Martini Drink Quotes

I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host.

How?" I demanded. "How could you have screwed this one up?" "When I got in, they said the manager was on the phone and would be a few minutes. So, I sat down and ordered a drink." This time, I did lean my forehead against the steering wheel. "What did you order?" "A martini." "A martini." I lifted my head. "You ordered a martini before a job interview." "It's a bar, Sage. I figured they'd be cool with it.

Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't.

Inside you is a two-million-year-old soul that knows what you deserve, that's making martinis as we speak. Start talking to that woman and drink what she's serving.

At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I've become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments. I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage. I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong. I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I'm never going to die. You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die.

Not if you pay attention. I mean, you're sending all the right signals - no earrings, heels under two inches, your hair is pulled back, you're wearing reading glasses with no book, drinking a Grey Goose martini, which means you had a hell of a week and a beer just wouldn't do it. And if that wasn't clear enough, there's always the "fuck off" sign that you have stamped on your forehead.

She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the old days, all set to do its little magic.

Rachel and I, we’d been raised to do what we wanted to do, and we had; we’d been successful, and we’d shown everyone. We didn’t need to wear apocryphal T-shirts because we already knew the secret, which was this: that when you did succeed, when you did outearn and outpace, when you did exceed all expectations, nothing around you really shifted. You still had to tiptoe around the fragility of a man, which was okay for the women who got to shop and drink martinis all day—this was their compensation; they had done their own negotiations—but was absolutely intolerable for anyone who was out there working and getting respect and becoming the person that others had to tiptoe around. That these men could be so delicate, that they could lack any inkling of self-examination when it came time to try to figure out why their women didn’t seem to be batshit enthusiastic over another night of bolstering and patting and fellating every insecurity out of them—this was the thing we’d find intolerable.

I took a sip from my second martini, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot and are found dead in a gutter at the end of every film.

But I feel more powerful than ever. And more peaceful too. I am living more truthfully than I’ve ever lived. I may not be the exact portrait of womanhood that my teenage self envisaged (sophisticated and slim; wearing black dresses and drinking martinis and meeting men at book launches and exhibition openings). I may not have all the exact things I thought I’d have at thirty. Or all the things I’ve been told I should have. But I feel content; grateful for every morning that I wake up with another day on this earth and another chance to do good and feel good and make others feel good too.

I think we need a little more rallying around the dumpee. If you were a woman and I’d told you that the third guy in eighteen months had broken up with me, right now we’d be drinking lemon drop martinis and giving each other female empowerment pep talks about how we don’t need a man in our lives to feel complete. And then we’d watch The Notebook and drool over Ryan Gosling.” “Sorry, babe. But when they handed out best friends you drew the straw with a penis attached. That means no Ryan Gosling.

It's true,' said Freddie Humbert, 'kids nowadays have got no ability to listen to simple instructions.' 'Here you go, Dad,' said Quent, returning with a tray of drinks. 'Two martinis, one with extra olives, one with no olives, one mineral water, ice and a twist of lime and a jade juice, no fruit.

She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story.

I was sent to a school with bosses for teachers- no Twain, only cane; check your dick you harry, no Dickens either, No Tom Sawyers no David Copperfields only Webster, master it for grammar, the Wren with a dash of Martini-Drink deep.

Oliver came up to me and asked me to play something on the piano. 'What would you like?' I asked. 'Anything.' This would be my thanks for the most beautiful evening of my life. I took a sip from my second martini, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot and are found dead in a gutter at the end of every film.

Your presence resembles a dirty martini, she only drinks it when she’s thirsty.

I'd rather drink my dinner out of a martini glass and follow it up with a cosmopolitan chaser.

A friend of mine in the ER told me that the animal consciousness is one of the here-and-now and that the human being can approximate it by drinking five martinis while soaking in a hot tub.

A proper drink at the right time—one mixed with care and skill and served in a true spirit of hospitality—is better than any other made thing at giving us the illusion, at least, that we’re getting what we want from life. A cat can gaze upon a king, as the proverb goes, and after a Dry Martini or a Sazerac Cocktail or two, we’re all cats.

She was teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Three-quarters child, one-quarter yearning. Her dreams were confused kaleidoscopes of swanning through the sets of TV shows, drinking cocktails that looked like vodka martinis and tasted like Sprite, wearing lipstick and pumps covered in red craft glitter, and marrying someone who was half pop star and half stuffed animal.

Chris, soap people are like us-they seldom go outdoors. And when they do, we only hear about it, never see it. They loll about in living rooms, bedrooms, sit in the kitchens and sip coffee or stand up and drink martinis-but never, never go outside before our eyes. And whenever something good happens, whenever they think they're finally going to be happy, some catastrophe comes along to dash their hopes.

When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window." He's supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he is raking leaves in Ithaca or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm. When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. When she says, "We're talking about me now," he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says, "Did somebody die?" When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? When he says, "Ours is a transitional era," "that's very original of you," she replies, dry as the martini he is sipping. They fight all the time It's fun What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead. A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture. "I've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an English accent. One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

as bitter and medicinal as the martini was, I set about drinking it as though each sip would make it more appetizing. Which proved to be true. Five

When I’m a single woman in London I will be extremely elegant and slim and wear black dresses and drink martinis and will only meet men at book launches and at exhibition openings.

I felt cold and dry, like a Martini.

It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini.

You hear it most when politicians who live in places like Hyannis Port and Beacon Hill and Wellesley make decisions that affect people who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and then step back and say there isn’t a war going on. There is a war going on. It’s happening in playgrounds, not health clubs. It’s fought on cement, not lawns. It’s fought with pipes and bottles, and lately, automatic weapons. And as long as it doesn’t push through the heavy oak doors where they fight with prep school educations and filibusters and two-martini lunches, it will never actually exist.

Do you prefer fermented or distilled? This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there’s a difference, at one in the morning while you’re hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy.

