Mixology: Gin Rickey

Friday, January 25, 2008

By Clifton Fadimann

2 oz. gin.
3/4 oz. lime juice.
Club soda .

Pour gin and juice over ice into highball. Top with soda. Stir, but gently.

There was a time when boring people bored me, annoying people annoyed me, and there were few other members of the human race I knew too well. This was before I enjoyed the society of Frederick Fayerweather IV, an aging trust fund brat who went by the moniker ‘Skip.’ He was the first individual I’d met who’d managed to forbid himself annoyance or boredom, while himself being neither more boring and annoying than was absolutely necessary. After the initial shock wore off, I studied his technique. His most salient habit was inhabiting bars. I choose my words carefully: he was not, compared to his peers, a bottomless pail of liquor and beer, though he put away just enough Gin Rickeys to remain social. But the more significant aspect of his being was that he did not usually hang out with people he liked. This struck me all at once one evening as I flanked him at his favorite watering hole. I hadn’t been round there for a few weeks, but I remembered distinctly that on my last visit, Skip had told me that if there was one group for whom he reserved his most finely honed contempt, it was bloggers. Because of his careful habits, I knew that this was not attributable to alcoholic overindulgence. Bearing this loosely in mind, I began to speak to Skip’s drinking companions. It didn’t tax my powers of detection to realize quickly that they were all of the blog persuasion. They spoke of their sites as if they were spouses. One in particular had me in his grim, bloggish thrall. He was so stupendously tedious, so epically tiresome, so vigorously solipsistic, and so preternaturally oblivious to these characteristics of his that I couldn’t look away. It was like watching a casino detonation. Afterwards, I told Skip how much I enjoyed the talk. He wasn’t surprised, he told me; so long as you’re slightly drunk and able to leave at any time, jerks, flakes, and other undesirables are perfectly suitable for conversation and entertainment. It was nothing short of an epiphany; the world seemed new. It really is false that cynics are unhappy.

Mixology: Gin Rickey

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