Well, I feel much better today than I did yesterday.

Two very large and delicious dinners this weekend with mixed results.  Let’s get right into it, shall we?

Dinner 1: Saturday Night
I woke up on Saturday with a hangover (nothing goes better with Shark Week than vodka) but went to the gym and ran for 2.5 miles.  2.5 miles!  With a hangover!  Six weeks ago I couldn’t run three blocks without collapsing into the arms of some unsuspecting tourist, panting and sweating and ranting about the forthcoming Race War and Armageddon and would you like to get a drink with me.  But I ran 2.5 miles Saturday.  It’s a start.  And if it keeps up, I may actually have to buy condoms - and not just for decoration or for putting on and dancing around when I’m alone and feeling silly.  I mean, groundbreaking stuff here.

But I paid a price for this running.  While running, I thought, "This is awesome."  Afterwards, I thought, "What the fuck did I just do to my body?"  My legs were sore in a way that they had never been before (as I probably ripped apart every tendon in them).  It wasn’t just my legs – my back was killing me.  Sweet.  My hangover was gone, but I was overcome by a feeling of the worst kind of exhaustion: when you feel tired and just want to sleep but you’re body is too awake and won’t let you.  No good.

It was under these circumstances that I met my editor Brian for an early dinner at Angelo & Maxie’s, a steakhouse here in the city.  This was our long awaited celebratory dinner, a "Congratulations - you wrote a book" meal, even if it was qualified with "Maybe not a great book, but at least it’s pretty long and there are only a few spelling errors.  Also, you use N-word way too many times, but we’ll talk about that some other time."

I may have been physically out of sorts, but that didn’t stop me from eliminating all the food put before me (and a few napkins and my half of the table cloth).  Remember, I’m used to Lean Cuisine baked chicken and Slim Fast shakes.  Brian and I had fried calamari, proscuitto with mozzarella and tomatoes, 15 oz steaks, and piles of creamed spinach and mashed potatoes.  It was so good that as I write this tears are falling off my cheeks onto my keyboard.  Because it smells in my office.  Kinda like throw up.   

But just as I paid a price for my overexertion, so I did for my gluttony.  Halfway through the meal, I could practically hear my body saying, "Dude, what the fuck are you doing?  Is this some kind of fucking joke?  Do you want the puking to come before the heart attack or vice-versa?  Maybe both at once?"

Brian noticed how slowly I was drinking my beer, so to step it up instead of desserts we got spirits.  I had myself a nice aged Bourbon and that gave me some legs for a while.  After dinner, we met with some other book-related people, two guys who drank Guinness faster than their pints could be poured.  In order to keep up, Brian and I kicked back our drinks, both whiskeys by this point, with the same speed.

We all went to a bar after that to meet some friends and by then I was bombed, tired, and feeling a little sick.  Around 2am I pulled an Irish Exit, saying that I was going to the ATM but then taking off (and despite that I was feeling ill, this didn’t stop me from breaking a cardinal rule and getting two slices of pizza, which I inhaled in the short cab ride back to my place).  For the second night in a row, and the only weekend that I can remember, I was in bed before the bars closed on both Friday and Saturday nights.  Unprecedented and pathetic. 

Performance: D+
Total bitch moves on my part.  Inexcusable. 

Overall fun of night: B
Had some serious potential if not for my cop out.  Good food, good company, good drinks, lame Jason.

Dinner #2: Sunday night
My friend Annie was in town from Seattle this weekend.  Sunday was her last night, so my friend Nicole and I had dinner with her at Pastis. 

Pastis was a gorge-fest, but I was a little more prepared this time.  But it was not the food at Pastis (which I’m beginning to think is overrated, though Nicole’s fancy steak sandwich was phenomenal) that made our night there interesting – it was the drinks.  Particularly the Sazeracs.

I discovered the Sazerac, a whiskey drink, a few weeks ago after having dinner on my birthday.  It was the closest I’ve come to love at first sight in my life.  It’s a little sweet, but it’s got some real kick to it and, most importantly, gets you very, very drunk.