You could drink hard liquor in the middle of a school day without people assuming you were an alcoholic underachiever. Strange how in America in the 1950s, at the height of its industrial and imperial power, men drank double-martinis for lunch. Now, in its decline, they drank fizzy water. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.

I sat there silently, staring at him, and immediately ordered a third martini, one more than I usually drink.

Iced tea, three lemons. Club soda, two limes. Martini with two olives and an onion. I’m particular about my drinks. [Laughs] I’m particular about a lot of things.

It occurred to me, not exactly for the first time, that psychogeography didn't have much to do with the actual experience of walking. It was a nice idea, a clever idea, an art project, a conceit, but it had very little to do with any real walking, with any real experience of walking. And it confirmed for me what I'd really known all along, that walking isn't much good as a theoretical experience. You can dress it up any way you like, but walking remains resolutely simple, basic, analog. That's why I love it and love doing it. And in that respect--stay with me on this--it's not entirely unlike a martini. Sure you can add things to martinis, like chocolate or an olive stuffed with blue cheese or, God forbid, cotton candy, and similarly you can add things to your walks--constraints, shapes, notions of the mapping of utopian spaces--but you don't need to. And really, why would you? Why spoil a good drink? Why spoil a good walk?

And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on—drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lamé bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion—everybody would think I must be having a real whirl. Look

An ice-cold Martini is like the first sip of water for a desert strandee — nectar from the Gods; a warm one is a human rights violation and tastes more like Bear Grylls' regular drink of choice

Benefits Now—Costs Later We have seen that predictable problems arise when people must make decisions that test their capacity for self-control. Many choices in life, such as whether to wear a blue shirt or a white one, lack important self-control elements. Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time. At one extreme are what might be called investment goods, such as exercise, flossing, and dieting. For these goods the costs are borne immediately, but the benefits are delayed. For investment goods, most people err on the side of doing too little. Although there are some exercise nuts and flossing freaks, it seems safe to say that not many people are resolving on New Year’s Eve to floss less next year and to stop using the exercise bike so much. At the other extreme are what might be called sinful goods: smoking, alcohol, and jumbo chocolate doughnuts are in this category. We get the pleasure now and suffer the consequences later. Again we can use the New Year’s resolution test: how many people vow to smoke more cigarettes, drink more martinis, or have more chocolate donuts in the morning next year? Both investment goods and sinful goods are prime candidates for nudges. Most (nonanorexic) people do not need any special encouragement to eat another brownie, but they could use some help exercising more.

The martinis came, not in little glasses but big as bird baths with twists of lemon peel. The first taste bit like a vampire bat, made its little anesthesia, and after that the drink mellowed and toward the bottom turned downright good.

What did I want to do with myself? I wanted to do this! I wanted to drink martinis with showgirls, and listen to Broadway business talk, and eavesdrop on the gossip of boys who looked like girls! I wanted to hear about people's big sex lives!

Aunt Bette.” I started squirming toward her voice. “Are you okay?” “No, I’m not okay. We’ve been kidnapped and Marsh is drinking martinis and probably flirting with the waitress!” she snapped, and it sounded like she too was moving but not in my direction.

She gestured toward the bartender, a teenager with spiky hair and a shiny chin, and asked for a Hendrick’s martini with two olives. When her drink came she raised it in my direction. I had one sip left, and said, “Here’s to inoculation against international travel.

Usually we lay around on the grass all afternoon, drinking martinis from a thermos bottle and watching the ants crawl in a glittering black thread on the messy cake plate, until finally the martinis ran out, and the sun went down, and we had to straggle home for dinner in the dark.

The idea of having several days, never mind weeks or months, to relocate to a climate that was better for your lungs or gout, or to have an extra home in which to practice bridge strategies and indolence, was unimaginable to all but the most wealthy Bostonians, who were inbred and warped. Their idea of vacation was to go north, to a cold dark place, where they would not speak to their families but instead sit in silence, drink martinis, looking out over bodies of water that you would never, EVER go into. Because the waters of Maine are made of hate and want to kill you.

I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will.

Rachel and I, we’d been raised to do what we wanted to do, and we had; we’d been successful, and we’d shown everyone. We didn’t need to wear apocryphal T-shirts because we already knew the secret, which was this: that when you did succeed, when you did outearn and outpace, when you did exceed all expectations, nothing around you really shifted. You still had to tiptoe around the fragility of a man, which was okay for the women who got to shop and drink martinis all day—this was their compensation; they had done their own negotiations—but was absolutely intolerable for anyone who was out there working and getting respect and becoming the person that others had to tiptoe around. That these men could be so delicate, that they could lack any inkling of self-examination when it came time to try to figure out why their women didn’t seem to be batshit enthusiastic over another night of bolstering and patting and fellating every insecurity out of them—this was the thing we’d find intolerable. I

The Martini No one really knows the true origins of the drink that E. B. White called “the elixir of quietude.” Some say a bartender invented it at the end of the 1800s in the town of Martinez, California. Others say other things. Too many people say too many things and I wish they’d stop. In the end it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that the Martini exists. And to me it matters a great deal that it exists in its driest form. (The word “Martini” will always be capitalized within these pages.)

A dry martini,’ he said. ‘One. In a deep champagne goblet.’ ‘Oui, monsieur.’ ‘Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?’ ‘Certainly, monsieur.’ The barman seemed pleased with the idea. ‘Gosh, that’s certainly a drink,’ said Leiter. Bond laughed. ‘When I’m … er … concentrating,’ he explained, ‘I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink’s my own invention. I’m going to patent it when I can think of a good name.

The two of them went on from many faculty parties, hitting the bars until they closed, then stopping at some mom 'n' pot) store for a case of beer they would drink parked at the end of some back road. There were mornings when Jack would stumble into their leased house with dawn seeping into the sky and find Wendy and the baby asleep on the couch, Danny always on the inside, a tiny fist curled under the shelf of Wendy's jaw. He would look at them and the self-loathing would back up his throat in a bitter wave, even stronger than the taste of beer and cigarettes and martinis-martians, as Al called them. Those were the times that his mind would turn thoughtfully and sanely to the gun or the rope or the razor blade.

