four

Things are on my mind. This will be the first of my drinking posts, and it will likely be long. Just a warning.

Firstly, the poems I wrote the other night are mediocre and frustrating - the ideas are strong, or at least feel strong(er than I), but I can't pin them down. The one is about escaping familiarity and memory, the other about being born not in the wrong place or time, but in the wrong life. Neither is a strong poem, neither is a complete poem, neither is worth duplication even on this blog. Maybe soon.

Secondly, cucumbers in drinks. My first experience with cucumbers in drinks, actually, was as basic as possible: cucumber slices in the water pitchers at Orchard Bistro in downtown McMinnville. It was odd; there was something to the water that didn't quite match up with all my memories of drinking, smelling, or otherwise interacting with water. I think it was Laura who said it made the water crisp. I think it was my dad who said it was "strange." I liked it.

From water, my cucumber moved to Hendricks gin (which should, now that I think of it, replace water in all taps and wells, as well as rivers, lakes, and oceans). Gin is as clear as water, and has in fact always seemed to me to be somehow more clear. There is a physical clarity to gin that I do not see elsewhere, not in water, vodka, glass, or thin blue air. No matter how many red berries, pink flowers, brown spices, or even green vegetables you add to the mix, gin is beyond transparent. Hendricks, distilled with a handful of interesting botanicals, was either the first gin to include cucumber or the first gin I noticed that included cucumber. Hendricks being the reason I got into gin in the first place, its inclusion of the green vegetable set it apart from the various gins I tasted subsequently. In the UK, Marty and I searched endlessly for a place that would serve us the Scottish gin with its suggested garnish-from-the-garden. We found it, surprise surprise, in Scotland. It is strange, the Hendricks and tonic with cucumber. A sip of it feels like biting through a slice of cucumber with the peel still on - it is hard but not tough, it stabs you between the teeth, it shocks you at first with a splash of something white and airy. All of that in the first second, and then a smooth settling on the tongue and throat, until the liquid is nothing at all and the feeling inside your mouth is unlike emptiness but unlike a mouthful of drink. The cucumber, in this case, lends even more clarity to an already confusingly overclear drink.

Bear with me, please, as we move from clear Hendricks gin in the grey rain of Scotland to dark bourbon and ginger in the dry snow of Bend, Oregon. At the Astro Lounge (a bar not nearly as terrible as its name might suggest), in downtown Bend, they serve a drink they call the Wall Street (named, presumably, neither for Wall Street in New York City or for the classic Wall Street cocktail, a gin and creme de menthe drink with champagne, but rathe for the street in Bend itself). It is a tall, dark but shining drink served, to me at least, in a pint glass; it is bubbly with ginger ale, stirred with bourbon, ginger syrup and, surprisingly at least to me, a few slices of cucumber. By this time, I knew the trick of the Presbyterian (of the drink, scotch and ginger ale, that is - none of the various devious and cunning tricks of the Presbyterian church, of which there are no doubt many, but of which I am, alas, ignorant): ginger ale cuts the burn and bite of a whisk(e)y but pushes up its fundamental flavors and, with bourbon especially, enhances that sweetness that may just be why you drink bourbon instead of scotch. The ginger ale used was heavy on the ginger, the syrup sweet, and the cucumber light and crisp and airy as ever, but just like a wisp around the edges. Shape up the sweetness a bit with a lash of the tiny cucumber whip. Or perhaps, rein in and replace the burn of bourbon with the cucumber's own subtle bite. Match the cucumber with the ginger? That initial onset of sensation when you bite a cucumber, in fact, seems to me to be a subdued version of the harsh spice of biting a piece of ginger. Bourbon, ginger ale, and ginger syrup make for a thick, heavy drink, and cucumber lightens it considerably. Whatever the specifics, it results in a rounded, full-feeling drink, surprisingly complex for something in a tall glass.

Of course, there are numerous gins now that include cucumber in their botanicals (locals like 12 Bridges and Rogue's Spruce Gin to name a couple). The cucumber has popped up in a lot of cocktails (the bartender at Split, in Bridgeport Village, used to throw some in a Pimm's Cup, to no real positive or negative effect), and I don't know if it's Hendricks' fault, but I'd like to think so.

All of this to lead to one statement: I think I'm going to try to make some cucumber-infused vodka. And when it's done, you're invited to come try it. I don't know the process very well (although, it seems to be 1. put some cucumbers in some vodka 2. wait), and I don't expect a complete success, but vodka is praised for it clarity, and the cucumber could only add to that, right? Well. I'm going to try. (I'm also considering some pineapple-infused bourbon. Uh oh.)

one

I'm really not exactly sure what this is for yet.  So far, I think it is about reading and writing, but maybe also drinking.  I'll start with writing.  With this little story.