The Sazerac is one of the specialty cocktails at Pastis.  When I saw this on the menu, my eyes lit up.  Then when the drink came, my belly got warm.  Then when the waiter returned, I ordered another.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.      Though I wasn’t drunk after dinner, I was certainly on a roll.  Nicole, Annie and I headed across the street to the rooftop of the Hotel Gansevoort.

I have to take a minute here to explain to non-New Yorkers why I love having Nicole back (and Annie this weekend) in the city as my go-to classy female friend (background: Nicole and Annie lived in NYC for two years two years ago, both moved away, Nicole just moved back).  I do not belong at a restaurant like Pastis or on the rooftop bar of the Hotel Gansevoort.  For example, one of the last times I was at Pastis was for an "entertainment industry meeting" and Ben Stiller and his wife were eating not ten feet away from me.  I have been on the roof of the Gansevoort before for similar "entertainment industry" stuff and did not have to pay.  This time, when the waitress brought our three drinks and I offered to get the first round, it cost me $50 (including tip).  $50 for three drinks.  Yikes.  But I paid and smiled, knowing that this was only a temporary thing and that soon I would return to my roots (i.e. Wendy’s and any bar with the word "Pub" in the title).  Besides, Nicole (and Annie) is teaching me to be versatile.  I have mastered the art of drinking in the pub.  Now, I must move on to Drinking in the Lounge (notice the caps) if I ever want to fuck some seriously hot chicks.  I mean, if I ever want to court a classy lady. 

We did not stay long at the Gansevoort, not only because of the cost but also because Nicole was babysitting her family’s seventeen year-old cat (!) at her apartment on the Upper East Side and had to return there to administer the cat’s medicine.  It was still early, so we agreed to go give the cat its medicine (sadly, not a sexual expression) and then head to a neighborhood bar around Nicole’s place.

At that neighborhood bar, whose name escapes me because I was pretty drunk by that point (somewhere in the 80′s), the three of us set up shop.  Nicole left after a few drinks, having work the next day, but Annie, who kept guilting me about how she won’t get to see me anymore once she’s back in Seattle, and I stayed, drinking very quickly, almost violently.  I started with what I had been drinking at the Gansevoort – Maker’s Mark and ginger ale.  But after a few of those I realized that the ginger ale was not really serving any purpose so I went with only the Maker’s Mark and some ice. 

I’m learning a few things as I continue my journey with whiskey.  First and foremost among them is that whiskey drunk sneaks up on you.  Because it tastes so good and goes down so easy, you don’t realize that you’re poisoning yourself at an alarming rate.  And it’s a different drunk than a beer buzz, which leaves me bloated and irritable.  Whiskey drunk is a nice warm feeling.  It’s as though the whiskey fills the control room of your brain that’s supposed to warn you to slow down the drinking with the soothing sounds of Sade and maybe there are some massages involved. 

Near the end of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom.  I suppose you’re waiting for me to say that the whiskey hit me as soon as I stood up, but sneaky devil that it is, it didn’t.  I walked seemingly soberly to the bathroom and took a whiz.  Everything was fine.  But it was when I started to wash my hands that I felt a sudden surge of drunkenness.  It was almost supernatural; like I was either possessed or there was a poltergeist in the room that suddenly pushed me.  I stumbled a bit, laughed it off, finished washing my hands, and returned to Annie, thinking only, "That was a little weird.  And man I have to do something about my pubes."

It was getting near 3am and I had to work the next day, so Annie and I called it a night.  Outside the bar she finished off her cigarette and hailed a cab, offering to share it with me.  She was surprised when I brushed her off, telling her I was going to walk.  But it was a beautiful New York City night and I wanted to enjoy it.  

There are nights in the summer, though they are rare, that are prefect.  After sitting in the stuffy bar for several hours, the air was almost cool.  And it was quiet.  There is a strange beauty to walking the streets of New York, the greatest city in the world, with a solid buzz on while everyone else is asleep.  

I finally reached my building and walked in.  I passed the doorman and went straight to the elevator, which was open and waiting for me.  In good spirits, I started singing The White Stripes’ "You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)" to myself after I pushed the button for my floor and leaned against the elevator, looking forward to being home.  After a good meal and a long night of whiskey, I was going to enjoy the cold comfort of my bed. 

