The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.
I’m not sure where the concept of the evening cocktail came about. Someone told me recently that the daily schedule of early humans was to hunt and gather in the morning and lounge around for the rest of the day. I’m sure that those early humans had a considerably easier time getting fucked up on prehistoric drugs. There wasn’t anyone to send you to prison for it.
As a Korean, it is something of a stereotype that we drink a lot. Based on personal experience, this stereotype has not been proven wrong yet. To this day, my dad has a ritual of calling his friends over once a month. They get belligerently drunk, yell at each other until someone inevitably calls another “trash”. At the end of the night, they all hug each other then slump into the passenger seat of their cars as their wives drive them home. Overall, it’s a good time.
Despite my cultural heritage, I didn’t have any interest in alcohol until I was 17. It was the summer of senior year and I was being sad and immature because of a recent breakup. I met up with a friend of mine, Tom, who was several years younger than me. We met up at the roof of the local elementary school, a popular spot for the local suburban kids. He had several bottles of tequila and I said, “why not.”
The next thing I know, our designated driver was taking us to a McDonald’s, where Tom threw up pure liquor and stomach acid all over the front door of the establishment. As I watched Tom splash thick clean and pink elixir onto that glass pane, I distinctly remember standing with a crowd that was forming around the midnight spectacle. One of the onlookers standing next to me said,
“That dude looks drunk.”
“Yeah, he is,” I said. “So, am I..”
“No way, man. Me, too.”
We shared a brief moment of solidarity while the designated driver and I waited for Tom to finish puking. Then, we got him in the car with his head out the window before we could hear the sirens in the distance. I closed my eyes to defend myself from the motion sickness. When I opened them again, Tom and I were both on his front lawn, heaving. Luckily, nothing came out of me but Tom apparently still had enough to give away.
His dad came out of the house. I expected him to be mad. Instead, he just sighed and said,
“Again?”
At some point, the driver took me home and when I woke up, the sun blared into my room. My dad stood over me with a frown on his face.
“Did you drink last night?”
My eyes barely opened, I just nodded. It was all I could muster. He must have been able to smell the sharp sweetness of the tequila exhuming from my breath, drawn from the depths of my stomach. I was surprised how little I felt afraid.
“You know you are grounded, right?
I nodded, again.
“You have your martial arts tournament today so after that, you are coming straight home.”
“What about my concert tonight?”
“Oh. Well. After that, you are grounded.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. These were the same parents who wouldn’t let me go to a concert after they found out I had an exam the next day. Compared to that travesty, I was getting off incredibly easy. Coincidently, the day of my first hangover was also my first time placing Gold in a martial arts tournament and the night of my very first rave. All things considered, it was a day of victories.
My history with the evening cocktail started a couple of months later when I started college. Everyone was drinking and smoking weed. In those days, getting alcohol required an older sibling or friend, willing to take your order and get all the stuff for you. With weed, all you needed was finding a college kid willing to take a risk to pay off his school loans. There are plenty of those at any university.
So, weed was my daily fix and alcohol was my weekend poison. Wake up. Smoke. Go to class. Smoke. Homework. Smoke. Go hang with friends. Smoke. Get back to the dorm. Smoke. Sleep. When the weekend hit, it was back to back hitting greens and downing browns.
While weed and I got along at the beginning of college, we started having problems towards the end. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but at some point, paranoia, anxiety, and hallucinations started to get the best of me. People forget that cannabis is a psychoactive drug. Those who are susceptible become caught up in strange, sometimes frightening experiences. My cut-off point was when I took a dab of hash oil that took me into a trip that I now call the “Shadow Realm.” It was an interesting experience but not necessarily an enjoyable one.
By the time I was in my senior year, I gave it up altogether. By then, I was 21 and I could buy alcohol without relying on friends of friends, most of whom talked too much about things that annoyed me. Every evening after classes, I had a couple of glasses of soju and beer. My goal wasn’t to get obliterated. Just enough to carry soft buzz.
Of course, the plan didn’t always go my way. Some mornings, I woke up with a hangover. But I was still young. My sleep schedule was already ruined by four years of college and four years of high school before that. In those days, I barely registered such phenomena as a hangover, just another miserable morning as I dragged myself to class.
This carried over into working at the Chocolate Shop. By the time I had started working there full time as a chocolatier, I was 22 going on 23. For the first time in my life, I had a real disposable income. It wasn’t enough to go out every night (which was fine with me. I’ve never been huge on bars and nightclubs). It was enough to pay for my daily dose of motor oil.
So, here were some of my drinks of choice:
- Sojo
- Beer
- Soju w/ Beer (called So-mek)
- Jameson
- Jameson and Coke
It was a good routine for a while. Go to work. Drink. It was simple. Why shouldn’t I have my evening cocktail after a long day of physical labor? It seemed to buy something of a time-honored tradition for the working-class of humanity since the beginning of time. It was something to look forward to, especially since 8 hours is a long time to be doing anything.
Yet, as time went on it became something of a crutch. An unstable crutch that seemed to be made of rotten planks and poor decisions. Knowing what I do now, I attribute some of this to my ADHD. Racing thoughts are a daily problem for me, ranging from distracting to existentially crippling. No wonder I sought an elixir that muted all thoughts and let me bask in uninhibited emotions…
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15. Ice Cream Scoop Sizes
Danger Wonka 