Barrett’s Mixology

By Parker D. Lessing '99 | Sunday, August 5, 2007

The Makeshift Bloody Mary

Three parts boxed wine.
Four parts tomato juice.
A teaspoon of black pepper.

Mix with index finger when no one is looking.

Summer began cool and damp, and as I walked home to my apartment above Murphy’s, summer was ending, and it was still cool and damp. I couldn’t tell if the humidity was lying heavy on my chest, or if something else was weighing me down: “but nothing has changed in three months,” those were the words echoing in my mind, “so it must be the humidity.”

Suddenly, my mind swerved off course and I remembered that only once had it been this humid before—the night I was laying out on the Green with my girl, Marcella, trying to combine the stars in new ways and name them after mixed drinks. I took a group of fist-shapped stars and called them the Bloody Mary; she named her group the Tequila sunrise, rose up, and left.

That was the last time I saw her, and it wasn’t much of a goodbye if you ask me. But, in her defense, she was a writer, and into those kinds of melodramatic goodbyes that usually left me at a loss.

When I stepped into my still apartment, my chest was weighing down on me so heavily that I felt my feet sink into the softness of the rug. Then I remembered I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Pantry: empty. Fridge: wilting lettuce, a half empty bottle of tomato juice, and some boxed wine.

I poured some wine into a tall plastic cup, filling it up almost half way; then I made up the difference with the tomato juice. I dumped some pepper onto it, and mixed up the concoction. It wasn’t a Bloody Mary, and it wasn’t dinner, but it would do. I drank it quickly, and I did not feel as cool or damp anymore.

Barrett’s Mixology

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