“THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF
WHY YOU’RE ON THIS TRIP,
RIGHT? TO LEARN?”
My mother is not an educated woman. Which is not the same as saying she’s stupid. In fact, my mom will be the first to tell you that she never cared much for formal schooling. After scraping through elementary school at St. Martin of Tours in Northeast Philadelphia, she completed an entirely unremarkable year at Little Flower High School for Girls before deciding to drop out to pursue other interests. These interests primarily consisted of, in decreasing order, sitting around, standing around, and smoking.
My mother’s parents were not reasonable people on their best days, so when they learned she had abandoned her secondary education, she was given both a whipping and a choice: either re-enroll somewhere—anywhere—that might pass for an institute of learning or immediately matriculate at the University of Homeless Prostitutes. So it was that Charlene Fabrizio wound up at Mercy Vocational School, a cheerless depository for scholastic castoffs, to all appearances based on the Soviet gulag model. For three years she commuted an hour each way from her lousy neighborhood to an even more dilapidated one in North Philadelphia. The neighborhood was gloriously decorated with abandoned cars, condemned buildings, and the smoking embers of the American Dream.
In 1967 at the age of seventeen, Charlene was unceremoniously discharged from Mercy Vocational with a certificate in “beauty culture,” which is about as hilarious as graduating from Yale with a degree in panhandling, except without all the job security. A few months later she somehow passed the state board exam in cosmetology—“with flying colors,” she’s still proud of saying—and became an officially licensed hairdresser. A few months after that, I slid, real prettylike, out of her nether regions.
I’ve never asked her, and probably never will, but I suspect my mother hasn’t read a book from cover to cover since . . . well, since forever. Her inexhaustible nonreading list includes, of course, the three books that I published. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which she would be moved to flip through the pages of this tome either, which is why I’m comfortable telling you the details of her extravagantly Dickensian life story. There are a host of reasons for me to fear my mother, but her becoming incensed over something I wrote is not one of them.
For as book smart as my mom isn’t, though, she has a remarkable capacity for retaining and regurgitating bromides. Indeed, virtually every word of encouragement, wisdom, inspiration, or castigation she’s ever bestowed upon me was originally said by someone else, before being repeated by others to the point of near meaninglessness. As the French poet Gérard de Nerval once opined “The first man who compared woman to a rose was a poet, the second, an imbecile.” Of course, had de Nerval said something like that to my mom, she would have probably punched him in the face. Not for any reason, mind you. He just looked like he had it coming.
See, my mom doesn’t know things, but her lack of knowledge is matched by an equally impressive apathy about acquiring knowledge. And in the absence of critical thought, man, do those bromides come in handy.
So not only does my mom not read books, she doesn’t judge them by their covers. The handwriting on the wall, on the other hand . . . well, that marches to the beat of a different drummer and takes the bull by the horns while making lemonade out of lemons. Regardless of the situation, my mom likes to fight fire with fire, catch flies with honey rather than vinegar, and when in doubt she always, always looks before she leaps.
On the other hand, she would not be caught dead beating a dead horse, isn’t one to cry over spilt milk, and never bites off more than she can chew. Though she also, somehow, never says never. Consistency is not her strong suit.
Mom also regularly conflates clichés, resulting in entirely new forms of nonknowledge. A sort of squared ignorance that’s almost its own absurd genius. Because you’ve got to break a few eggs to make a cake. But remember not to put all those eggs in one basket because then you can’t have the cake and eat it too. With all the eggs, there’s no room for utensils, see. And if you can’t eat it, join it. Just don’t forget which side your bread is buttered on, because the grass is always greener over there.
After living with this kind of thing for my entire childhood, I became almost entirely immune to mom’s hackneyed exhortations. I literally don’t hear them. Except for one, that is. When I was ten years old, some friends and I went to see a movie called Hooper that starred Burt Reynolds as the world’s greatest stuntman (I was pretty sure at the time that it was a documentary). It was an inspiring film, and we left the theater energized, intent on emulating our new hero, Sonny Hooper. Since we weren’t yet capable of growing mustaches or bedding Sally Field, we instead procured a large piece of plywood and some milk crates and constructed a device that might best be described as a child suicide facilitator. We, however, called it a ramp.
In a bizarre twist of fate, I didn’t kill myself. For that I credit both my youthful verdure and the sturdy construction and shock absorbent balloon tires of my trusty Huffy. I did, however, suffer a compound fracture of my left wrist, which hurt the way Scarlett Johansson looks: a fucking lot. Of course it was the 1970s and if you couldn’t afford health insurance—and we certainly couldn’t—you didn’t get prescription pain medication. Now of course, you can’t swing a drug dealer in my old neighborhood without knocking over a hand truck of OxyContin. Progress!
