if my mother had whispered to me “I’ll be right back. I have to go drink the metaphorical blood of the dead son of our Lord.”
Horrifying. The same way thinking about an entire church full of people drinking out of the same metal wine glass that was simply wiped, and turned, before the next person’s sip is horrifying. My insurance today would never cover a doctor’s visit from a disease I contracted thusly.
You got strep throat how? No, I’m sorry, sharing a single cup of wine with 500 strangers isn’t covered under your insurance.
As far as sanitary procedures went, it wasn’t exactly surgical. For this and many other reasons, I didn’t often indulge myself in the 9 am Sunday morning shared glass of church wine.
At home, my parents didn’t drink much save for the occasional glass of wine from a box, or the beer my father would have while watching golf on a Sunday. This brown glass bottle perspiring on the coffee table next to him was so foreign to me.
The most exotic beverage I was allowed was a small cup of soda (Usually Pepsi, but occasionally Sprite) on Friday nights with pizza, but even that came from plastic two-liter bottles. What was in this glass bottle? I once walked up to my father’s recliner and asked if I could taste his beer. He obliged me a tiny sip. My taste memory serves up a small splash of carbonated bread that made me wrinkle up my nose. It wasn’t something I was interested in.
From then on there weren’t many other drinking experiences. Strange considering how much time I spent behind a bar as a child.
My parents, part of the generation that turned their finished basements into destinations for parties, had created a nautical theme. They built a full-size four-seat bar with fake sea creatures captured in resin on the surface and a working fish tank in the middle. Plastic lobsters and crabs clung to fishing nets on the wall. A dingy with my sister’s name on it. A scuba diver’s helmet which was actually an ice cooler. A harpoon and a captain’s wheel which both adorn my apartment to this day.
Some kids play dress up when they are kids. My sister and I played bartender.
Sitting in a high-backed wooden swivel stool my sister would order a Piña colada. I would then busy myself behind the bar I could barely see over gathering the many tiny sealed liqueur bottles my uncle had brought home from Europe, arranging the ingredients I imagined were necessary for the only drink I knew the name of.
I would choose from the fancy stemware and fake pour these bottles into a glass, pushing it across to my only patron, embellishing the glass with a mixing straw my parents had brought home from Jamaica. We thought nothing of our underaged speakeasy game. It was simply part of our basement. I’m not sure at what age I realized how bizarre it was to have an entire nautical-themed bar in one’s basement. For my entire life, it was just the norm. And I loved it.
I spent a considerable amount of time behind that bar being intrigued by everything. The drink bottles in languages I couldn’t read. The jiggers, mixing straws, and strainers that looked more like carpentry tools than beverage accouterments. None of the real liquor was down here of course. That was upstairs in the kitchen. But behind the bar were other curiosities; decorations from a Super Bowl party my parents had thrown, huge boxes of Pogs and the “You Know You’re Getting Older” joke book I spent a considerable amount of time not understanding.
You know you’re getting older when “getting a little action” means your prune juice is working.
I didn’t know what action was. I didn’t know what prune juice did. But the book felt illicit. Hidden down here amongst the flotsam and jetsam of my parents’ life before us. It felt exciting to be reading it in the cozy private alcove behind the bar. More exciting than the idea of actually drinking alcohol.
As I got older I continued avoiding church wine and played behind the bar less. It wasn’t until I was about 14 I actually went into the real liquor cabinet in my house, the one in the kitchen. It was built into the counter, a single door at waist height with two retractable drawers full of bottles of different shapes and colors. It was a museum of drinking relics. Dubonnet. Pinch Whiskey. Creme De Menthe. Alcohols in vogue in the 1970s had been sent here to age gracefully, a kind of retirement home for drinking fads. Trotted out only for the random request at a gathering of my parents’ friends.
The only bottle I really recognized was vodka. My curiosity had gotten the better of me. I wanted to try it. I knew vodka could be mixed so I headed to the fridge for the only non-milk beverage we had; some 4C raspberry iced tea. It was made from the powdered mix that came in a tall canister you might keep the oats you gave to a horse. I poured, what I thought, was the correct amount of vodka into a glass with ice and mixed in the raspberry iced tea. I took a whiff and panicked.
It smelled like the rubbing alcohol from our bathroom. Was this the same? This didn’t make sense. They were different right? This was before craft vodka took off. But even today, my father’s penchant for purchasing $7 bottles of American vodka with unpronounceable Russian names leads me to believe he couldn’t have paid more than $1.25 for this bottle in 1976.
I took another whiff, and then the smallest of sips which only confirmed my suspicions. It was rubbing alcohol. Worried I had just poisoned myself I ran to the sink and dumped the whole glass down the drain.
I would have been better off with a Piña colada.
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