I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls jut like me all over America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping bout in those same size seven patent leather shoes I'd bought in Bloomingdale's one lunch hour with a black patent leather belt and black patent leather pocket-book to match. And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on - drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lamé bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion - everybody would think I must be having a real whirl

If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two. And the other? That life over there at Starbucks, sitting alone, writing — a memoir, maybe a novel or this poem. No kids, probably, a small apartment with a view of the river, and books — lots of books and time to read. Friends to laugh with; a man sometimes, for a weekend, to remember what skin feels like when it’s alive. I’m thinner in that life, vegan, practice yoga. I go to art films, farmers markets, drink martinis in swingy skirts and big jewelry. I vacation on the Maine coast and wear a flannel shirt weekend guy left behind, loving the smell of sweat and aftershave more than I do him. I walk the beach at sunrise, find perfect shell spirals and study pockmarks water makes in sand. And I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever find you.

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

Running a restaurant means setting a stage. The believability hinges on the details. We control how they experience the world: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. That starts at the door, with the host and the flowers.” And then, the bar. Timeless: long, dark mahogany, with stools high enough to make you feel like you were afloat. The bar had soft music, dim lighting, tinkling layers of noise, the bumps of a neighbor’s knee, the reach of someone’s arm by your face to take a glittering martini, the tap of a hostess as she escorted guests behind your back, the blur of plates being passed, the rattle of drinks, the virtuoso performance of bartenders slapping bottles into the back bar while also delivering bread, while also taking an order with the requisite substitutions and complications. All the best regulars came in and greeted the hostess saying, Any space at the bar tonight?

The Air Force has always had more money than sales resistance, and they bought a one-year program (probably for something in the order of a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars) and in June of 1961 Hawkins and Summers punched the “start” button and the machine started to shuffle IBM cards. And to print out structures that looked like road maps of a disaster area, since if the compounds depicted could even have been synthesized, they would have, infallibly, detonated instantly and violently. The machine’s prize contribution to the cause of science was the structure, to which it confidently attributed a specific impulse of 363.7 seconds, precisely to the tenth of a second, yet. The Air Force, appalled, cut the program off after a year, belatedly realizing that they could have got the same structure from any experienced propellant man (me, for instance) during half an hour’s conversation, and at a total cost of five dollars or so. (For drinks. I would have been afraid even to draw the structure without at least five Martinis under my belt.)

I told her about my revenge on Topper the attempted rapist and the guy at the transient's hotel in  Brooklyn, and, finally, I told her about stealing the money. "You did what?" She sat straight up in her chair, her eyes wide, her mouth open. "Shhh." Other diners were staring at us, frozen in silent tableau, some with forks or spoons halfway  to mouth. Millie was blinking her eyes rapidly. Much quieter, she said, "You robbed a bank?" "Shhh." My ears were burning. "Don't make a scene." "Don't shush me! I didn't rob a bank." Fortunately she whispered it. The waiter walked up then and took our drink order. Millie ordered a vodka martini. I asked  for a glass of white wine. I didn't know if it would help, but I figured it couldn't hurt. "A million dollars?" she said, after the waiter left. "Well, almost." "How much of it is left?" "Why?" She blushed. "Curiosity. I must look like a proper little gold digger." "About eight hundred thousand." "Dollars!" The man at the next table spilled his water. "Christ, Millie. You want me to leave you here? You're fifteen hundred miles away from  home you know.

What a dreadful experience for a young boy who just wanted the company of his dad, who just wanted to whack at baseballs in the backyard with the old man, who just wanted to be taught to use a circular saw, who just wanted to learn the rudiments of five-card stud or blackjack, who just wanted to understand the precise location of the clitoris or how to pronounce clitoris, or who wanted to learn how to order meat from a waiter, or who wanted to say the word meat with great gusto, or who wanted to learn the proper way to mix and shake a martini, or who wanted to learn to say good little piece of tail, or who wanted to contemplate the necessity of moving on, or who wanted to neglect to shave, or who wanted to learn the specifics of firearms, wanted to be able to eject a used shell, to drive with one hand and dangle the other out the window, to belch without shame, who wanted to drink in the morning, who wanted not to bother flushing the toilet, who wanted to learn to walk naked from the bathroom without worrying about who saw him, and who wanted to cut down his colleagues, his personal friends, in midsentence when he had to. Who would not want his dad when his dad was gone?

MET therapists build up motivation by encouraging their patients to talk about their healthy desires. There’s an old saying: “We don’t believe what we hear, we believe what we say.” For example, if you give someone a lecture on the importance of honesty, then have them play a game in which cheating is rewarded, you’ll probably find that the lecture had little effect. On the other hand, if you ask someone to give you a lecture on the importance of honesty, they will be less likely to cheat when they sit down to play the game. MET is a little manipulative. When the patient makes a statement the therapist likes, referred to as a pro-change statement, such as, “Sometimes I have trouble getting to work on time after a night of heavy drinking,” the therapist responds with positive reinforcement, or a request to “tell me more about that.” On the other hand, if the patient makes an anti-change statement, such as, “I work hard all day, and I deserve to relax in the evening with a few martinis,” the therapist doesn’t argue, because that would provoke more anti-change statements as the debate goes back and forth. Instead, she simply changes the subject. Patients usually don’t notice what’s going on, so the technique slips past their conscious defenses,

Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer. The ubiquity of chemical intoxicants in our lives is undeniable evidence of the continuing universal need for safer medicines with such applications. While use may not always be for an approved medical purpose, or prudent, or even legal, it is fulfilling the relentless drive we all have to change the way we feel, to alter our behavior and consciousness, and, yes, to intoxicate ourselves. We must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk free and as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants? I mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death. Imagine an alcohol-type substance that never caused addiction, liver disease, hangovers, impaired driving, or workplace problems. Would you care to inhale a perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air? How would you like a pain-killer as effective as morphine but safer than aspirin, a mood enhancer that dissolves on your tongue and is more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine, a tranquilizer less addicting than Valium and more relaxing than a martini, or a safe sleeping pill that allows you to choose to dream or not? Perhaps you would like to munch on a user friendly hallucinogen that is as brief and benign as a good movie? This is not science fiction. As described in the following pages, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can’t crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, perfectly safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are. This book is your guide to that future. It is a field guide to that silent spring of intoxicants and all the animals and peoples who have sipped its waters. We can no more stop the flow than we can prevent ourselves from drinking. But, by cleaning up the waters we can leave the morass that has been the endless war on drugs and step onto the shores of a healthy tomorrow. Use this book to find the way.

