Last week I went out for a friend’s family birthday dinner. His parents were visiting from the UK and took us all out to the good old Southern Cross, to which I’ve been many many times but never for actual food. It was a fantastic dinner that involved little individual barbecue grills, much bonhomous camaraderie, and a lot of alcohol.
I ordered my usual glass of bubbles at the bar, planning to drink about half of it since it was, after all, a celebration. Champagne seems to be the one drink I can stand with any sort of regularity, although sometimes I like certain kinds of red wine, too. (I couldn’t tell you what those kinds are, only that they’re the ones that don’t make me squinch up my face and go, in as sophisticated and soigné a manner possible, “Eeeeeeew.”) Anyway, I was sitting next to the birthday boy’s very dashing father, who was having a hard time with the amount I was putting away.
“I have a rule when I go out,” he said, leaning over and raising his eyebrows with great seriousness, “and that is that a lady never has more than one drink in front of her.” He’d poured me some of the (non-squinch-face inducing, I must say) red wine that everyone else was drinking with great gusto, and since we’d been at the table an hour already I’d made it through about a quarter of my bubbles.
“Weeeeellll,” I said, smiling at this lovely older gentleman who had so politely pulled my seat out for me, “I’m not much of a drinker, so I don’t think I’ll abide by that rule.”
“Oh come on, love,” he said, furrowing his brows and frowning a bit. “Drink up now, there’s a good girl.”
I laughed and took a bite of risotto, washing it down with a gulp of water and a sip of red.
“Dear dear,” he fretted, shaking his head. “That hardly even touched her lips. What will we do?”
“It’s advisable,” said one of the other friends at the table in her beautiful plummy accent, “to either pour it into a planter or just neck it when he gets like this.”
“I don’t see a planter,” I said, still smiling, beginning to wonder what the big deal was and why everyone else was getting into it and how it wasn’t feeling like a joke anymore.
“Oh, well, you’ll have to just neck it then, won’t you?” she said, shaking back her curls.
“Dad,” said my birthday-having friend. “She’s almost completely teetotal.”
“Well,” said the dad, topping up my red. “We’ll have to change that then, won’t we dear?”
And that, my friends, was just about the first time in my life anyone has every pressured me to drink.
I’ve amended, since I got to New Zealand, the statement “I don’t drink,” to “I don’t really drink” because I feel like it’s cheating to say plain old “I don’t drink” now that I’ve been experimenting with the half-a-glass-of-champagne-every-three-weeks thing. When I first got here and was living at the Maple Lodge one of the things I had to get used to right away, from pretty much the first night, was the sheer amount of booze people guzzled on a nightly basis. On weeknights the tables in the lounge were awash with bottles from the nearby (very friendly) Regional Wine And Spirits, and of course on weekends everyone would go out to the bars and drink there. Bars can be pretty nice places to hang out, I’ve found, especially if the bartender assumes you’re the designated driver and gives you your lemon-lime-and-bitters for free. I am usually exempt from shouting a round because people know that I’m only going to have a sip and it’s kind of unfair, so I am able to spend my hard-earned Kiwi dollars on things like chocolate cake instead. Still, I was pretty surprised at how British and New Zealand people drink and it’s taken a little while to get used to things like my office opening bottles of wine at four on Friday afternoons. I feel very innocent sometimes.
And that is, of course, because I am, at least in this particular area. While you were experimenting with the rum on top of the fridge in your best friend’s parents’ house and with wine coolers that your cousin Travis got you sometimes when you all went down to the lake, I was becoming a Teen Evangelist, you see, and making the decision not to drink, at all, ever in my life. I’d grown up around booze, having been given my first glass of wine when I was about eight at a Italian-side-of-the-family Christmas party in Queens; at the time there was a lot of commentary on how I was starting out late and if we’d been back in the old country I’d have got that first glass at four the way my dad did. I was never able to acquire a taste for it but what I was able to do was spend a lot of time watching a lot of people get really drunk and really scary., By the time I was at the age, a whole lot of inappropriate-for-publishing-online-stuff later, when kids start sneaking booze I was already convinced that I wanted nothing to do with the stuff, and somehow evangelical Christianity gave me a convenient explanation for why, as well as giving me a a bunch of people who felt similarly to hang out with. I didn’t drink at all, ever, all through college, and didn’t start having sips of wine with dinner (squinch face) until my mid-twenties. I have still never been drunk in my life, not even close.