The night of the accident I spent an indefinable period of time lying in bed alone, a ball of tears, mucus, and pain. My mother was mightily pissed that she had to cut her shift short at Olivieri’s barbershop to come extract me from the hospital. On the bus ride home I tried to explain what happened—that I’d been possessed by the spirit of Sonny Hooper and that one too many milk crates may have been used in the construction of the ramp—but she just shook her head in disgust and said that Burt Reynolds and I were a couple of assholes. That hurt. I still harbored the secret fantasy that mom and Burt Reynolds would get married someday. She ignored me for the first few hours, but at some point, her maternal instincts must have kicked in because she came to my room and lay in the bed beside me. For a long time she didn’t say anything. Just held me in her arms as I wailed in agony.
The deluge of tears eventually gave way to mild blubbering, and my mom got up and said it was time for her to go to sleep. She added that I didn’t have to go to school the next day, and she was sorry for calling me an asshole on the bus. And that her and Burt Reynolds, well, it probably wasn’t going to happen.
“Mom,” I whimpered.
“Yes?”
“Is my arm going to get better?”
“Yes,” she said. “Before you know it.”
“But how do you know?”
“I know,” she said.
“But how?”
She leaned in and whispered, “Because time heals all wounds.”
“HOW GOES THE GLORIOUS STRUGGLE?” Scott asked.
He was calling from Brooklyn. I was in the FJ Cruiser on my way over to a vineyard in northern Sonoma County. It was a damp, gray morning, but agreeably so. It reminded me of those old black-and-white photographs of U2 by Anton Corbijn that I had plastered all over my wall when I was a kid. For the first time in recent memory, I felt at ease.
“I’m good, actually,” I said.
“Well, that’s an improvement. I was worried about you these past few weeks. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you were really going to do this.”
“I’m thinking about giving the FJ a name,” I said.
“A name? Like Carl or something?”
“Carl!” Brian cackled from his mason jar. I waved a hand to shush him.
“Not a person’s name,” I replied. “Something suitable for a vehicle.”
“And ‘FJ Cruiser’ isn’t a suitable vehicle name?” Scott said.
“You know what I mean. This truck is gonna be my companion the next few months. I’m entrusting it with my life. We should be on a first name basis.”
“A little early in the trip to be losing your marbles, but okay. Have any names in mind?” he asked.
I didn’t.
“I kind of like Carl Vehicle,” he offered.
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m not the one who decided to drive across the country in a car named Carl Vehicle.”
“I have to go now.”
“I know for a fact that you don’t. You have four more hours of driving. And I have lots of—”
I hung up. After all, Scott wasn’t going anywhere. Dude was stuck in Brooklyn with four kids and a mortgage. Meanwhile I was out on the open road with a jar full of talking ashes and a car named Carl. Okay, so maybe he might be ahead of me. For now. Asshole.
I pulled into a muddy lot at the winery, cut the engine, and started gathering the necessary items—notebook, pen, camera, digital recorder, breath mints. Was there ever a doubt in my mind that I was going to do this? Okay, yes. Lots. The day before I left I seriously considered scrapping the trip altogether, posting a résumé on some job sites and hoping for the best. Yet here I was, five hundred miles from home, staring into the void. About to begin . . . something.
For the first time since the idea for this trip occurred to me, I stopped to ask myself why. But I didn’t have an answer. So I asked myself how instead. How did I get here—how did I overcome those pesky moments of doubt and fear that threatened to jeopardize the whole endeavor? And the answer to how it happened was simple: I remembered something a wise person once told me . . .
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Thanks, Mom.
GARDEN CREEK RANCH VINEYARDS AND WINERY lies in a quiet corner of the Alexander Valley, beneath the illustrious Mayacamas mountain range. Jim Miller bought what was then a forty-four-acre parcel back in 1963 when he was twenty-seven years old. Today Garden Creek comprises over one hundred acres. A fifth-generation Californian, Miller initially figured the place would make for an ideal retreat. A quiet space to work on his photography and write poetry. He got more than he bargained for, though. He caught the bug. He became a winemaker.
Miller raised the walls on every building, planted the vines, dug the holes for the trees in the orchard, and laid every stone in the rock walls. He laid down the roots that remain there to this day. Motherfucker didn’t play.
Given that he retired twenty-five years ago, Jim Miller wasn’t around the morning I visited Garden Creek. But his daughter-in-law was. Jim’s son Justin is the current winemaker and operations manager. Justin’s wife and business partner is Karin Warnelius-Miller. And ladies and gentlemen, Karin Warnelius-Miller is a certified wine badass.
Karin and her family immigrated to the United States from Sweden in 1974 when she was four years old. Her family purchased their first twenty acres north of Geyserville in Sonoma County. The fields were planted with mostly Italian grape varietals—Sangiovese. Trebbiano. Vermentino.
Karin’s and Justin’s mothers were best friends. Karin recalled seeing Justin when he was fourteen and she was nineteen and was pretty sure he had a crush on her. And she was absolutely sure the feeling wasn’t mutual. The next time she saw him was in 1998, when he was twenty-two and had a girlfriend. She was twenty-seven and engaged. She was between apartments and needed a place to crash for a few weeks. Justin had a vacant room. Karin moved in and noticed Justin wasn’t fourteen anymore (and that he was still crushing on her, big time). One thing led to another, and nine years later Karin and Justin got hitched. Adorable, no?