Mostly Gaylord deals with insurance scamming. He takes a car off a lot and the insurance company pays.” “That’s still stealing.” “I guess, but it’s an insurance company, and everyone hates those people.” “I don’t hate them.” “Well, you’re weird,” Lula said. “Do you like the car?” “I love the car.” “There you go. And by the way, you might want to put a dab of concealer on your nose.” Kranski’s Bar was on the corner of Mayberry Street and Ash. This was a neighborhood very similar to the Burg, but the houses were a little larger, the cars were newer, the kitchen appliances were probably stainless. I parked in the small lot beside the tavern, and Lula and I sashayed into the dim interior. Bertie was working behind the bar that stretched across the back of the room. A bunch of high-top tables were scattered around the front of the room. Two women sat at one of the tables, eating nachos and drinking martinis. At one end of the bar four men were drinking beer and watching the overhead television. I spotted Kenny Morris at the other end. He was alone, nursing what looked like whiskey. Bertie caught my eye, tilted his head toward Kenny, and I nodded back. “I guess that’s the guy you’re looking for,” Lula said. “You want to tag-team him?” “No. I just want to talk to him. I’ll go it alone.” Lula hoisted herself onto a barstool by the four men, and I approached Kenny. “Anyone sitting here?” I asked him. “No,” he said. “No one ever sits there.” “Why not?” “The television is at the other end.” “But you’re here.” “Yeah, I’m not into the team television thing.” He looked a lot like his yearbook photograph. His hair was a little longer. He was slim. Medium height. Pleasant looking. Wearing jeans and a blue dress shirt with the top button open and the sleeves rolled. He was staring at my nose with an intensity usually displayed by dermatologists during a skin cancer exam. I couldn’t blame him. I’d smeared some makeup on it, but even in the dark bar it was emitting a red glow. “It’s a condition,” I said. “It comes and goes. It’s not contagious or anything. Do you come in here often?” “Couple times a week.

The translucent, golden punch tastes velvety, voluptuous and not off-puttingly milky. Under its influence, I stage a party for my heroines in my imagination, and in my flat. It's less like the glowering encounter I imagined between Cathy Earnshaw and Flora Poste, and more like the riotous bash in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Not everyone is going to like milk punch. So there are also dirty martinis, and bagels and baklava, and my mother's masafan, Iraqi marzipan. The Little Mermaid is in the bath, with her tail still on, singing because she never did give up her soaring voice. Anne Shirley and Jo March are having a furious argument about plot versus character, gesticulating with ink-stained hands. Scarlett is in the living room, her skirts taking up half the space, trying to show Lizzy how to bat her eyelashes. Lizzy is laughing her head off ut Scarlett has acquired a sense of humour, and doesn't mind a bit. Melanie is talking book with Esther Greenwood, who has brought her baby and also the proofs of her first poetry collection. Franny and Zooey have rolled back the rug and are doing a soft shoe shuffle in rhinestone hats. Lucy Honeychurch is hammering out some Beethoven (in this scenario I have a piano. A ground piano. Well, why not?) Marjorie Morningstar is gossiping about directors with Pauline and Posy Fossil. They've come straight from the shows they're in, till in stage make-up and full of stories. Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air. Mira, in her paint-stained jeans and poncho, is listening, fascinated, asking a thousand questions. Mildred has been persuaded to drink a tiny glass of sherry, then another tiny glass, then another and now she and Lolly are doing a wild, strange dance in the hallway, stamping their feet, their hair flying wild and electric. Lolly's cakes, in the shape of patriarchs she hates, are going down a treat. The Dolls from the Valley are telling Flora some truly scandalous and unrepeatable stories, and she is firmly advising them to get rid of their men and find worthier paramours. Celie is modelling trousers of her own design and taking orders from the Lace women; Judy is giving her a ten-point plan on how to expand her business to an international market. She is quite drunk but nevertheless the plan seems quite coherent, even if it is punctuated by her bellowing 'More leopard print, more leopard print!' Cathy looks tumultuous and on the edge of violent weeping and just as I think she's going to storm out or trash my flat, Jane arrives, late, with an unexpected guest. Cathy turns in anticipation: is it Heathcliff? Once I would have joined her but now I'm glad it isn't him. It's a better surprise. It's Emily's hawk. Hero or Nero. Jane's found him at last, and has him on her arm, perched on her glove; small for a bird of prey, he is dashing and patrician looking, brown and white, observing the room with dark, flinty eyes. When Cathy sees him, she looks at Jane and smiles. And in the kitchen is a heroine I probably should have had when I was four and sitting on my parents' carpet, wishing it would fly. In the kitchen is Scheherazade.

