I was having a martini. It was good. The gin was excellent, the vermouth ratio was just right and the chilling was perfect, but the best thing about it was the annoyed expression it produced on the face of one of the other guests.
Like the others, he was holding a glass of white wine. He approached with policeman’s tread. “You realize, of course,” he said, “that nobody drinks martinis anymore.”
“Nobody but me.”
“Do you have any idea how many brain cells it’s destroying?”
“Billions,” I said.
“And yet,” he said, “you go ahead and drink it anyhow. Isn’t that rather juvenile?”
“That isn’t the worst of it,” I said. “I don’t jog either.”
“Well, it’s your heart attack,” he said, “provided your brain doesn’t go first.” The thought of my imminently ghastly demise seemed to improve his day.
I recognized him now. He was one of the agents of physical and moral uplift, the new American tyranny that was determined to bully everybody into living the fully uplifted life whether they wanted to or not.
“As long as you’re here,” I said, “maybe you could tell me who you have to see in this town to get a parking ticket fixed.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of being a party to the corruption of public officials?” he asked.
“I am, indeed,” I said, “but I’d be twice as ashamed if I contributed to a situation in which it was impossible to get a parking ticket fixed in America. That’s one of the things democracy is about.”
He rallied the other guests to combat. “Look,” he said, “at this symbol of American folly. Busily engaged in destroying himself with his vices, he would pollute the system by trading his vote for a parking-ticket fix. He probably drives three blocks when he wants to go to the drugstore instead of walking.”
“And in a gas guzzler,” I said. “I used to walk, but joggers kept jeering at me for not jogging, and doctors kept stopping me to warn me off eggs and marbled beef, and excessively decent young people scolded me for flirting casually with divorcees. They said I should establish healthy permanent sexual relationships. The only way I could get any privacy was to drive.”
The group moaned unhappily. “Hear that moan?” asked the agent of the uplift police. “That is the cry of an outraged America demanding that a law be passed to take care of people like you.”
“No,” I said. “That is the moan of people who have been drinking white wine too long in hopes of attaining physical and social uplift. They are moaning for martinis.”
The agent turned upon the moaning crowd. “Anybody who would drink a martini would eat eggs,” he said. The crowd recoiled in terror. “Anybody who would drink a martini,” he said, “would take saccharin.”
The crowd retreated rapidly. Several persons dashed to their doctors for emergency injections of fear to help them resist vice and achieve senility intact.
“Anybody who would drink two martinis,” I said, finishing my second, “would break up the furniture.”
“How juvenile,” said the uplift agent as I broke up a lamp and an oak table in very respectable time. It was excellent exercise and far more fun than jogging. It also created a thirst for another martini, which I resisted, as I did not want to give this man the satisfaction of seeing me break up my gas guzzler. I knew there was no hope of bribing Congress into letting Detroit make me a new one. Uplift had cast such a blight over Washington that you could scarcely find a dishonest Congressman anymore.
The commotion had drawn a large crowd outside. They were threatening to pass a law that would require me to be sold over the counter as a prescription drug, but the martinis’ fleeting gift of genius enabled me to get rid of them. “Disperse at once,” I shouted, “or I shall do something dreadful.”
“He’s going to smoke,” shrieked a voice.
“Worse than that,” I said, “I’m going to say a good word for Richard Nixon.” They scattered. Of course it was perverse, but at times uplift has to be beaten across the snout to keep it in its place. It made me feel so good I had the third martini after all. Now I need a new car.