What I'm Not Drinking This New Year's Eve

It is hard to drink Champagne when you're weeping.

Whiskey goes much better with grief. So does tequila, which is also strong enough to accompany a violent death.

Some people like to drown their sorrows in gin. This will not work for me. I am a vodka drinker so I only consume gin in fiction. I could use vodka. As the Russians will tell you, vodka is good for washing wounds and cleaning the feelings out of your guts. And the Russians do know a lot about death. In addition to vodka, they also invented the Gulag.

But I need something less mean than vodka to get me out of this funk. A sentimental beverage, like sherry, would work. I can sit in the grey light of the library, read Keats and Ghandi, listen to the sleet on the gutters, and get tipsy. But I'm in more of a Thomas Mann mood these days, and you can't read Death in Venice on sherry. What about Absinthe? Absinthe is in vogue right now. I used to smuggle it in from Czechoslovakia, though now that you can buy it at Sammy's Discount Liquors, it is not as romantic and subversive as it used to be. No, not absinthe. I am too sad to drink anything that decadent. Besides, decadence, like Las Vegas, is overrated. The fashion for decadence is eroding like the beaches of Chatham and Montauk. Soon we will all be wearing hairshirts and living on bark. Good. We deserve it.

This mood will not do. She was a strong and resilient woman. She would have wanted courage not bitterness and tears. She would not like to see us weep in our coffee cups while we listen to the BBC. She would have wanted us to fight for our strength and optimism, after we got through with cursing. She would have wanted us to be brave and stylish as we conquered barbarism and intolerance.

Although I cannot drink Champagne this New Year's Eve, her murder will not keep me from going out. I will wear a costume to mask my sadness. I will drink the sweetest wine in the world to soothe my heart.

You will know me by my hat. If you meet a woman in tails this New Year's Eve, listen closely. She will be murmuring to the bartender in a thick German accent: "Daaahrling, I am so saaad this evening. Give me another Trockenberenauslese. I want to dance again."


In memoriam