You’re going to do great,” Lizzy said as they reached the mini Tiki bar. The air was cool in the high fifties and the scent of various meats on the grill filled the air. Even though they’d had the party catered, apparently Grant had insisted on grilling some things himself. “I wouldn’t have recommended you apply for it otherwise.” Athena ducked behind the bar and grinned at the array of bottles and other garnishes. She’d been friends with Lizzy the past couple months and knew her friend’s tastes by now. As she started mixing up their drinks she said, “If I fail, hopefully they won’t blame you.” Lizzy just snorted but eyed the drink mix curiously. “Purple?” “Just wait. You’ll like it.” She rolled the rims of the martini glasses in sugar as she spoke. “Where’d you learn to do this?” “I bartended a little in college and there were a few occasions on the job where I had to assist because staff called out sick for an event.” There’d been a huge festival in Madrid she’d helped out with a year ago where three of the staff had gotten food poisoning, so in addition to everything else she’d been in charge of, she’d had to help with drinks on and off. That had been such a chaotic, ridiculous job. “At least you’ll have something to fall back on if you do fail,” Lizzy teased. “I seriously hope not.” She set the two glasses on the bar and strained the purple concoction into them. With the twinkle lights strung up around the lanai and the ones glittering in the pool, the sugar seemed to sparkle around the rim. “This is called a wildcat.” “You have to make me one of those too!” The unfamiliar female voice made Athena look up. Her eyes widened as her gaze locked with Quinn freaking Brody, the too-sexy-man with an aversion to virgins. He was with the tall woman who’d just asked Athena to make a drink. But she had eyes only for Quinn. Her heart about jumped out of her chest. What was he doing here of all places? At least he looked just as surprised to see her. She ignored him because she knew if she stared into those dark eyes she’d lose the ability to speak and then she’d inevitably embarrass herself. The tall, built-like-a-goddess woman with pale blonde hair he was with smiled widely at Athena. “Only if you don’t mind,” she continued, nodding at the drinks. “They look so good.” “Ah, you can have this one. I made an extra for the lush here.” She tilted her head at Lizzy with a half-smile. Athena had planned to drink the second one herself but didn’t trust her hands not to shake if she made another. She couldn’t believe Quinn was standing right in front of her, looking all casual and annoyingly sexy in dark jeans and a long-sleeved sweater shoved up to his elbows. Why did his forearms have to look so good? “Ha, ha.” Lizzy snagged her drink as Athena stepped out from behind the bar. “Athena, this is Quinn Brody and Dominique Castle. They both work for Red Stone but Dominique is almost as new as you.” Forcing a smile on her face, Athena nodded politely at both of them—and tried to ignore the way Quinn was staring at her. She’d had no freaking idea he worked for Red Stone. He looked a bit like a hungry wolf. Just like on their last date—two months ago. When he’d decided she was too much trouble, being a virgin and all. Jackass. “It’s so nice to meet you both.” She did a mental fist pump when her voice sounded normal. “I promised Belle I’d help out inside but I hope to see you both around tonight.” Liar, liar. “Me too. Thanks again for the drink,” Dominique said cheerfully while Lizzy just gave Athena a strange look. Athena wasn’t sure what Quinn’s expression was because she’d decided to do the mature thing—and studiously ignore him.

I don’t have to worry about the money at all, really. My dad left me with this trust fund. I can sit home and watch the viewscreen and drink vodka martinis, or go out and play hovertennis. It’s terrific, what a life.

I order three martinis and down them in quick succession, shuddering at the strength of the alcohol. When they don’t immediately work, I order another three. At these prices, I’ll need to drink quickly if I want to achieve the effect I’m after.

Mirabelle? Mirabelle Bevan? Well, I’ll be blowed!” Mirabelle started, almost spilling her drink. It took her a moment to realize who the handsome man was, now his hair was greying at the edges and he was out of uniform. Puffing laconically on a cigarette, martini in hand, he wore a lounge suit and an understated silk tie with a discreet regimental insignia woven into the fabric. “Eddie,” she smiled. “What are you doing here?

With all respect to James Bond, a martini should be stirred, not shaken.

Her enhanced boobs dwarfed my 32Cs; she could legit carry drinks without a tray. I always pictured her balancing martinis on her mammaries with circus music teed up.

larynx (pp. 352–354), and (2) smaller intrinsic muscles that control tension in the glottal vocal folds or that open and close the glottis. These smaller muscles insert on the thyroid, arytenoid, and corniculate cartilages. The opening or closing of the glottis involves rotational movements of the arytenoid cartilages. When you swallow, both sets of muscles work together to prevent food or drink from entering the glottis. Food is crushed and chewed into a pasty mass, known as a bolus, before being swallowed. Muscles of the neck and pharynx then elevate the larynx, bending the epiglottis over the glottis, so that the bolus can glide across the epiglottis rather than falling into the larynx. While this movement is under way, the glottis is closed. Foods or liquids that touch the vestibular folds or glottis trigger the coughing reflex. In a cough, the glottis is kept closed while the chest and abdominal muscles contract, compressing the lungs. When the glottis is opened suddenly, a blast of air from the trachea ejects material that blocks the entrance to the glottis. Sound Production How do you produce sounds? Air passing through your open glottis vibrates its vocal folds and produces sound waves. The pitch of the sound depends on the diameter, length, and tension in your vocal folds. The diameter and length are directly related to the size of your larynx. You control the tension by contracting voluntary muscles that reposition the arytenoid cartilages relative to the thyroid cartilage. When the distance increases, your vocal folds tense and the pitch rises. When the distance decreases, your vocal folds relax and the pitch falls. Children have slender, short vocal folds, so their voices tend to be high pitched. At puberty, the larynx of males enlarges much more than that of females. The vocal cords of an adult male are thicker and longer, so they produce lower tones than those of an adult female. Sound production at the larynx is called phonation (fo.-NA .-shun; phone, voice). Phonation is one part of speech production. Clear speech also requires articulation, the modification of those sounds by voluntary movements of other structures, such as the tongue, teeth, and lips to form words. In a stringed instrument, such as a guitar, the quality of the sound produced does not depend solely on the nature of the vibrating string. Rather, the entire instrument becomes involved as the walls vibrate and the composite sound echoes within the hollow body. Similar amplification and resonance take place within your pharynx, oral cavity, nasal cavity, and paranasal sinuses. The combination gives you the particular and distinctive sound of your voice. That sound changes when you have a sinus infection and your nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses are filled with mucus rather than air.

