Southern Legitimacy Statement: One set of my great-grandparents comes from Washington, North Carolina; another from Richmond, Virginia. I grew up in Richmond in the 1960s and 1970s on the front lines of school desegregation. When I went to New England for college, people made fun of my accent. I settled in Boston and lost the drawl, but I still write about my Richmond roots. That’s where my deepest stories come from.
My First Drink
When the cocktail waitress came up to our table and asked, “What’ll it be?” I felt as flustered as if she asked me to tell her a dirty joke.
I stalled by pretending I didn’t hear her. She turned to my date, Sam, who was only 17 but appeared 21 with his perpetual stubble, glasses with tinted lenses, and a smoker’s cough. Sam motioned to his friend, whose date was already on her second strawberry daiquiri.
“What should we get her?” Sam asked.
They leaned their heads close together, and muttered something that made them both snicker.
“A Singapore Sling for her and a Bud draft for me,” Sam told the waitress.
She flounced off without asking any of us for our ID’s. Not one of had turned 18, the legal age. The drink went down as easily as Hawaiian Punch.
***
I heard about Rum & Coke, 7&7, Bourbon & Ginger, Screwdrivers, Bloody Marys, Cuba Libres, Sex on the Beach. Neat, straight up, on the rocks, with a splash, with a twist.
All I had tasted was champagne, bubbly yet surprisingly bitter, when my uncle offered me a sip from his glass at a party. Nothing about beer appealed to me – its piss color, its soapy flecks on top, its dank odor. I couldn’t stand how it changed perfectly unremarkable classmates into chumps who single-mindedly schemed about scoring six-packs and feeling up girls too drunk to protest.
***
My mother kept her liquor – Virginia Gentleman, Wild Turkey, Gilbey’s Gin, jugs of Almaden wine – in the back closet where we also kept our old Frisbees and baseball bats. She only brought it out for parties, set it up at a card table covered with a yellow and white plastic cloth that she could wipe clean when the party ended. Once, she bought a beer because her cousin, Sterling, was supposed to come for dinner. He never came. The beer sat in the refrigerator so long the can turned rusty.
***
My friend Sandra’s father lived in the attic of their house, her mother in the bedroom on the first floor. He called his whisky bottles “swikky,” as if Sandra still couldn’t pronounce the word properly.
For my 14th birthday, I invited Sandra and two other friends out to the Pizza Shack for dinner. My mother drove, walked ahead of us from the parking lot. When we passed beneath a sign for a bar I called out its name, “Hurry Sundown! Let’s hurry on in.” Everyone laughed.
Liz asked, “What kind of name is that?”
“They want it to be sundown so they can hurry up and drink,” said Sandra.
***
After I had downed two Singapore Slings and half of a third, Sam led me out of the bar. I had to lean on his arm so I wouldn’t stumble on the cobblestones. This was a newly reclaimed neighborhood in Richmond, old tobacco warehouses turned into nightspots. In the parking deck, Sam asked if I wanted to go up to the roof instead of leaving right away. He was driving; I was in no hurry to stagger past my mother’s bedroom door. The city twinkled and swirled below. I stretched my arms wide and tried to walk along the yellow lines that divided the parking spaces. I felt like I was on a balance beam in gymnastics class, carefully placing one foot in front of another, frantically windmilling my arms to keep from falling. Sam laughed and tried to catch me in his arms.
“No, no,” I waved him away. I still wanted Andrew. The two of us on a sled, flying down the hill at Bryan Park. Passing a sandwich back and forth at lunchtime. Andrew holding my hand the way I liked, touching my fingers every once in awhile instead of just clenching and sweating. But Andrew no longer wanted any of that. He had started going to keg parties with girls who wore khaki pants and cable knit sweaters.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” Sam said. I laughed a wild laugh that echoed off the empty concrete. “I like it,” he said.
I started singing the Rolling Stones: “Hey, you, get off of my cloud.”
“You’re going to be thirsty tomorrow,” he said.
