Fresh Air, Old (Fashioned) Flame

I first tried whiskey when I was [definitely of legal drinking age] in an apartment in Davis, California. I couldn’t tell you the name of the street it was on, and I haven’t been there in 10 years, but if you told me to drive there, my autopilot would have no trouble finding her way.

“Here, try this.”

He sets the bottle of Jack back down on the mini fridge in his closet as he turns to face me.

He hands me a beer glass, an iceberg of misshapen cubes fused together and floating amidst neon yellow.

I sniff the glass.

“No! Don’t d— Why is it the first thing people do is sniff their drinks…”

His eyes widen as he shakes his head, arms outstretched in exasperation. I giggle and take a sip.

I was unclear about alcohol at this point, having been the goody-two-shoes who didn’t drink at high school parties. (What high school parties?)

No, I was too busy forking people’s lawns or sneaking Phish Food into the movie theatre with my closest friends, both of whom were raised Mormon.

The art of drinking came as a new concept to me. So did love.

I have known Scott for so many years that we’re not sure when exactly we were aware of each other’s existence. We just – knew each other.

The knowing turned into friendship in high school, and friendship turned into “no we’re not dating” the summer after my first year of college.

I can’t believe I’m using this phrase but — “this one time, at band camp…”— except this time we were working, earning very little money (and free food) for the joy of yelling “knees up!” at our younger brothers during marching drills.

We have always had a natural, sometimes flirtatious, rapport, so you can imagine how spending fourteen hours a day in the South Bay heat for a week brought us closer. Even after the week was over, we were texting every day.

Not long after, the texting turned into a question: “Hey, wanna go to the John Mayer concert at Shoreline?”

I already knew the answer.

The texting and concert-going turned into more texting, and eventually letter-writing and skyping as I went back to college in the Fall. By January, we were more than friends, more than “not dating,” and more than “texting all the time.”

But I was anxious, still unsure about love and relationships.

It was, well, strange and new and could be dangerous.

But soon, I couldn’t wait to say it.

I was getting comfortable with the comfort, and learning how it made me feel.

The more I understood what it meant for someone to care about me, to see me, the more I loved it.

Terrifying, but magnificent.

We began to grow out of college drinking and into our millennial desire for cocktail bars.

You know the ones—brick or mahogany backsplash, lights in recycled milk bottles hanging low from the ceiling, drinks mixed by bartenders with suspenders and rolled up sleeves, then poured into mason jars.

There was Paper Plane, which used a single, colossal ice cube in their Old Fashioneds. We called them Death Stars.

Or Single Barrel, the basement speakeasy where we sipped Manhattans from frosty coup glasses while the staff shushed us for “fun.”

Even when we went to parties, Scott would craft sophisticated cocktails while others mixed Jack and coke.

We had grown up and grown out of a desire to drink just for the sake of drinking, instead carefully collating our drinks of choice.

Even when we grew apart and had to painfully untangle the threads of our four years from each other, I continued to drink whiskey.

I did have to stop listening to John Mayer, but I never gave up whiskey.

I actually loved that it had become part of my identity, the way Carrie Bradshaw’s cosmos were part of hers.

But I was going for Don Draper, minus the identity theft and threesomes.

I loved going up to a bartender, confidently ordering “Old Fashioned, rye,” and watching them nod knowingly and get to work.

When I started dating again, I would order a whiskey drink and pretend not to notice my date lift an eyebrow in quiet reverence.

“Damn” they would think to themselves. “She’s a badass.” At least, that’s what I’d hoped.

From time to time, Scott and I would still see each other.

After all, we had always been friends, and had always been reasonable and mature people.

Why not catch up over a drink every few years?

Which is why, on Tuesday, March 10, 2020—exactly one week before the world shut down—Scott and I found ourselves drinking Old Fashioneds in a bar in downtown San Jose.

This was the last time each of us would be inside a bar, or see one another, for at least a year.  

Indeed, the following St. Patrick’s Day, Scott sent me a picture of his drink, poured into a personalized glass I once gave him as a gift.

After a few casual “Sunday night cocktails” over the course of the next few months, we agreed to hang out one more time before I moved to Oakland for a new job.

I didn’t know that by the end of a whiskey-filled evening, we’d cross back into a territory I hadn’t allowed myself to traverse.

When he told me he had feelings for me I wasn’t ready.

It wasn’t that the feeling was strange or new, but it could definitely be dangerous.

So I took my time. I went to Oakland.

I dated other people. I poured myself into work.

I cooked and wrote and talked through my thoughts with friends who I trusted to tell it to me straight.

But it wasn’t until I was listening to John Mayer’s new release album, drinking an Old Fashioned and staring out my apartment window, that I stopped thinking and allowed myself to feel.