Scotch & Politics

Friday night we dragged our way through a wet, snowy Boston, trying to salvage what looked to be a clunker of an evening. Soaking and shivering, we finally decided to ride out the weather at Eastern Standard - a ritzy, raw-oysters type restaurant in Kenmore Square. We elbowed our way through the crowded, noisy room and, after 10 minutes of waiting, managed to grab seats at the bar. I picked up the extensive, $10-per-cocktail drink menu, and resigned myself to a very expensive, very boring night.

Then I saw that Eastern Standard serves absinthe.

Absinthe was just legalized for distribution and sale in the US this year. While I had heard the drink was available, I never actually considered that you could buy it at a bar. This revelation quickly brought to mind Oscar Wilde’s famous quote about absinthe, which I had read a few years earlier:

The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things”

Wonderful things, monstrous things – that wasn’t really important. What mattered was the part about seeing things at all. Absinthe has traditionally been thought of as a hallucinogen and drink of choice amongst tortured artists: Van Gogh, Wilde, de Maupassant, Manet, and, of course, Earnest Hemingway. I had just finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which Hemingway’s protagonist, Robert Jordan, habitually drinks absinthe to dull the realities of war. Jordan calls the drink - “that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing, liquid alchemy.”

Now it was here, right in front of me. Upon realizing that, for $10, I could take part in one of the most mysterious, bohemian drinks out there (and possibly hallucinate legally) I was game.

Eastern Standard prepared the drink in the “Dutch” style – which is the most ostentatious presentation of a cocktail that I have ever seen. You are provided with a cup of ice, a carafe of water, the traditional reservoir-styled absinthe glass, and a special stirring wand (with its own plate, no less). The bartender holds a spoon with a liquor-soaked sugar cube over the glass, and lights it on fire. I immediately became of the center of attention as the sugar gave off and eerie blue flame for several seconds, and was then dropped into the glass. Very cool.

The whole procedure took about 2 minutes, and left the drink quite warm. I added water and ice, stirred it using my special stirring wand, and pulled it closer. The first thing I noticed was that absinthe isn’t green, which was actually kind of surprising, it is called “The Green Muse,” after all. The drink is clear out of the bottle, and when mixed with water turned a cloudy white color. Also, absinthe is not too tasty; it coats the tongue and reminds me of black licorice or very strong Jägermeister.

So I sipped my drink over the course of a half an hour, and waited. My friends waited too, wondering if I would suddenly freak out and have my own personal “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!” moment in Kenmore Square.

In the end, I didn’t see anything. No curious things, no monstrous things, and I didn’t cut my ear off. But, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting too much in terms of transcendental experience. If you can buy it in a bar, I really doubt its going to turn Commonwealth Avenue into a field of tulips. One thing I did feel was lucid – I definitely walked out of Eastern Standard relaxed, relatively clearheaded, and, paradoxically, pretty wobbly (absinthe can be 58+ proof). While I wasn’t about to sit down and write a surrealist novel, the feeling was, on the whole, much more pleasant than anything my usual Guinness and Jack-and-Coke repertoire produces.

Then, on our way home that night, I suddenly felt the urge to spring. I don’t know why, I wasn’t scared or jittery, but I just took off - maybe I felt like I needed the exercise. I left my friends behind, bounding over snow banks and sliding across icy sidewalks, holding a decent pace for several blocks. Eventually, gasping for breath and my legs burning, I stopped and waited for my friends to catch up. It took them 10 minutes. It was then that I realized I still felt great, so I stayed up until 2 AM listening to TV on the Radio.

Saturday morning I bought a bottle.

“A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world.”