Karin claimed living and working with her husband day in and day out is not the claustrophobic drag one might imagine it to be. On the contrary, “What we do here with our wines pushes into us as a couple.” Wait, is that what she said? Pushes into us? That’s what I wrote down, but it doesn’t sound right. It does sound kinky, though, so I’m leaving it.
She said wine is about “the personality of the land” and that in winemaking “logic doesn’t always work. Sometimes you have to rely on intuition.” I’m sure I copied that one down correctly.
She said that she and her husband are, above all, farmers. And that “a true farmer is dirty from head to toe every day.” I looked down at my Timberland boots. There was mud all over them. This made me very happy. Like I belonged. I found myself wondering if these two would ever consider adopting a heartbroken fortysomething booze writer with a car named Carl Vehicle. I’d make a good farmhand. And I knew all about wine.
Then, while explaining the process of producing a Bordeaux blend called “Tesserae,” Karin mentioned the term “cold soak,” and the look on my face revealed that I had no idea what she was talking about. I felt self-conscious and apologized for my ignorance. She smiled and shook her head and said, “No apologies. That’s the whole point of why you’re on this trip, right? To learn?” She explained that “cold soaking” or “cold maceration” is a way to extract color and flavor from grape skins prior to fermentation. The adoption was back on. So what if my new mom was younger than me? We clinked glasses and sipped Tesserae, and in the back of my mind I composed a list of commonly used terms to describe wine.
TASTING TERMS EXPLAINED
OPULENT
Another way of saying “full bodied” without fat-shaming a wine.
FLAMBOYANT
Best served with show tunes.
FOOD FRIENDLY
It has no beef with beef, is cool with kale, and sociable with Sociables.
BUTTERY
The preferred passive-aggressive way for California Chardonnay haters to describe Chardonnay made in California.
CHEWY
So tannic it dries out your mouth. Or you forgot to spit out your gum.
DRY
Most still wines actually fall into this category. Try substituting “Steven Wright–esque,” “Saharan,” or “moistless” to impress at tastings.
COMPLEX
Translates to “I actually have no clue what I’m fucking tasting.”
BIG
Goddamn California Cabernet.
FOXY
Looked really hot in the ’60s.
FUNKY
Sounded great in the ’70s.
FLOCK OF SEAGULLSY
Came and went in the ’80s.
OXIDIZED
Hey, look at me and my big wine words!
LEATHERY
Hints of Keith Richards’s ball sack.
JAMMY
Wine that is spreadable on toast.
VEGETAL
Which one of you motherfuckers put carrots in my Cab Franc?
FRUIT FORWARD
Best served with show tunes.
SAVORY
Fruit backward.
FLABBY
Lacks acidity and often has trouble finding clothes that fit well.
I CLIMBED BACK INTO THE FJ. No, Carl Vehicle. I said it out loud a couple of times. Crazy, but I kind of liked it.
I had spit out most of the wine I tasted because I had to drive, but there was still the matter of the wine on my breath. That’s enough to get you in trouble in those parts. I mean, what else do the cops have to do in the Alexander Valley?
I found a pack of Doublemint gum in the center console beneath the mason jar containing my brother’s ashes. Thanks, Brian. Don’t mention it, Dan.
I left Garden Creek and headed to the adorable city of Healdsburg, where I had plans to have lunch at Jordan Winery with a group of people that included Christopher Sawyer, an old friend who bills himself as the “Sommelier to the Stars.” Chris does this unironically, I might add. Which is probably why I like him so much. Irony, of course, being the central tragedy of modern life. For twenty years or so it’s felt like people have become afraid to just be something. They have to knowingly be it. Or “be” it. Wasn’t there a time when people just did things instead of eternally commenting on doing things? Then commenting on commenting on doing things and so on down an infinite rathole. See also: the Internet.
Or maybe I’ve just been in Los Angeles too long. And maybe all this irony is only about things that are easy to accomplish. One of my favorite things about winemaking is the fact that it’s too much of a pain in the ass for anyone to do it ironically. No one goes to the trouble of starting up a winemaking enterprise so they can go “oooh, look at me, I’m a ‘winemaker’ now.”
Sommeliers though? Them I’m not so sure about.
There is no shortage of hipsters in the drinks industry, of course, from the clove-smoking prohibition revivalist with the interesting facial hair behind the stick at a trendy craft cocktail joint, to the skull-ring-wearing ersatz biker tough slinging PBR at your local sanitized dive. Honestly, it’s getting to the point that a fella can’t get the shit beaten out of him properly anymore.
But there is a breed of hipster lurking out there in Boozyland that is much more difficult to spot. A secret society of superciliousness made up of the most pernicious of all the hooch-slinging hipsters.