This has been neither as difficult nor as boring as you might think. One reason is that I am stupid and immature enough to do a lot of the dumb things that some mere mortals need to be a little tipsy to do. For whatever reason, I’m able to sing karaoke, dance in public, tell a boy I like him, skinny dip, get into a vindictive family shouting match, and be tied up by a stripper in front of all my friends in my living room at two in the afternoon stone cold sober. The downside is that I remember it all in cold clinical detail the next morning, but fortunately my liver is doing really well and I usually have some leftover money in my wallet. I’ve noticed that I can get a buzz off sparkly water sometimes, depending on whom I’m with and how much fun I’m having. I’ll also start slurring my words and bumping into things on about the same schedule as my drinking friends will at a certain point in the night, and, as I had reason to discover all those years ago at JournalCon, I’m even capable of getting a hangover. It would seem I’m capable of being a drunk without having to do the actual drinking. No one that I hang out with regularly, drinker or non-drinker, seems to care much about this, by the way. They mostly care about having fun and flirting and really concentrating on the fluttery moany voice thing you do when you’re trying to sing “Careless Whisper” with feeling.
Every now and then, though, I’ll run into someone who thinks it would be funny to see me absolutely hammered. “If this is what you’re like normally,” they’ll say, “then I can’t imagine what you’d be like drunk.” This is usually someone who doesn’t know me all that well and is usually surprised, after a quiet dinner out when I’m being social filter-less (“Stripper hot tub cocaine, and I’ll have the carrot-dill soup and the roasted portabella mushroom, please,”) to find that I’m not tipsy already. I am pretty sure that I would not be a very entertaining lush—I’d probably be a weepy “I love you, man” drunk, which I always say is better than an angry political Nader-Should-Be-President drunk. But most people who say this (fortunately, they are few and far between) seem to think that my being absolutely trolleyed would make for some very good fun indeed.
And this is what I don’t understand, and what brings me back to the original point of this whole story. Why? Why would someone I have just met two hours before want me to drink a whole glass of wine? Or see me intoxicated? Why would anyone else care if I’d just prefer water or Orangina or cranberry juice? Are they trying to tell me I’m boring? Are they meaning to initiate me into some secret club? Do they think that if they act all consterned about the contents of my glass that’s going to make me change my completely non-offensive behavior? As long as I don’t have to fend off their advances or get into a car they’re driving, I could care less what people drink and what they do when they’re drunk. So why does the reverse seem to bother some people? What are people really trying to say, when they say they want me to drink?
Comments
18 responses to “Drinking”
What are people really trying to say, when they say they want me to drink?
That you are very interesting and they’d like to hear what you have to say when your social filters have been chemically disabled to see if you get more or less fascinating. Some people believe that polite social fictions are preventing people from being who they *really* are, and booze gives people an opportunity to transgress those boundaries with (relative) impunity. Basically, the question is “are you really like that or is it an act?”
With me I’m pretty sure it’s an act, as I turn out to be quiet drunk with the sense of humor of an 8 year old. Stupid puns and vaguely mean physical comedy in front of me, and me sitting quietly in the corner smiling to myself relaxing.
I’d like to echo what Peter said about the social filters thing, and add a little note that in my experience a lot of people, and Europeans especially, have a tendency to regard people who don’t drink as children. Peter says my grandparents treated him very differently after he’d had a drink with them, and I believe it. The point wasn’t that he’d gotten drunk, just that he’d done something adult, and that moved him away from the kids’ table in their minds; I can’t express it better than that.
I catch myself thinking along the “kids’ table for non-drinkers” lines sometimes, only I also do it for people who drink stupidly, to excess, in ways that just don’t seem like any kind of fun to me. (Beer pong? No, thanks. And by the way, grow up already.) All these thoughts make me feel very old and cranky, but I digress. I think one generous interpretation of some people who try to get you to drink is that they want to confirm that you’re really a grownup, whatever the hell that means. People who try to get you drunk, they’re harder to interpret in a positive light, because it seems to me like they’re operating on the theory that alcohol is an excuse to do things one doesn’t otherwise dare, which strikes me as somehow dishonest, or at the very least both bogus and sad (to borrow a phrase from an uncle of Allison’s whom I’ve never met). As far as I’m concerned alcohol is an ingredient in certain beverages which I sometimes find tasty, and when taken in sufficient quantities it acts as a mood amplifier. Not a mood enhancer, which is why I don’t drink if I’m in a lousy mood. Tonight, however, I’m doing all right, and beer tastes good with spicy red beans and rice (hopefully coming soon to a food blog near you).
Hi! I think this is my first comment, but you have written about something that really struck a chord with me.
I am also an almost-teetotaller (I never drank at all til I was 23, got drunk a few stupid times in one year, and now drink very very rarely).