The Pink Tie With White Paisleys

He owned a menswear shop, and could think of nothing more appropriate to do during slow times than sit at the till and count money.  This is what he was doing when the door burst open and a woman, fifteen, twenty years younger than him stumbled in.  She was soaking wet, although the sun was shining and the streets were dry.  She stood up straight and looked around her.

            The shop was small but densely packed with suits, vests, ties, socks, hats, and shirts.  Bright pink paisleys; violet and baby blue stripes; red, yellow, and orange polka dots; plaids in pastel greens; and every shade of white, grey, and black beamed gently from the low-lit shelves.

            The shop was small but Edgar was proud to see this woman’s shining, wet face turn across the walls, her eyes alive.

            Suddenly, it was raining, and thunder shocked them both.  She jumped a bit and looked immediately to him.  She frowned, and took a few steps toward him.  He turned to a shelf of handkerchiefs behind him and took one, offered it to her.

            “For your face.”

            “Thank you.”  As she took it, she stopped, frozen completely.  In that moment, she reminded Edgar of a photograph he had once seen, taken long before he was born, of a nurse in the first world war, a French woman.  She had had blood all over her hands, and splattered over dark stains on her smock.  She was staring at the camera like it had shot her, and she had just realized that all that blood was hers.

            “Wet out.”  He nodded toward the window.

            “Edgar?”

            She spoke his name like she was afraid of it.  He put both hands on the counter.  He looked at her, but only recognized the expression she still wore, and that only from the photograph of the bloodied nurse.  He tried to remember.

            “Do I know you?”

            “Oh.”  She hesitated, her mouth open just enough to imply speech.  “No. Of course not.”  She stepped backwards, then forward, gave him the handkerchief back.

            “How do you know my name?”

            She turned toward the door, but saw the rain and turned back.  Her wet hair flicked across her shoulder and the rest tumbled, lock by lock, down the front her shirt.  Edgar watched in silence.

            She darted down a staircase under a sign for sale clothes and accessories.  Edgar stood at the counter for a few minutes.  A crash of thunder made him look to the window, where thick streams of water rolled down the glass amid the tiny, disordered splashes of drop after drop.  He put the unused handkerchief on the cash register and headed downstairs.

            The sale room was more dimly lit, the shelves and tables more laden with clothes.  Silver and gold cufflinks, tie bars, watches and money clips shone brightly, and the same rainbow of colors lined the walls.  The room smelled of leather – wallets, flasks, belts and gloves were piled on a table in the center of the room.

            The woman stood next to a wool tweed suit, her fingers in the inside breast pocket, her body turned away from Edgar.  On the other side of the room, a row of folded ties had fallen off of a table and pooled on the ground.  Edgar imagined the way they unfolded, like accordions, and fell one by one, their twinkling descents the only motion in the room.  He closed his eyes against the stillness.

            “Miss, did you knock these over?”  He accused her immediately, but did not know why.  She did not acknowledge his question, which suited him.  But she turned toward him, her hand still inside the jacket.  She stared at his eyes and never looked away from them.  She spoke clearly and confidently.

            “I want to buy this suit.  Don’t worry about the measurements; I want this exact one, off the hanger.  And those silver cufflinks, the little crosses in the purple box.  A white shirt, any one, and that tie.”  She pointed to the small body of ties at his feet.  Her voice lost its confidence, became like stuttering, splashing water.  “The pink one with white paisleys, on the left there, the wide end sticking up, the rest rising and rolling like a sea serpent.”

            Edgar looked at the ties, which did resemble a roiling sea.  Again, he was surprised by his own animosity. 

“I won’t sell you the suit without measuring.  Come back with measurements or a man to dress.”

            She stared at him, her long arm still extended, pointing at the tie.  After some time, she lowered her arm and took slow, halted steps backwards until she nearly tripped over the first stair.  She ran up and out the door.

            Edgar knelt next to the ties and started to pick them up.  The wind howled down the street, rattling the door against its frame.  He thought he heard sobbing and stopped, frozen with his hands on the ground beneath the sea of folded silk. 

The pink tie with white paisleys slithered over his hand, into his jacket sleeve.  It pulled itself up his arm, came out at the neck.  It licked at his throat, caressed his jaw.  He listened to the wind, and a blast of thunder that rolled down the street.  The pink tie with white paisleys hissed in his ear, and behind his tight shut eyes, he was a soldier, lying on a hospital bed, standing on a boat.  The pink tie with white paisleys wrapped loosely around his neck, over his eyes, and entered his mouth.  He stood still, a soldier on a boat in a tweed suit, being shot while she leaned into him, her fingers in his inside breast pocket.  He watched the woman’s bloodied hands pull a bullet from his chest.  He listened to the water.  He held her tight and tried to remember.

Hopefully, I will not just keep posting old work.  Eventually, I might actually write something new, and then it will (maybe) make it up here.

Thanks.  Seriously.