I love a martini—but two at the most. Three I’m under the table, four, I’m under the host.

COSMOPOLITANS AT THE PARADISE Cosmopolitans at the Paradise. Heavenly Kelly's cosmopolitans make the sun rise. They make the sun rise in my blood. Under the stars in my brow. Tonight a perfect cosmopolitan sets sail for paradise. Johnny's cosmopolitans start the countdown on the launch pad. My Paradise is a diner. Nothing could be finer. There was a lovely man in this town named Harry Diner. Lighter than zero Gravity, a rinse of lift, the cosmopolitan cocktail They mix here at the Paradise is the best In the United States - pink as a flamingo and life-announcing As a leaping salmon. The space suit I will squeeze into arrives In a martini glass. Poured from a chilled silver shaker beaded with frost sweat. Finally I go Back to where the only place to go is far. Ahab on the launch pad - I'm the roar Wearing a wild blazer, black stripes and red, And a yarmulke with a propeller on my missile head. There she blows! Row harder, my hearties! - My United Nations of liftoff! I targeted the great white whale black hole. On impact I burst into stars. I am the caliph of paradise, Hip-deep in a waterbed of wives. I am the Ducati of desire, 144.1 horsepower at the rear wheel. Nights and days, black stripes and red, I orbit Sag Harbor and the big blue ball. I pursue Moby-Dick to the end of the book. I raise the pink flamingos to my lips and drink.

loopholes in some United States liquor laws allow it to be served in restaurants with only a beer and wine license. This has led to shochu’s use as a mixer in Asian-inspired cocktails—think lemongrass martinis—

Rae gave her a get-real look. “Please. You go to Italy? You have your plans, remember?” She held up her hands innocently. “Why are you looking at me like that? Come on—you know this about yourself.” “True. But when you say it, it makes me sound so…lame.” Suddenly concerned, she leaned in, lowering her voice. “I’m not lame, am I?” “Sweetie, you’re not lame.” Rylann grabbed her drink. “Look at this, I drink martinis on workdays—that can’t be lame, right? And this wasn’t even planned.

It’s an off beat picture,’ Fellows said politely. ‘The public wants pictures like Ma and Pa Kettle. I say make pictures the public wants. Over here,’ he said to a waiter who had entered with a tray holding six Martinis in champagne glasses. ‘No getting away from it, John,’ Fellows went on, handing Huston a drink. ‘Biggest box-office draws are pictures catering to the intelligence of the twelve-year-old.’ People underestimated the intelligence of the twelve-year-old, Huston said.

Before dinner each night the two leaders, Hopkins, and various other members of the president’s official family gathered for cocktails in the Red Room. Roosevelt sat by a tray of bottles and mixed the cocktails himself. This was a cherished part of the president’s daily routine, his “children’s hour,” as he sometimes called it, when he let the day’s tensions and stresses slip away. “He loved the ceremony of making the drinks,” said Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames; “it was rather like, ‘Look, I can do it.’ It was formidable. And you knew you were supposed to just hand him your glass, and not reach for anything else. It was a lovely performance.” Roosevelt did not take drink orders, but improvised new and eccentric concoctions, variations on the whiskey sour, Tom Collins, or old-fashioned. The drinks he identified as “martinis” were mixed with too much vermouth, and sometimes contaminated with foreign ingredients such as fruit juice or rum. Churchill, who preferred straight whiskey or brandy, accepted Roosevelt’s mysterious potions gracefully and usually drank them without complaint, though Alistair Cooke reported that the prime minister sometimes took them into the bathroom and poured them down the sink.

The best way to meet people in Cannes is to sit on the Carleton Terrace and order a drink. A few hours later the waiter will bring you somebody else’s martini. You pick up the martini in an extravagant manner and look around. A few tables away someone will be holding your Perrier with a twist in a quizzical position

Why do some people deal with being upset by playing three sets of tennis or drinking a stiff martini, while others carve their arms with razor blades?

Enjoy, your Martini shake and Safari long drink.

It’s true,” said Freddie Humbert. “Kids nowadays have got no ability to listen to simple instructions.” “Here you go, Dad,” said Quent, returning with a tray of drinks. “Two martinis, one with extra olives, one with no olives, one mineral water, ice, and a twist of lime, and a jade juice, no fruit.

We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets. "They don't know how to make them here," he said. "What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.

So what post-workout beverages can I interest you two in?” “Dirty martini, please,” Emma decided. “I feel like it would be culturally inappropriate of me to drink in Blue Moon without trying a wheat grass shot,” Niko mused. “You could be run

I went into the bar and sank into a leather bar seat packed with down. Glasses tinkled gently, lights glowed softly, there were quiet voices whispering of love, or ten per cent, or whatever they whisper about in a place like that. A tall fine-looking man in a gray suit cut by an angel suddenly stood up from a small table by the wall and walked over to the bar and started to curse one of the barmen. He cursed him in a loud clear voice for a long minute, calling him about nine names that are not usually mentioned by tall fine-looking men in well cut gray suits. Everybody stopped talking and looked at him quietly. His voice cut through the muted rhumba music like a shovel through snow. The barman stood perfectly still, looking at the man. The barman had curly hair and a clear warm skin and wide-set careful eyes. He didn’t move or speak. The tall man stopped talking and stalked out of the bar. Everybody watched him out except the barman. The barman moved slowly along the bar to the end where I sat and stood looking away from me, with nothing in his face but pallor. Then he turned to me and said: “Yes, sir?” “I want to talk to a fellow named Eddie Prue.” “So?” “He works here,” I said. “Works here doing what?” His voice was perfectly level and as dry as dry sand. “I understand he’s the guy that walks behind the boss. If you know what I mean.” “Oh. Eddie Prue.” He moved one lip slowly over the other and made small tight circles on the bar with his bar cloth. “Your name?” “Marlowe.” “Marlowe. Drink while waiting?” “A dry martini will do.” “A martini. Dry. Veddy, veddy dry.” “Okay.” “Will you eat it with a spoon or a knife and fork?” “Cut it in strips,” I said. “I’ll just nibble it.” “On your way to school,” he said. “Should I put the olive in a bag for you?” “Sock me on the nose with it,” I said. “If it will make you feel any better.” “Thank you, sir,” he said. “A dry martini.” He took three steps away from me and then came back and leaned across the bar and said: “I made a mistake in a drink. The gentleman was telling me about it.” “I heard him.” “He was telling me about it as gentlemen tell you about things like that. As big shot directors like to point out to you your little errors. And you heard him.” “Yeah,” I said, wondering how long this was going to go on. “He made himself heard—the gentleman did. So I come over here and practically insult you.” “I got the idea,” I said. He held up one of his fingers and looked at it thoughtfully. “Just like that,” he said. “A perfect stranger.” “It’s my big brown eyes,” I said. “They have that gentle look.” “Thanks, chum,” he said, and quietly went away. I saw him talking into a phone at the end of the bar. Then I saw him working with a shaker. When he came back with the drink he was all right again.