My perspective is that people may pressure you to drink because of a variety of reasons. People with good intentions want to be generous to you, and may think that by encouraging you to drink, they are assuring you that you’re in a safe space, that you can “let loose” and not have negative repercussions for doing so. People with bad intentions, on the other hand, may feel threatened by your non-drinking and, more generally, to your non-conformance to societal norms. And of course, there are people whose intentions lie somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
I’ve only had one person ever pressure me to drink. It was a boy who I liked in college, and who unfortunately was definitely pressuring me for the bad reasons. It was sucky for me to realize that, but at least it helped me to get over the crush.
I think people get uncomfortable around someone who chooses not to drink, because obviously, it makes them evaluate their own non-teetotaling ways. I find that as I get older, the days of wine and roses – and more wine – are less appealing.
I will always have juice for you when you come to visit me, dear.
I have more people pressuring me to eat than to drink (“You don’t have enough! Take some more! Try the eggplant!”) but I think it’s done for similar reasons — to be social, to show abundance, to encourage you to fully engage in the social event you’re at. Which is not necessary, of course, but a lot of people think you need to really push the boat out, because it’s an ‘occasion’. I don’t know. I plead a big lunch.
It usually helps with alcohol/wine if you can seem a bit knowledgable in your refusal: “No thanks, this is enough for me – I’m just getting into red wines. What do you think of this one?” all change-of-subject like. And to help: the squinch-face things are tannins. You can taste them in tea too, if you leave it to brew for too long. It’s that bitter, astringent feeling in your mouth. So you probably enjoy wines with little or no tannins (like white wines or pinot noir) rather than wines with heaps (cabernet or shiraz/syrah). I say this because I am a red wine newbie and this is my experience. Your mileage may vary.
Oh dear.
“‘We’ll have to change that then, won’t we dear?’”
Arg! You don’t need to change anything. But obviously that guys needs to change his attitude.
“it’s taken a little while to get used to things like my office opening bottles of wine at four on Friday afternoons”
Yeah, I think I even asked you about this when you chose New Zealand. Getting drunk (not just drinking) seems such an ingrained part of their culture that they are one of the few groups that actively didn’t accept my near-teetotaling. As Tracy said, they treated me like a child. With one statement, I suddenly wasn’t in the in-crowd.
My heart echoes so much of what you’ve said; I appreciate you putting it on paper better than I ever could.
The same reason people love to tell me about the “hundreds of field mice killed every harvest” when I tell them I’m a vegetarian. (Someone seriously said that to me last night.)
Most people are uncomfortable around people who have made a conscious decision to NOT do something that most people do without thinking. Drinking, eating meat, having sex, anything. The unexamined and “auto-pilot” life is the norm, and it throws most folks for a loop when they come across someone who has thought about the way he or she acts in a certain situation and who chooses the less common option. It used to really upset me, but now I put my foot down and say, “Thanks, but we are not having this conversation.” I walk away if I have to!
Good post, thanks. Kisses!
Also a teettotaler weighing in. Also have the personality that seems slightly tipsy in certain company, and uniquely have the rosy cheeks that make self appear as though am alcoholic. But am not.
Am sincerely sorry you have to contend with the judgements/pressures of others. Sometimes I think it’s cultural, sometimes I think it’s people’s own self-consciousness seeping through. I really wish we could all mind our bizzies and leave personal decisions alone if they’re clearly not hurting people. But polishing up your canned answers and social graces in these instances is always a good exercise.
What do I say, given the situation? I say, my husband and I decided a while back to make this decision. At that time, I usually get, “Not even a glass of wine with dinner? Not even an apple martini on the airplane?” I just try not to get too miffed at those questions because they almost always derive from people who aren’t sensitive enough to be my friend and too shallow to understand my real reasons anyway.
Ciao bella.
Wine AND Bubbles.. Girl, you are playing with fire there! Thankfully during my impending visit I’ll be encouraging a more “juice friendly” drink habit! Seriously though, have had numerous people try to change my nearly-tea-total drinking preference – mostly for good reasons (wanting me to enjoy the event more) so know what you mean. Catch up wth you soon, I’ll give you a call now we’re sort of in the same timezone!
Where does this guy get rules for LADIES when he goes out? Is he a lady? How can he have rules for YOU? Sounds like he wouldn’t think you were adult, no matter how much you drank. “Drink up now, there’s a good girl.” (Did that come with a few pats on the head?) I disagree with the “not adult” interpretation here, since you were *having* a drink. Two drinks. Slowly.
BTW, I would be pretty damned irked at that point, already. And I do drink alcohol.
But then, I get irked when people pressure me to do ANYTHING. I have a well-developed You-Are-Not-the-Boss-of-Me reflex. (Possibly overdeveloped.)
((I forget — how do you say American-style “pissed off,” with the correct degree of vehemence, in recently-British-derived English? Miffed, irked, etc, are too squishy.))
