Dinnercraft helps bring your (and our) protracted adolescence to an end. Our authors cover topics ranging from cooking and eating, to home and garden, to crafting and DiY, and all the rest of the things you find yourself caring about these days.
How We Rage Now
The author, circa 2002.
I had my first drink in a discotheque on board a cruise ship somewhere south of St Thomas in 1993. It was a tall Tom Collins. I was 14. There have been many drinks since that one but none that was as sweet.
In high school we had Jello shots at Tadd’s and MGD in the woods behind Marty’s; blackberry brandy on snow days when we would go sledding at Kingdom Hall and Southern Comfort on summer’s days when we would hike at Chatfied Hollow or the bird sanctuary. On my first day at BU my new roommate and I went to the Brookline Liquor Mart and found a stranger to buy us vodka and Kahlua. We celebrated our independence with milky white russians as we unpacked and set up for a year away from home. Sophomore year we drank 40 oz malt liquor from the Store 24 out of necessity as much as for irony’s sake. Subsequently there were the kegs, shotguns, and beer bongs you might expect at any institution of higher education. I personally went through a cheap wine phase – thanks for the indigestion, Kerouac, followed by a cheap whiskey phase – thanks for the bad poetry, Dylan Thomas. In the late 90s Magic Hat happened, in any given dorm room in Dominican Hall. The denouement of these cramped soirees was our group of friends huddled together for the Pennywise classic, Bro Hymn. It seems silly now but at the time it was our cathartic anthem. Frankly, it still is. But you can’t stop a cocktail party to clink beers and shove while you crash around and bellow “whoah, oh oh oh…”
During the post college years we imbibed dirty martinis in Manhattan and Manhattans in old New Haven. We attempted sophistication and practiced our posture but parties still ended the same way as in college: on the cold hard tile of a bathroom floor or in a bedroom that was familiar but still that of a stranger. Those limbo days were easy. It wasn’t a game to play at being a boss by day, but our after work drinking couldn’t have been more of a labor of loss and lament. Oh, the tragic aging youth of modern urbanity! Where was our Great War, our Depression, our Cultural and Sexual Revolution? We washed away our Sallie Mae sorrows in a bath of Knob Creek and Gray Goose.
With each passing year our lives become a little more sorted and secure. Even as the world trembles around us we are more firmly rooted by relationships, marriages, the homes we have created, a career path we love or some other mooring. Those raucous gatherings and weeknight bar crawls are fewer and farther between. Our priorities are gardens and health and housekeeping and families and wholesome outdoor events like concerts. Do we still require those endless nights? Have you ever accidentally gotten tight at happy hour with a gaggle of nervous colleagues? Do you party on the deck when the kids are in bed and you hope nobody is watching?
I think most of us balance it all well because we are lucky and have chosen to enjoy what we are doing, but still I wonder, as fully-realized wraiths of the blank and bloated adolescents we were not so long ago: do we still rage, against what and how?
You were 14 in 1993? FML. I drink wine every day.
FML indeed. I had my first *legal* drink in 1993.
And I, too, drink wine every day.
I tend to burn my rage rather than drown it… and at the end of a long week, it sure still feels good. (And I had MY first legal drink in Las Vegas in 1976.)
Oh look… it’s Friday afternoon
Rage, no, not a part of my life anymore. But I still get crazy by myself dancing and drinking wine when he isn’t around, and gazing at the stars and talking talking talking when he is. Late nights at Puerto Viejo are in there somewhere,too. Dominoes and mescal go together somehow.
But wine, mostly, please.
And first drink, Golden Gate Park about 1967 I think. Red wine. Thank goodness for James, who got us home.
This is the song you’re looking for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL79-7oo9Xc
I don’t think I rage as much as I suffer from “righteous indignation” now. I battle the sins of the world by poking people with a sharp stick at local politics events, and sending hard earned money to political groups/causes/non-profits that I believe in.
Sometimes I miss the heady days of beer bongs and chugging contests, blading with knives over a stove, vomiting into a toilet for hours because I drank 5 or 6 different varieties of alcohol in a sitting – but mostly not. I take greater pleasure in an occasional pricey wine or rare scotch for a slight glow on a special day.
I do miss chain smoking beside the computer all night long though. THOSE were the days.
It is hard to rage when you have responsibly. Society is like Frank the Tank’s wife trying to get him to go to the Home Depot & Bed Bath and Beyond early the next morning.
Personally I have found new ways to stay raging but the old ways always put a smile on my face when I think of them.
I rage houseboats.
Ah, yes. Manhattans in old New Haven–that was your, and my, first mistake. The only place these days I even ask for one is Archie Moore’s because they know what they’re doing.
As for rage, well, I rage against the area where I work and its lack of soul, because it’s outside of my little happy island of New Haven.