Yes indeed, sommeliers out-hipster even the most mustachioed mixologist, but they can be hard to spot. These sinister operators pass under the radar for several reasons. First, they wear a different uniform, one we’d be more likely to associate with a Ritz-Carlton concierge or general manager at Brooks Brothers. You’ll rarely find them sporting facial hair, and any ink or piercings tend to remain well hidden. They typically occupy a higher age bracket than the garden-variety bar hipster, making them even more difficult to spot.
But while their near invisibility is surely an asset, the thing that makes the sommeliers the most dangerous of the booze hipsters is their secret weapon, a twin instrument designed to destroy both your self-esteem and your wallet: the wine list.
The primary goal of any hipster is to make themselves seem interesting by making others feel inferior for not knowing things, such as the name of the band Thom Yorke was in before Radiohead, where the power outlets are at Café Grumpy, and the name of Michael Cera’s stylist. The basic equation hinges on the principle that a given item’s value is inversely proportional to its popularity. No matter how dreamy One Direction might be, they’ll never make Pitchfork’s Top 100. (Unless they’re being used as pawns in a game of meta-contrarian 3D Chess.) The modern wine list is a direct outgrowth of this tendency. It is a sommelier’s calling card and it is their cudgel. It’s the hipster equivalent of a bunker buster—a remotely delivered piece of ordnance that allows sommeliers to appear superior to a vast number of customers at once, while only personally interacting with a fraction of them face-to-face.
The key to the sommelier’s dark art is stacking the list with obscure bottles that are not on the lists at any other restaurants in the immediate vicinity. This is not especially difficult, given the vast breadth of individual wines on the market. Then, thanks to the human male’s natural desire to not ask for help, especially in a competitive mating environment (i.e., a date), the sommelier can remain in the shadows—his natural habitat—while observing the tourist masses (the sommelier thinks you’re a tourist unless you work at a bar or restaurant within a mile of his) puzzling over his fiendish creation, ultimately shaking their heads and picking out bottles based vaguely on color and how much they want to wave their dick (a.k.a. money) around. I would go so far as to say that the modern wine list is the ultimate “no soap, radio” joke. Get it? Get it?
Restaurant owners are trapped, of course. They have invited the devil in, and now they’re stuck with him. Bottles and glasses of wine represent a hefty chunk of the profits for any medium-to high-end restaurant. Nowhere else would you not bat an eye at paying $60 for a bottle you’d pay $12 for at the store (which the restaurant got for $8). And that’s due directly to the fact that you haven’t heard of any of the bottles on the list, have no idea what they go for at retail, and don’t want to be the douchenozzle who pulls out his phone to look up wine prices. You’ve heard of the beers they have. You’ve heard of the vodkas and the scotches and the gins and the bourbons. But while you’re nearly guaranteed to find Maker’s Mark or Bombay Sapphire in any given restaurant, there are very few places where you can walk in and expect them to carry the particular bottle of wine you have a hankering for.
So it looks like we’re stuck with these superior leeches, at least until global warming wipes out the grape harvest and we’re all reduced to drinking grain alcohol with Kool-Aid and telling ourselves its “fresh, vibrant texture is redolent of summer hay and warthog musk.” Think of them as the obnoxious IT guys of the restaurant business. They have spent a lot of time acquiring obscure knowledge that their company needs to continue operating, and they never miss an opportunity to point out how irreplaceable they are, and how little they care about what you think.
Still, there’s one final, somewhat uncomfortable truth I need to face about sommeliers. I have painted them in the preceding pages as a pack of judgmental assholes, and I have, on more than one occasion, been called a judgmental asshole. Which leads me to wonder if, instead of spouting off as a blowhard booze writer, I couldn’t be making a tidier living as a blowhard sommelier.
Which brings me back to lunch with Chris Sawyer on the terrace at the Jordan Winery.
“I’M GIVING IT SOME SERIOUS thought,” I told Chris.
“You? A sommelier?” Chris said, bemused.
“Sure,” I replied. “I’m ready to trade in these long nights hunched over a keyboard spouting bullshit for leisurely afternoons swirling a glass wearing an ascot next to a spit bucket spouting bullshit.”
Chris, it must be said, is not a hipster. And something else is important to note. Fun though it might be to spout glib half-truths about sommeliers, in my honest experience, the field is split approximately 50/50 between the twin phyla of Douchebag Sommelier (Chumpus vinious) and Impossibly Awesome Sommeliers (Rockstarus ofwineous). The natural habitat of the Impossibly Awesome Sommelier is a local pub, and they subsist on Guinness and Hot Pockets. Best of all, if you befriend one, they can often score you some good wine on the cheap. Chris Sawyer is an Impossibly Awesome Sommelier.
“By the end of this trip, I imagine you’ll at least have what it takes to start the process,” Chris said.
“The process?”
“The process. Of getting your certification.”