I think that in a lot of cases, people who are persistent in pushing alcohol at you (even after you decline) feel, indeed, threatened by your non-drinking. If they have any misgivings about how much or how often they drink (and what non-tee-totaler doesn’t, sometimes?) then they may see your abstemiousness as judging them. Negatively. Your behavior says, to them, “You drink too much.”
And the way to stop feeling uncomfy about that? Obvious! Get you to stop rudely implying that, by nagging you into upping your intake.
In my experience, people that are encouraging you to drink out of expansive, celebratory feelings (the good reasons) tend to let up the pressure as soon as you let them know that drinking a lot is not your usual celebratory mode. They’re trying to improve your experience. Nagging doesn’t. So they stop.
So, it’s not about you. It’s about insecure them. Pobrecitos.
Damn. I just commented and it’s not showing up.
I hate people who are so rude and in someone else’s business that way. I say next time you tel them that you’re allergic to alcohol and get violently ill, or that you’re a recovering alcoholic and then tell some scandalous story that was supposedly your rock bottom moment. Make them squirm and wish they’d bothered to read an etiquette book. Jeezus, what is it with people?
The next time some intrusive friend of my in-laws lays the whole, “So when are you two going to have kids?” line on me (figure it out people, we’ve been married for 13 years!) I’m going to burst into tears and run from the room and let them draw their own conclusions.
When I was a teenager I lived in NZ for a year and came home pledging not to drink again (this lasted a few years). I think it’s such a part of the culture – sheep herders have to stay warm, eh? – that they probably meant no offense, but were actually trying to include you in the festivities. That was my experience, anyway!
I think that people pressure others the drink in order to justify their heavy drinking. If one person at the table isn’t slamming shots the a person might have to listed to that voice inside telling them that they aren’t doing something smart. If you’re not drinking then you’re a sober smack in their face and they mgiht have to look at their behavior. I don’t drink at all and it really bugs drunk people, it’s kinda funny. I’ve just gotten to saying that “I’m alergic, I break out in handcuffs”, which is partly true :O)
I’m the wife of a near-teetotaller; his reason — (a) there’s a history of alcoholism way back in the family — a remote possibility but one he doesn’t see the necessity of messing with and (b) he just doesn’t like the taste of alchohol.
I, myself, didn’t drink until college, but of course after that had my share of booze-induced antics. I actually do like the taste of a good wine with cheese, really enjoy a good dirty martini with big, fat olives, and relish a cold, crisp beer with pizza. But if I didn’t actually like these things, there wouldn’t be much point in forcing myself to consume them just because. Bang your head on this wall so it will feel good when you stop!
We joke about him liking “girly” drinks like margaritas and dacquiris and fruity martinis where that alcohol bite is mostly masked. But in our experience, the only people who have ever seemed truly bothered by the fact that he just doesn’t really drink are people who, for whatever reason, have been insecure about their own consumption or are just really insensitive to the fact that if someone says “no thanks” they probably have a reason. Fortunately, the vast majority of people we’ve encountered simply don’t care.
There may be something to the cultural aspect with British/European attitudes; drinking in the US seems irrevocably tied to this Puritanical/guilt complex we, to make a societal generalization, seem to have about so many things.
Meh. Some people are just like that. I know that I like to drink when other people are also drinking because then I know they’ll be on a similar wavelength and won’t be too offended by my craziness, although sometimes they are still offended (ha). Then again I was hanging out with one of my sisters friends last weekend when we were both drunk, and she was SO rude to me once she was drunk that it completely changed my opinion of her. Then again, drinking is such a NZ/British thing…I mean, my Dad has his own still. So he encouraged/encourages me to drink. I don’t mind.
Oh, PLUS – I’ve always wanted to drink with someone whos never drunken before. Just like I’ve always wanted to fly with someone whos never flown before. You can kinda get a buzz off the fact that its their first time, like its your first time. I mean being drunk is such a bizarre feeling that its impossible to describe, and so different from just being high on life. When you have no inhibitions in the world and then you drink too much and you’re wasted and your body is doing all these things you don’t even ask it to do, and you have all these crazy new exciting thoughts, well yeah, I would like to see that happen to someone for the first time. Maybe I’m crazy. I would never make someone drink though.
I’d have just given him the finger. But whatever.
ACB’s comment made me reflect on why my mates are so interested in getting me to take a Ghanaian boyfriend (or “at least a lover”). It probably comes up once a week. The fact that I have a boyfriend back in the states doesn’t seem to be a good excuse to them for why I remain “not attached”. And it is not just because I’m a foreigner, I think that there are different cultural beliefs about fidelity, sort of how the NZ folks view drinking. But it doesn’t mean that in “getting to know the culture” you have to adopt all beliefs/practices.