Day 15
Tuesday when I woke up I felt even worse than Monday. The “30 days of drinking” experiment has rapidly turned into “30 days of not sleeping enough, eating junk food, and drinking more soda than I should” which roughly translates to “30 days of feeling like shit”.
Tuesday was low key. I went to a bar trivia night with some friends and it turned out that the trivia questions were about 70% the same as the trivia questions from a few weeks ago when I did another bar trivia night at a completely different place.
I felt like I was cheating, but I gave them the answers anyway. I guess my conscience is dwindling also.
It turns out that trivia isn’t quite as fun when you know all the answers.
We were at a TGI Friday’s, though, so I looked at the menu to compare the prices with the craziness Shane and I paid while in Time Square. The drink was about 60% cheaper and the dessert was about 40% cheaper. Fuckers.
Feeling like crap and needing to drive, I didn’t drink anything. Called it a relatively early night and was in bed by midnight. I’m getting too old for this.
Day 16
On Wednesday I met up with Gary, Alex, and Adam at the Sunset Grill in Allston. Sunset’s claim to fame is that they have something like 130 beers on tap. Over the course of the last week I’d been telling Alex and Gary about how I wasn’t a fan of beer at all. They decided that I should try a bunch to see if I could find one I liked. Fair enough.
As best as I can tell from my notes, we ordered the following:
Newcastle
Guiness
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Youngs Double Chocolate Stout
Sam Adams Brick Red
Harpoon IPA
Flying Dog Doggy Style Pale Ale
Cisco Whale’s Tale Pale Ale
Dogfish Head Pale Ale
Three Philosphers Belgian Style Quadruple
Newcastle 120
I know. It’s a lot of beer. Sunset does a 2oz beer sample option, so a bunch of those were in 2oz samplers. Here’s a poorly lit photo of some of the beer:
I ordered a burger and some of Sunset’s root beer on tap which is fantastic. I’d say that if there’s a drink out there that I enjoy and sample often, it’s root beer.
The nice thing about root beer is that it seems to completely cancel out any lingering beer or alcohol taste in my mouth. It’s a nice reset for when you’re sampling a bunch of different types of beer. I was able to give each beer a fair shake without letting the previous one spoil or dilute the flavor.
My notes are kind of jumbled from the night, but from what I can tell I didn’t care for the Brick Red very much (sorry Sam Adams) or the Doggy Style, but the Sierra Nevada and the Harpoon IPA weren’t bad.
This could be because the Sierra Nevada and the Harpoon were a little lighter - easier on my delicate beer-virgin sensibilities.
I expected the Guiness to be a lot thicker, like beer in a glass, but it the consistency was just like any other beer. It wasn’t bad, but I don’t know that I’d seek it out.
The Newcastle 120 was the most flavorful of all the beers I tried. It was very “sharp” - for lack of a better term - and it didn’t go down easy, but I could taste a lot going on with it. Some of the others kind of blended together in my head and I had trouble keeping them apart, even after sipping them to compare. The Newcastle 120 was immediately recognizable.
The Youngs Double Chocolate actually tasted like chocolate! It was very surprising. A lot of beer mentioned fruit and other flavors but I can’t really taste it. The chocolate was very obvious. It’s like a dessert beer.
Alex, Gary, and Adam gave me a crash course on beer. I learned about how different types of beer are made and the origin of IPA - they put a lot of hops and high alcohol content to preserve the beer over the long voyage from England to India back in the 1700s.
It was only about 15 minutes after I planted myself in the seat before I was back in the now familiar tipsy territory. The beer came before the food and I hadn’t eaten much earlier. We had a few hours so I just kept sampling the beers and trusted that time and the food would sort me out before I needed to drive home.
Conversation was plentiful and the company was good. It was a pretty great evening. I didn’t really find a beer I was happy with enough to actually want to drink in the future but I was definitely starting to get a better hang of the different types of beers and what I liked more than other types.
We talked about Slush Puppies, which made me want one, and reminisced about being kids and growing up. It was the kind of night I had been looking forward to since I started the experiment. Just hanging out with some friends drinking beer.
We dropped Adam off at North Station and I came for the ride because I wasn’t quite ready to drive yet and we hit a fair amount of crazy Boston city traffic. I said goodbye to Alex and Gary and started up my car.
The night was still pretty early so I called my friend Jon and had him meet me at Flat Top Johnny’s in Cambridge for some pinball. We’d been starting to meet there often and my pinball skills were improving. Jon claims that he gets better as he drinks but I think it was just a scam to get me to drink more. I knew I wouldn’t be there long so I stuck to water.
At around 11:30 I got a call from Jimmy to see if I was still in the area. I bid Jon farewell and headed over to Inman Square to pick him up and we decided on meeting at the 7-11 off Prospect St.
Knowing I’d get there before Jimmy, I went into the 7-11 to buy some water and a snack. I just got into the line when I realized that the group of five or so kids who walked in just before me were arguing with the cashier. I didn’t even catch the gist of the argument but when the cashier declared that they had to leave the most vocal of the kids decided that it was an invitation to fight.
His girlfriend got between him and the cashier - who had come around the counter to fight the kid - and the kid was moving her forcefully out of the way as the kid’s friends were rushing to grab him and get him out of the store.
Amused, I looked outside to see if the cop that I parked next to was still in the parking lot. Yup.
I call this kid a “kid” despite him being probably 25 because who else but a kid wants to fight a 7-11 cashier over what was probably some bubble gum with a cop sitting outside in the parking lot? Bad decision makers. I wondered if they were sober.
I read an article a few months ago from an old Seattle Police Officer who was discussing marijuana and his position to legalize it. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something along the lines of:
“I ask police officers to tell me when the last time they had a violent confrontation with someone who was high on pot, and after a long pause they can’t come up with anything. Then I ask them when was the last time you had a violent confrontation from someone who was drinking, and they look at their watch.”
I worked security for clubs and concert venues for a few years and I can tell you - drunk people love to fight. High people just want to eat.
Way too much time had passed since I entered the 7-11, but the kid ended up outside through forceful intervention from his friends and started his talk with the cop. I didn’t see if he got arrested but I paid for my stuff and got out of there to find Jimmy outside waiting for me by the car.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“I don’t want to bore you with the story”, I told him.
“Then don’t make it boring.”
Hard to argue with that. I recapped the story with as much grandeur as I could muster as we drove home.
It was late by the time we got home. Jimmy had something that didn’t sit well with him and we spent a few minutes in the living room talking about drunk people and the crazy stuff they do.
I went to bed thinking about all of the times I was a pain in the ass for my friends to deal with and how it paled in comparison to having to drag me around or hold my hair back while I puked on the sidewalk - or on someone. Do these events make people closer, or further apart? At some point I’d have to think that I’d get sick of my drunk and violent friend and stop hanging out with them.
I’m lucky in that none of my friends get drunk and want to fight or start things with random people or 7-11 cashiers. I don’t know if they’re just inherently considerate so the alcohol has no effect or what, but I’ve never had to drag someone out of a convenience store because they were starting a fight. And you can be damn sure that none of my friends have never shoved aside their girlfriends who tried to just get them to leave the store.
I’m fortunate that the kid at 7-11 didn’t do anything beyond shove his girlfriend out of the way. I’ve seen my share of guys hitting girls and I just can’t stand by and watch that sort of thing happen. I’m not sure that getting my head kicked in by 5 kids at a 7-11 on a Wednesday night would be a good end to this particular story.