“I need to get certified to become a sommelier?” I asked.
“It’s not an absolute necessity,” Chris said. “But if you want to be taken seriously, then yes.”
“Taken seriously . . .”
“Hired,” Chris replied. “By any respectable place anywhere.”
“Crap. Seems like a lot of work,” I said.
“It is,” Chris said. “And a lot of money.”
“For what?”
“Paying for the courses you’ll have to take, books, wine, going out to dinner, travel, suits, et cetera.”
“This is starting to sound like a pain in the ass.”
“It is one of the biggest pains in the ass ever invented,” he continued. “Trust me, your easiest path to becoming a wine professional is if your book works out. At least then you’ll keep getting invites to the good festivals.”
It’s worth noting that when your best shot at something is contingent upon success in publishing, you’ve got no shot.
HOW TO BECOME A MASTER SOMMELIER
Since 1977 the Court of Master Sommeliers has served as the international examining body of wine stewards. To become a master sommelier, candidates must pass four examinations, each harder than the one that precedes it. Like, wurtzite boron nitride–level hard. Imagine passing the LSAT, then making the grade for Mensa, becoming an FBI agent, and, finally, acing Oxford’s All Souls Prize Fellowship Examination. All while drinking!
For realz, people. It is no exaggeration to say that becoming a master sommelier is one of the most difficult human endeavors imaginable. True story—Sir Edmund Hillary’s biggest dream was to become a master sommelier, but when he discovered how near impossible it was, he said, fuck it, I’ll go climb a mountain instead. (It should be noted that this story is wholly fabricated. But don’t let that stop you from spreading it.)
Okay, but let’s say for masochism’s sake you decide to give it a go anyway. Here is what’s in store.
LEVEL I: INTRODUCTORY SOMMELIER COURSE AND EXAM
It costs $525 for two days of intensive instruction and relentless grilling (but mostly relentless grilling) by people who know way more about wine than you do, expect you to fail, and are usually not shy about letting you know it. That’s followed by a multiple-choice theory exam consisting of seventy goddamn questions. Not seven, seventy.
LEVEL II: CERTIFIED SOMMELIER EXAMINATION
If you pass the introductory exam, you earn the right to take the Certified Sommelier Examination, which costs $325 and includes a written theory exam, a blind-tasting exam, and a practical wine service exam. Fun! If you pass, that is. Which means you’re ready for stage three. Fail after all those years of preparation, and be ready to wallow in misery thinking about all the shit on Netflix you could have been watching instead.
LEVEL III: ADVANCED SOMMELIER COURSE AND EXAMINATION
Okay, you’ve become a certified somm, now it’s time to decide whether you’re ready to take the next step toward becoming a big enough pompous jerk to compete with the other insufferable wine twits for the primo jobs. (Did I say twits? Sorry, I meant whizzes.) Also, you should probably ask yourself, Am I fucking crazy? If the answer is yes, then the three-day educational program and subsequent three-day test is for you. Just be sure to bring along two checks in the amount of $795 for the course AND for the exam. If you’re one of the three out of ten candidates that on average pass the exam, well, you’ve earned the right to move on to . . .
LEVEL IV: MASTER SOMMELIER DIPLOMA EXAMINATION
And people think completing a Rubik’s Cube or beating cancer is hard. To sit for the three-day/three-part MS review, you’ve got to travel to Atlanta, Dallas, or San Francisco on your own dime with another check in tow. Just kidding . . . you actually need to bring three checks, one for each section, in the amount of $795. Don’t worry, though, there’s a 20 percent chance it’ll be worth it.
AFTER WE FINISHED LUNCH WITH Chris Sawyer, Fred made the grave mistake of telling us it was his birthday. Did I mention that my good friend Fred had flown up to Sonoma to hang out for a few days? Well, he did, and long before I ever had a chance to miss him (or anyone else from home, for that matter). I would have preferred he waited a while, until, say, Nebraska. But when a close friend says he wants to come hang, he comes and hangs. Plus, none of my friends like me enough to come to goddamn Nebraska.
Nothing good happens to two men out of town on a wine-drinking trip if one of them knows it is the other’s birthday. We of course drank to Fred’s health. And his long life. And to his parents. And you can’t leave out the grandparents. To make sure the angry ghosts of his great-grandparents didn’t come after us, we drank to them as well. Hours later, we found ourselves drinking to Fred’s childhood town, his first-grade teacher, and Hunter, the family Labrador who died of Lyme disease when Fred was six. We held each other to get through that one.
Despite my protestations, Fred insisted we film our not-quite-Nebraskan adventure on his phone. We drank and filmed inside the winery, on the vineyard, in a boat on Jordan’s private lake, at the guesthouse where we were staying, at several bars in downtown Healdsburg, in a taxi with two women we met, while pulled over on the shoulder of Alexander Valley Road (Fred had to vomit), and, finally, in one of the bathrooms at the guesthouse (Fred had to vomit again). As you can probably guess, we made some real magic happen. It’s highly provocative footage. Think The Blair Witch Project meets My Dinner with Andre meets Barfly.
