Drinkers know how important alcohol can be to a relationship – not because it’s necessary to get to know someone, but because of the parties, conversations, shared experiences and adventures that two people have when they knock back a few too many. This week, the NY Times had a superb Modern Love column (which we usually skip, to be quite honest) in which the writer’s husband of 11 years gives up drinking.
The piece is by Elissa Schappell, and she turns it into a love letter to booze along with a chronicle of her personal relationship. In her experience, alcohol serves as a memory marker, provoking nostalgia better than a dusty old Polaroid. Check out how she chronicles a history of their relationship through booze:
First, the bloody mary in a can I had bought for us to share on the Amtrak train, where we had just met. The cold Rolling Rock beers we drank the next night on our first date at a bar on the Lower East Side called Downtown Beirut. The glasses of Pernod on the rocks we sipped while listening to the Velvet Underground, after I had moved in with him (and his three actor roommates) on Staten Island. The coveted 100-year-old Armagnac my father — clearly drunk with happiness that his daughter had finally brought home a man he approved of — decided to break out and share with Rob.
When Rob decides to give up drink, things certainly change. The entire piece is touching and worth a read – which you should do by clicking here.
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