Alice Through The Martini Glass

Surely some cerebral archaeologist would be able to find the mental artifact that explains my fascination with the culture of cocktails.

Born in 1953, I really came at the tail end of the greatest cocktail generation--did World Wars have something to do with that greatness?--yet I'm drawn to not only the drinks of that era but the surrounding accoutrement and tchachkes that went with them. Certainly, my parents and their neighbors did indulge; they were part of the great suburban middle-class where Manhattans and bridge parties were at least weekly events. (My father found himself in possession of a bottle of Slivovitz--nasty stuff--which led to a fond, if bizarre, childhood memory: Mrs. Wright standing on her lawn waving the empty bottle--she was the only one who liked it--and yelling something which mercifully has left my memory bank.) But I can't see that as the missing link because bridge baffles me despite ardent parental attempts to teach me. One no trump? I ask you, what language is that? If I try to read Omar Sharif's bridge column (he was so gorgeous in Lawrence of Arabia), I have a headache after the first line.

But the Manhattans, those I understood. And in part, I think I also understood them as a symbol of relaxation and a genteel sociability. Part of my "Renaissance Man" illusion is a niggling belief that I really should have been born into the gentry so I could dabble in the arts and gentlemanly (womanly) callings without having to earn the buck that is all I ever manage to earn. Failing that, I guess a Martini before the tuna casserole or a Cuba Libre on the plastic-webbed chaise in the back yard struck me as the closest I was going to get. And--this being the '50s--everyone still dressed up a bit even for the neighborhood bridge game: women in shirtwaists and heels; men in white shirts and ties--always ties. Compare that to the way you see people dress today even when they're going to weddings: shorts, flipflops, whatever. What about any of that says "I was destined for better things."

Then there's writing and writers and we all know about them. Maybe I just had a sordid literary upbringing but it seems like every writer I really got turned on by was a drinker. Remember the scene in Julia when Jane Fonda, playing Lillian Hellman, is sitting on the beach with her typewriter in front of her and a shot glass in her hand? Whoa, what's not to aspire to? And Dorothy Parker. She got to be the only woman who was part of the Algonquin Round Table and you just know it was because she could hold her liquor: "I love to have a martini; two at the very most. . ." Etc. Etc. Even writers that most girls growing up in my era never heard of, I loved, gravitated to like a fruit fly to a saucer of scotch (just had to get one bad drinking metaphor in there), like Craig Rice. First female writer to get her photo on the cover of Time. Wrote the funniest, most alcohol-laden mysteries in the '40s. Go look her up. Unfortunately, died fairly young and I don't want to go into the cause, thank you very much.


All this might be trying too hard, however. It's all of a piece: mysteries, martinis, melamine dishes. My favorite things just aren't very '90s or, even worse, '00s. And if I thought I could rock a shirtwaist while typing on the beach. . .watch out world.