After Fred passed out and the girls left, I went to bed but couldn’t fall asleep. I tried masturbating, but my penis had been overserved. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ready to sleep yet either.
“Let’s call Elizabeth!” penis said.
“No fucking way am I drunk-dialing my ex, penis.”
“Good call. Let’s text her instead.”
“No way! Don’t even go there.”
“C’mon,” said penis. “I miss her. She’s probably at home lying in bed missing me too.”
“I’m going to sleep,” I said.
“Come on, man. You know you want to text her.”
“I’ll look desperate.”
“You are desperate.”
“Fuck off,” I said.
“You can tell her about the book.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Text her and say that when you got the big news about landing another book deal with a major publisher, you were incredibly happy. But sad too, because she’s your best friend and she isn’t here to share the moment with you. Being a world-famous author just won’t be the same for you because she won’t be part of it.”
“Even if that were true, I’d only be telling her to try to impress her and make her feel like she made a terrible mistake when she broke up with me,” I said.
“Exactly!”
“Penis. You are an asshole.”
“No way. That guy works around the corner.”
“Don’t get cute.”
“You are the first person who has ever accused a penis of being cute. How does that feel?”
“Like I should ignore everything you say.”
“Here’s the bottom line,” it said. “You won’t know unless you try.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“You said the same thing about teabagging Fred. And now you’re lying. You know how I know that?”
“How?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“So what?”
“So when you’re drunk, your true feelings come out. And that was always one of her biggest complaints. That you weren’t open and honest about your true feelings.”
“That is true,” I replied.
“So give her what she always wanted! Text your true feelings! She’ll probably be thrilled to hear from us.”
“What if she doesn’t text us back?” I asked.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that, dude.”
My penis was right. Elizabeth got right back to me. Here’s how it went down.
> Hi ;) would it be wrong of me to tell
u I really really really miss u sometimes.
If you were drunk at 2:30 <
in the morning, yes
> It’s only 2:27.
Dan! <
> What?
Don’t do this. <
> Do what? Tell the person I thought I
was gonna spend the rest of my life with
that I miss her? Ya, I’m a real shit.
You’re not a shit. I just don’t think <
we should make things harder than
they already are, that’s all.
> You mean, harder for me than
they already are.
For both of us. <
> You seem to be doing just fine,
Elizabeth. Hell, you’re already in
another relationship.
I TOLD YOU I’M NOT IN <
A RELATIONSHIP!
She used all caps. A dinghy appeared in my mental eddy. It was carrying Hope.
> You’re not seeing Jack anymore?
Hope had come ashore and was looking sexy as hell. She beckoned me to join her in the boat.
Yes. <
> Yes, you are seeing him, or yes
you’re not seeing him?
Silently, from the shadows near the water’s edge, Shame appeared, fixing Hope with a grim animus.
I’m seeing him, but he’s not <
my boyfriend.
> Don’t you miss me at all? I mean,
like not even a little bit?
As we left the shore, Shame grabbed Hope like a paper doll and tossed her. Letting out a whimper, Hope fell, limp, into the water. It took Elizabeth nearly three minutes to write back.
Of course I miss you. <
I’ll always miss you.
> Why did it take three minutes
to compose that reply?
What? <
> Did you nod off or something?
Dan! <
> What? Am I interrupting something?
Shame, which had been holding Hope’s head under water for a minute or so, suddenly glared at me, shaking his head.
OMG, seriously?!!! <
> Am I? It’s a simple question.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jealousy showed up. Shit, he was even bigger than Shame.
> Are you with him right now or
are you just texting him?
Jealousy grabbed Shame by the face with one hulking paw. Shame windmilled his arms, panicking. Jealousy turned his head and fixed me with an unwholesome leer.
Do you realize how crazy you <
sound right now?
> Oh, I’m the crazy one . . .
As Jealousy tossed Shame far out into the water, I leaped from the boat and started wading ashore. I felt a massive hand grab my collar and lift me off my feet. I was being dragged to Jealousy’s hot rod. My struggling was doing precisely nothing.
> You’re dating a wannabe actor in his
midthirties who isn’t smart enough to
realize he’s destined to be a bartender
the rest of his life.
No response. Jealousy tied me tight to his bumper, then hopped in the driver’s seat, revved the engine, and started smoking his tires.
> A guy who cheated on his ex-girlfriend
with you, I might add.
Still no response. Jealousy popped the clutch and away we went, all squealing tires and accelerating pavement. Jesus, what kind of engine did he have in this thing?
> And *I’m* crazy.
There was nothing ahead of us but a brick wall. Jealousy was cackling now, up into second . . . third, shit was he going to make it to . . .
> OK. Glad we worked that
one out. I was confused for
a second.
We hit the wall going north of 80. The pain was blinding. I was thrown clear, covered in dust and shards of brick. Or maybe it was quicksand. I certainly felt like I was sinking. Four long minutes crept by.