When I drink anything out of a martini glass I feel untouched by professional and sexual rejection. I am a dreamer with empty hands and I like the chill.

A dry martini," Bond said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea. "Gosh, that's certainly a drink," said Leiter. Bond laughed. "When I'm...er...concentrating," he explained, "I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name.

I’d never played bridge, but mom and dad had when I was back in high school. I vaguely remembered coming home from the roller rink or football games and finding a dozen people in our living room, all seated at those fold-up card tables. I’d never been sure if my parents had truly loved the card game, or had just used it as an excuse to get together with friends, drink martinis, and eat those little hot dogs rolled up in Crescent rolls that Mom used to bake for parties.

Hope is something worth practising. Hope makes each day go down as easy as a cold martini or a cup of gazpacho or a spicy shrimp salad or a big, hearty roast chicken shared amongst friends. I wish we were having this conversation in this real life, but i am grateful to have had this feast with you all the same. And I will let Maya Angelou give us a benediction from that stage in New York decades ago. Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older, that's the truth of it. They honour their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It's serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail, and maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs. Anybody can have that. I mean, in truth. That's what I write. What it really is like. I'm just telling a very simple story, feast by feast, friend by friend, nightcap by nightcap, hope by hope. Let's grow up together, just telling our simple stories over a good meal, learning from those who've done it before us.

as we sat in a dining room drinking martinis from big frozen glasses whose shape reminded me of the inverted, shellacked straw hats of the cyclo drivers.

You could drink hard liquor in the middle of a school day without people assuming you were an alcoholic underachiever. Strange how in America in the 1950s, at the height of its industrial and imperial power, men drank double-martinis for lunch. Now, in its decline, they drank fizzy water. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.

The martini glass teetered on the edge of the tray. When my waiter handed me the glass, the darker pink of the liquid splashed onto the lighter pink of the tablecloth. Maraschino cherries rimmed the orange slice floating in the center and the grenadine tinted the ice cubes pink.

Yes.” He waves the bartender over. “I’ll have a whiskey neat. And the lady would like…” I’m given a second chance, and I’m not going to hesitate this time. “A porn star martini,” I say. “With lots and lots of passionfruit.” The stranger shoots me a crooked grin. “Interesting choice.” “The drink tastes good,” I say defensively, “despite the name.” “Hmm. Or perhaps because of it?” To my mortification, a blush rises to my cheeks. I clear my throat and nod to the other side of the bar. “I’ve been thinking about the couple in the back… They’re

Adults didn't like maraschino cherries; nobody ate them but me. "Never give Charlotte just one cherry in her Shirley Temple," everybody said. "Make it at least five or six." But I tired of cherries, just cherries. So after a time, lemon, lime, and orange twists snaked around the brims. Dollops of Chantilly cream floated like water lilies on top of mint leaves in the fizzy pink water. The bartenders dipped sugar swizzles in grenadine overnight so they would look like pink rhinestones, capped cocktail straws with berries they had rolled in honey, and looped lemon peels around the stems of martini glasses. Everyone on the staff called those ones "Bondage Shirley Temples," and then they would wink at one another.

That's all I've ever wanted. Good humor and good friends. Wisdom and humility. Confidence. Bravery. An unlabored sense of self. So why was I freaking out now that I'd finally started making some of it real? Somewhere in my young adult life, patriarchal snipers must have hacked into the most sacred and high-security part of my system without my knowledge and tried to rewire me. To make me believe that life would only be meaningful–that I would only be more powerful–as a twenty-something. But I feel more powerful than ever. And more peaceful too. I am living more truthfully than I've ever lived. I may not be the exact portrait of womanhood that my teenage self envisaged (sophisticated and slim; wearing black dresses and drinking martinis and meeting men at book launches and exhibition openings). I may not have all the exact things I thought I'd have at thirty. Or all the things I've been told I should have. But I feel content; grateful for every morning that I wake up with another day on this earth and another chance to do good and feel good and make others feel good too.

Gran handed me her now warm Coke, and I took a sip, almost gagging at the sweet taste. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff, considering that your cocktail of choice is a martini that’s been shown a picture of vermouth.

[T]he vast majority of drinks called for in any bar are simple Highballs such as Scotch and Soda, as well as Martinis, Manhattans, Margaritas, and other perennial favorites that are quite easy to master. Every bar also has its idiosyncratic cocktails, such as house specialties or weird potions peculiar to that one particular joint. Most bartenders will tell you that it’s seldom necessary to know how to make more than a couple dozen drinks in any one bar.