And then I realized something: I don’t have an elevator in my building.

I don’t have a doorman, either.

Hmm…

I figured out that in a bourbon-induced haze I walked not to my current apartment - in Little Italy, 90 blocks south of the bar - but to my old apartment in the Upper East Side, only ten or so blocks from the bar.  You know, the apartment I moved out of in May 2005.  I was so wrapped up in the beauty of the night that I didn’t realize this until I was in the elevator of my old building.  Also, I was really fucked up. 

Oops. 

So when the elevator stopped at the 21st floor, I didn’t get out.  I sheepishly pushed the "L" and snuck passed the doorman on my out to the street and hopped in a cab.

But no, I was not finished.  The cab took 2nd Ave all the way down to my neighborhood.  I’ve mentioned before the Chinatown/Little Italy is downright scary at night, easily the most terrifying neighborhood I’ve lived in in NYC.  It’s so full of life during the day but eerily dead at night.

The cab pulled onto my block and soon stopped in front of my apartment.  When I leaned up in my seat to pay the cabbie his fare, for some unknown reason I said: "Excuse me, sir, but would you mind waiting until I get into my building before driving away?  I was shot a few months ago outside of my apartment."

???

The cabbie looked at me, half-frightened, half-quizzically.  I think he nodded, but I hopped out the cab and go into my building.  When the door closed behind me, he beeped.  Then he pulled away.

???

To be honest, I have no idea why I told the cabbie that I had been shot outside of my apartment.  I don’t know if I said it to be funny (which I’m not sure it is – it might be very funny but it also might be too fucking weird), I don’t think I said it out of fear (though the neighborhood is scary, there was no one there except me and I had to walk eight feet to my building), and I don’t think I said it to be a dick (I’m usually not that much of an asshole to fuck with the Pakstani cab driver). 

[Seriously, to paraphrase Karen's mother in "Goodfellas," what kind of person tells a cabbie he was shot outside of his apartment for fun?  I mean, what the fuck?]

But I do know one thing: I don’t think I would have said that if I had been drinking beer all night.  

Longtime reader and emailer Nate from Texas emailed me a few weeks ago after I announced my new love affair with whiskey.  He said something to the effect of, "Whiskey will only destroy you in the end.  Beer is the one true answer."  I replied, "Well, I guess that’s something every man has to learn on his own."  And while I’m not beating my wife or robbing banks, I think I may be starting to learn this.  

The question is, then, do I keep going?  I truly believe that, on the night I stayed in my apartment drinking whiskey and listening to George Jones, I would have continued drinking forever had I not run out of bourbon.  I would have continued to drink and drink and drink with a smile on my face, singing my George Jones, not having a care in the world.  Like my comment to the cabbie, I’m not sure if this is awesome or scary.     

But I think I’ve figured this much out. 

Beer, for me, is my girlfriend.  She’s safe.  She takes care of you – fixes you dinner, is pleasant company in your free time, gives you regular sex.  And you take care of her - take her to dinner, buy her presents, spend your money on her.  Sure, once in a while things might get a little crazy and you’ll fuck on the kitchen floor or in a stairwell, but for the most part you know what you’re going to get: a nice, even time.  You love her because you need her.  That may not have always been the case, but it is now.   

Whiskey, for me, is my whore.  She’s nuts, and it’s precisely her insanity that drives you crazy.  She’ll toy with your emotions, lulling you into a sense of security, before she’ll pull away from you entirely, make you look like a jerk in front of your friends, leave you lonely and confused.  But you put up with her because when you have sex her body because a piston (a piston that spews forth the dirtiest words in the English language – or any other language, for that language).  And because nothing cures boredom quite like danger. 

Doug Fieger, lead singer of the band The Knack, said he wrote the song "My Sharona" about a girlfriend he once had.  He said, "I had never met a girl like her – ever.  She induced madness.  She was a very powerful presence.  She had an insouciance that wouldn’t quit.  She was very self-assured…She also had an overpowering scent, and it drove my crazy."  Doug nailed it.  The uniqueness, the madness, the presence, the insouciance, the self-assuredness, the scent, and back to the madness.  A crazy woman and a bottle of whiskey.

…

But I think I miss my girlfriend.