You should go to sleep. I’m sorry <
you’re in such pain. You don’t have
to do this to yourself.
I felt arms lifting me up. It was Shame. He was soaked and covered in bruises, but it was clear he had just been trying to help. Before I could react, he grabbed my phone and powered it off. Then he punched my penis in the face.
I FELT BETTER IN THE morning. Fred did not.
“Did Satan take a dump in my brain last night?” he groaned.
“Satan left you alone. I, on the other hand, teabagged you eight ways to Sunday.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Check the video on your phone,” I said. “We got lots of close-ups.”
“Ha, ha,” he said.
“I guess I’d classify this as more of a horror film than a comedy,” I replied.
“Wait, did you seriously film that?”
“One of the girls did.”
“That’s wrong on so many levels.”
“You know what’s funny,” I said, “is as I’ve gotten older, my ball sack has gotten saggier. It’s really taken my teabagging to another level.”
“I’m gonna throw up.”
“Oh, and speaking of another level, you were hurling like Roger Clemens last night. We filmed that too.” I paused, thoughtfully. “Hey, I figured it out. It’s not horror or comedy. It’s a John Waters movie.”
Fred tottered over to the counter, where a woman from the Jordan staff had left a lavish spread that included a pot of gourmet coffee, a basket of pastries, enough oranges and papaya to rid the world of scurvy, and some potato-and-kale frittatas. He poured himself a cup of black coffee and eyed a frittata, then apparently thought better of it, grabbing a piece of dry toast.
“Did you hook up with that chick? Ellen, was it?”
“Nah,” I said. “Some women just aren’t ready for a ball sack this expansive.”
Ellen and I had actually gotten into a heated argument. She was in her early twenties, attended Berkeley, had some sort of job at a hospital, and was an occasional blogger for the Huffington Post. In other words, she knew everything. After her friend had passed out on the sofa next to Fred, I spent the better part of an hour feigning interest as she waxed authoritative about organized religion, architecture, the Beatles versus the Stones, U.S. foreign policy, celebrities’ Instagram accounts, and the death of the electric car. Sure, I thought she was as full of shit as Guy Fieri before his daily enema, but she had pretty eyes and phenomenal breasts. You’ve got to pick your battles. Believe me, it was all I could do to just focus on her knockers and keep my mouth shut as she blathered on about how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are “twice the songwriters Lennon and McCartney ever were.” She followed that up with a breathless condemnation of vaccines, then tried to make the case for Alec Baldwin as U.N. secretary or some shit. I’ll give her credit, she had a host of bullet points committed to memory. Ah, but when Ellen suggested, without provocation, that people of her generation didn’t give a rat’s ass about books and that my chosen profession was essentially a lost cause, well, I could no longer, to coin a phrase, Let It Be.
“You, madam, are incorrect,” I told her.
“Traditional publishing is dead,” she replied.
I pointed out that I had a book deal from a traditional publisher that directly refuted that notion. She countered that “a lot of the most exciting books” of the past ten years were initially self-published, citing Fifty Shades of Grey, Ten Tiny Breaths, and Still Alice as examples.
I realized I had veered badly off course and needed to correct. Squabbling about book publishing at 2 A.M. was killing my buzz.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t want to argue. Let’s watch the footage of me teabagging Fred again.”
“Are we arguing? I thought we were having a friendly discussion.”
“It feels more like an attack to me,” I said.
“Oh, the poor wittle sensitive boy.”
“You dismiss my career as a waste of time, yet the whole reason we’re here in this gorgeous house in the middle of a goddamn vineyard is because I’m writing an actual book. With pages.”
“I’m sure you’re a fine writer,” she said. “But the reality is that unlike people your age, people from my generation just aren’t all that interested in books. There are other mediums that are more relevant.”
“You mean the Internet.”
“Yes.”
“And what’s the going rate these days for one of those pieces you write for HuffPo? A free song download?”
“It’s great exposure,” she said.
“So . . . half a free song download?”
“I’m building my brand.”
“Oh, that’s right, a fleece-wearing dot-com asshole in SF explained this to me once. Exposure helps build your brand. Which leads to more exposure, which increases your social media presence and ultimately means you have to borrow money to pay the rent.”
“My parents pay my rent,” she deadpanned. “These complimentary stays in killer guesthouses . . . I guess that’s how you pay your rent?”
She had me there. After all, I was a full-time resident of Nowhere.
“Look, I don’t want to argue with you either,” she said, softening. “Let’s agree to disagree, okay?”
“I’m more the ‘disagree to disagree, then get too tired to give a shit type,’” I said with a smile. “The older you get, the more you may feel the same way.” I wanted to steer the ship back on course. Destination: Ellen’s spectacular ta-tas.
“It’s not like I don’t make my own money,” she continued. “I have a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“A real job,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, “one of those.”
