Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers (13 page)

T
WO GALLONS IS A GREAT DEAL OF WINE
, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of old and bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen.

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

Ralph Steadman, an illustrator and Thompson’s longtime collaborator, put it plainly enough, “Never try to drink as much as he does.” Thompson began his day with a lumberjack breakfast, never to be served before noon. Calling it his “psychic anchor,” he described the meal: “four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, chopped lemon for random seasoning, something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine.” It is hard to imagine chopping wood after that—or even standing up.

..........

T
UESDAY
, 12:30
P.M
. . . . B
AKER
, C
ALIFORNIA
. . . Into the Ballantine Ale now, zombie drunk and nervous. I recognize this feeling: three or four days of booze, drugs, sun, no sleep and burned out adrenalin reserves—a giddy, quavering sort of high that means the crash is coming. But when? How much longer? This tension is part of the high. The possibility of physical and mental collapse is very real now. . . .

. . . but collapse is out of the question; as a solution or even a cheap alternative, it is
unacceptable.
Indeed. This is the moment of truth, that fine and fateful line between control and disaster—which is also the difference between staying loose and weird on the streets, or spending the next five years of summer mornings playing basketball in the yard at Carson City.

“An alcoholic is driven by an urge which no one but another alcoholic can understand: He must justify himself (or stop drinking).”

Thompson was one of the hardest drinkers ever to make his name in letters. Back home in Nebraska, his grandfather would pour a morning toddy down Thompson’s throat to fortify him for the long cold walk to school. Later, as a hobo in Texas, Thompson would drink white lightning, home-brewed corn whiskey that could blind a man—and not just blind drunk. He drank ginger jack too, even more lethal, a ginger-based liquid sold as medicine. Still, if Thompson did not get to enjoy the fancy Sidecars he wrote about, he justified his drinking. On his deathbed, he told his wife, “Just you wait. I’ll become famous after I’m dead about ten years.” It didn’t even take that long.

..........

C
LOSING THE MENU
, she handed it back to the waiter. . . .

“. . . A sidecar, say, with bourbon instead of brandy. And, Allen, no Triple Sec, please.”

“Emphatically!” The waiter wrote on his pad. “We always use Cointreau in a sidecar. Now, would you like the rim of the glass sugared or plain?”

“Plain. About an ounce and a half of bourbon to an ounce of Cointreau, and a twist of lime peel instead of lemon.”

“Right away, Mrs. Langtry.”

“And Allen . . .”

“Yes, Mrs. Langtry?”

“I want that served in a champagne glass. . . .”

Moira watched him as he hurried away, her carefully composed features concealing an incipient snicker. Now, wasn’t that something, she thought. No wonder the world was going to hell when a grown man pranced around in a monkey suit, brown-nosing dames who made a big deal out of ordering a belt of booze!

“One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.”

In a notorious incident at Tony Soma’s speakeasy, Thurber, a fairly obnoxious drunk, tossed his drink in Lillian Hellman’s face. Dashiell Hammett, pretty well lubricated himself, pushed Thurber up against the wall. In defense, Thurber tossed another glass at Hammett, but missed (he was partially blind) and hit a waiter who was cousin to the club’s owner. The police were called—an extreme measure at a speakeasy. The whole event was made famous in Hellman’s story “Julia” in her memoir
Pentimento.

..........

The Drunk.
He is the stranger who annoys your party as you’re leaving “21.” He has no name. He appears from nowhere and reels off in the direction of nothing. He talks to himself.

The Drunken Bum.
Same as The Drunk, except that he asks for money, or falls down, or both. He curses.

The Souse.
He drinks the way other men play cards or bet on horses. He always stands at the bar, and will not sit in a booth. He has the lowdown on everything, and loves to talk about his wife, and sports. The more he drinks the shrewder he becomes, and he is a hard man to roll, to cheat at cards, or to lure into the badger game. He could find his way home blindfolded on the darkest night of the year. He loves to sing in a male quartet.