[A]s a generalization, drinks containing eggs; fruit juices; cream liqueurs, such as Baileys; or dairy products (cream, half-and-half, or milk) should be shaken, while clear drinks, such as the classic Martini or Manhattan, are usually stirred.

as a generalization, drinks containing eggs; fruit juices; cream liqueurs, such as Baileys; or dairy products (cream, half-and-half, or milk) should be shaken, while clear drinks, such as the classic Martini or Manhattan, are usually stirred. It’s fairly easy to determine why some drinks should be shaken: It’s far easier, for instance, to thoroughly combine a spirit with heavy cream or a fruit juice by shaking rather than stirring, whereas the Martini and the Manhattan, made with a spirit and vermouth, are easily mixed when stirred.

[A]s a generalization, drinks containing eggs; fruit juices; cream liqueurs, such as Baileys; or dairy products (cream, half-and-half, or milk) should be shaken, while clear drinks, such as the classic Martini or Manhattan, are usually stirred. It’s fairly easy to determine why some drinks should be shaken: It’s far easier, for instance, to thoroughly combine a spirit with heavy cream or a fruit juice by shaking rather than stirring, whereas the Martini and the Manhattan, made with a spirit and vermouth, are easily mixed when stirred.

There can be no doubt that vermouth changed the face of mixed drinks in the twentieth century. The Manhattan, the Martini, and the Rob Roy might be considered to be the Triple Crown of cocktails, and you can’t make one of them without vermouth.

Sidney E. Klein, a union organizer in Manhattan during the twenties, says that cocktails just weren’t the point when bibbers of the time went out on the town, and that most people just wanted the “straight stuff.” Although this doesn’t mean that Martinis weren’t made and Manhattans left the face of the earth, it certainly wasn’t a period when bartenders could be very creative. The new drinks that did appear during this era were mostly fashioned in Europe, where at least a few American bartenders fled to pursue their careers. Harry Craddock was one such man. He started work as a bartender at the Savoy Hotel, London, in 1925, and compiled The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), in which he admonished bartenders, “Shake the shaker as hard as you can: don’t just rock it: you are trying to wake it up, not send it to sleep!” Craddock is also credited with saying that the best way to drink a cocktail is “quickly, while it’s laughing at you!

Embury was the first true cocktailian of the modern age, and he took time to analyze the components of a cocktail, breaking them down into a base (usually a spirit, it must be at least 50 percent of the drink); a modifying, smoothing, or aromatizing agent, such as vermouth, bitters, fruit juice, sugar, cream, or eggs; and “additional special flavoring and coloring ingredients,” which he defined as liqueurs and nonalcoholic fruit syrups. Embury taught us that the Ramos Gin Fizz must be shaken for at least five minutes in order to achieve the proper silky consistency, suggested that Peychaud’s bitters be used in the Rob Roy, and noted that “for cocktails, such as the Side Car, a three-star cognac is entirely adequate, although a ten-year-old cognac will produce a better drink.” In the second edition of his book, Embury mentioned that he had been criticized for omitting two drinks from his original work: the Bloody Mary, which he described as “strictly vile,” and the Moscow Mule, as “merely mediocre.” On the subject of Martinis, he explained that although most cocktail books call for the drink to be made with one-third to one-half vermouth, “quite recently, in violent protest of this wishy-washy type of cocktail, there has sprung up the vermouth-rinse method of making Martinis.” He describes a drink made from chilled gin in a cocktail glass coated in vermouth. Embury didn’t approve of either version, and went on to say that a ratio of seven parts gin to one part vermouth was his personal favorite. While Embury was taking his drinking seriously, many Americans were quaffing Martinis by the pitcher, and Playboy magazine commissioned cocktail maven Thomas Mario and, later, Emanuel Greenberg to deliver cocktail news to a nation of people who drank for fun, and did it on a regular basis. Esquire magazine issued its Handbook for Hosts as early as 1949, detailing drinks such as the Sloe Gin Fizz, the Pan American, the “I Died Game, Boys” Mixture, and the Ginsicle—gin with fruit juice or simple syrup poured over chipped ice in a champagne glass. A cartoon in the book depicts a frustrated bartender mopping his fevered brow and exclaiming, “She ordered it because it had a cute name.” The world of cocktails was tilting slightly on its axis, and liquor companies lobbied long and hard to get into the act. In the fifties, Southern Comfort convinced us to make Comfort Manhattans and Comfort Old-Fashioneds by issuing a booklet: How to Make the 32 Most Popular Drinks. By the seventies, when the Comfort Manhattan had become the Improved Manhattan, they were bringing us Happy Hour Mixology Plus a Primer of Happy Hour Astrology, presumably so we would have something to talk about at bars: “Oh, you’re a Virgo—discriminating, keenly analytical, exacting, and often a perfectionist. Wanna drink?

and black sky. She waited impatiently for her third martini, making small talk with the bartender. The minute the drink was ready, she set a course for the terrace, sailing past the

Caper berries also make good Martini garnishes, and I’ve even seen regular capers added to the drink, but the most common “other” Martini garnish is the pearl onion, again packed in brine, which turns the Martini into a Gibson. The only real rule of thumb when using any of these berry-type garnishes is that an odd number of them must always be used: One olive is standard, three are acceptable, but two are verboten. This, I believe, comes from an old superstition, but I can’t find a good reference to it. The same rule, incidentally, applies to coffee beans when added to a glass of sambuca.

We like it because when you order a martini it comes in a chilled martini glass, and then, when you’re halfway through the drink, they bring you a fresh chilled martini glass for the rest of it. They even transfer the drink for you and bring you fresh olives. Astonishing, right? Service.

He suddenly felt like he was a thousand miles from Berkeley, in some kind of alternate reality where beautiful people sat sipping martinis at sunset and went to art shows and jogged along the waterfront and had casual sex with other martini-drinking beautiful people. A world where there were no Malibu Barbie beach houses and plastic dinosaurs to bang into in the night, no mismatched shoes five minutes before school, no debates about how all the bath water wound up on the bathroom floor or who let the dog chew up the couch cushions.

I've found that martinis make mourning much easier.