“I do billing at a hospital half-time. It pays the bills,” she said.
“I thought your parents paid the bills.”
“The bar bills,” she said.
As one of only a handful of individuals in this country who lists “alcohol expert” on his tax return, I’ve often wondered what it must be like to operate under the behavioral constraints of a traditional workplace. Like a paralegal tech-type thingy or a telecommunications hooziwhatsit. Every time I ponder such a scenario, I come to the same conclusion—it would suck donkey balls.
Because I may complain bitterly about the collapse of print, which consequently dominoed most long-form journalism, and perhaps attention spans in general. I may complain about deadlines and shit pay and having to churn out the engagement-driven drivel that dominates online content. And the unbearable weight of having to talk about myself all the time. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to be this fascinating?) But I simply could not trade my job for the clock-punching, boss-having kind.
I should probably clarify. I don’t mean that I am too precious, too unmotivated, or too fabulous to have a real job. It would actually be a relief to get a steady paycheck for once in my stupid life.
What I mean when I say I could not trade for a regular job is that no sane person would allow me to work for them. At this point, I am fundamentally unhireable. This is because most jobs require me to stop drinking during what the rest of the world has collectively come to define as “work hours.”
And while some might call this extreme, I’m just going to go ahead and call it what it is. Prejudice. Sure it’s an ugly word, but I don’t know a better one to describe what I have to live with. I’m afflicted with what fake doctors call Tipplitus officinia. The Fake Physician’s Desk Reference refers to Tipplitus officinia as the chronic inability to remain sober in the workplace. Or, as you may have heard it referred to colloquially, being Irish. Okay, that was a cheap shot, and I’m sorry. I mean no offense to my fellow Irish folk. I’m well aware the Irish have a chronic inability to stay sober anywhere.
Unlike most prejudices, however, which tend to be rooted out by the light of reason, this one seems to be getting worse with time. As any fan of Mad Men knows, there was a time not so long ago in this country when drinking was not only tolerated in the workplace, it was practically mandatory. In the 1960s, alcohol was celebrated as a social lubricant that made going to work far more entertaining than going home to your dysfunctional family afterward. But attitudes change and, sadly, getting schnockered on the clock down at the ol’ ad agency is as outmoded a social convention as smoking during pregnancy, spanking kids in public, and throwing garbage at Indian chiefs on the interstate. I’m sure it’s great to be a highly paid doctor, lawyer, or operator of heavy machinery. But I have too little training for the first two and not enough testosterone for the last one. Still, even if I were qualified to get hired for those gigs, I’d probably take myself out of the running before I even got started by offering whoever was interviewing me a swig from my flask during our first meeting. The way I see it, asking for ice is a great way to break the ice. And let’s face it, nobody in their right mind would ever hire a lush to argue cases in court, do gastric bypass surgery, or dig up the street for a new gas main. Though that last one does sound like it’d be fun after you’ve had a couple.
“I read about this study once that suggested boozing can be good for business,” I said.
“You read it, or wrote it?” Ellen teased.
“I’m not detail oriented enough to conduct any study,” I said. “The guys who did this one were MIT nerds. But when they tested the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication on creative problem solving, they found that people who were a little buzzed were able to perceive solutions faster and more frequently than the nerds who hadn’t consumed any alcohol.”
“So they confirmed your existence?”
“You could say that. But you could also say, ‘man, these clothes are getting uncomfortable.’”
“Believe me, I work with some people who I’m sure I’d find more tolerable if I were drunk. But then again, I work in a hospital. That could be dangerous.”
“The study had some darker wrinkles,” I continued. “Despite the fact that drinking has been proven to stimulate creativity, those who drink are perceived by others as less intelligent. It’s called the ‘imbibing idiot bias.’ And you don’t even need to actually drink. Just holding an alcoholic beverage makes you seem dumber than a teetotaler.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” she said after I explained this, draining the last drop of Chardonnay from her glass.
“It’s a harsh world, Ellen.”
This seemed to harsh her buzz. The magical diaphanous net that only a few moments before had connected us abruptly severed, scattering jewels all across the floor. Or maybe I dropped a glass. I’d had a couple. A few minutes passed in which very little was said. The mood—or what had passed for it—was gone. Ellen suddenly became very interested in waking her friend up, we exchanged numbers, and they left. See you never! And though things didn’t work out as I’d hoped, I was glad Ellen was gone. I mean, come on. Who shit-talks Lennon and McCartney like that?
I poured myself a glass of Cabernet and went out onto the deck that overlooked the vineyards to the north. If this was indicative of the road to come, it was going to be a long journey. Hopefully the rest of it wouldn’t be filled with people who were convinced they knew everything. That’s my job.
But you know what was nice about getting out of town? About getting out onto a farm? (I know I’m thick, but it took me until this moment to reclassify vineyards as grape farms.) It was quiet. And as my mother would have pointed out, silence is golden.
And I gotta hand it to you, Charlene. When you’re right, you’re right.