Vices

Cock Tales

Written by Sarah K. Inman
Monday, 13 July 2009 17:23

Sarah K. Inman on the perks and pitfalls of a a few too many.

All week my husband worked hard to temper his drinking with enough card playing at Harrah’s to earn him free parking while he attended some of the many offerings of Tales of a Cocktail. Dutifully, he came home sober enough to report on what he’d learned about CO2 infusions, gin drinks, and limoncello. 

Saturday, however, was different. I dropped him off at 7:30 in the morning in the French Quarter so that he could join the NOLA Bulls’ annual homage to the Festival of San Fermin and the running of the bulls. During this relatively safe, family friendly representation of Pamplona’s ritual, roller girls replace bulls.  Still, I chose to forego the activity. At six months pregnant I didn’t need to risk getting knocked over by a woman wearing horns or by a parent pushing a stroller.  More importantly, I wanted to go back to bed.

Around noon, I knew things were bad when my husband sent a text indicating that he was drinking with our friend J. H.  The next message I received read, “Sick me walking quarter.” I called him and urged him to eat something.  He assured me that he would.

A few hours later, another friend of ours sent the following text:  “Joe dropped his phone in the toilet.  FYI. I have a room at the W.  Wanna come over and swim?  Joe will be there.”


About two years before I became pregnant I had cut down on drinking alcohol mainly because of my aerial work.  During this time I missed quite a few social engagements and at the ones I attended, I tempered my drinking, limiting myself to one or two glasses of wine because often I’d have a show or a rehearsal the following night. Obviously performing while drinking or on drugs is unsafe, and I learned over the years that training while being hungover makes for an equally unsafe and unproductive workout.  Nonetheless, on occasion, it was nice to tie one on. 

On my way to the W, I noticed that water flooded the street on Decatur. Fire hydrants at different corners gushed.  Men worked to repair an apparent leak.  Inside a massive hole in the street stood three men in water up to their necks.  Would that feel like relief in this heat?  Or would it be a horrible, dangerous task?  I whizzed by on my bicycle.

Soused and slouched, a trio of men dressed in stained white t-shirts and red bandanas around their necks sat on padded teak lounge chairs at the W Hotel.  On the table before them rested a dozen or so plastic cocktail cups. Most were drained and stacked into one another.  The rest lay there in degrees of emptiness. One was full of pink liquid, a jalapeno pepper floating on top.  The W hosted a Tales of a Cocktail event that involved tequila. Young people packed the pool, and all around everyone had a drink in hand.  A woman dressed in a black delivered frozen concoctions while men at the outside bar prepared drink after drink.

Tequila tainted hiccups indicated that my husband had enough. He eyes dropped and he slurred his speech. Jarret, the other editor of this fine publication, picked up a pink drink and almost spilled the jalapeno as he brought it to his lips.  After denouncing contemporary conveniences, J. H. made friends with a woman who had an iphone, asking to see the score of the Cardinals’ game. She did one better and linked into the ball game for him.

“Twitter my nuts,” Jarret declared. 

Once the pool crowd thinned out, my husband and I took an awkward, drunken dip. Then my husband put on his shoes and shirt and walked out onto Chartres. I threw a sundress over my wet suit and raced after him.  I led him to the car, which was parked at Harrah’s, leaving my bicycle behind.  At home, he promptly removed his clothes, got a glass of water, and passed out in bed where he snored and hiccuped his way through most of the night.  It could have been a lot worse.  

I don’t envy the way J. H. and Jarret and my husband must feel today, but I won’t lie. I miss those nasty sticky midsummer nights when we’d leave late in the cool evening, when everyone and everything seemed more interesting.  We wouldn’t return until the ugly light of dawn, the penance of another hot day. 

When we wake early the next morning, my husband sips a recovery drink called After Shot, one of the many freebies he collected from the Tales of the Cocktail Swag room.  Then he drives me to the W where I left my bicycle and heads to Wal-Mart for a new phone.  Later we gather again with friends both old and new at Chickie Wah Wah, a Mid-City bar, for the First Annual Hemingway Competition. Tasty brunch food and tapas temper the sangria being served.  We read, enact, and interpret various scenes and stories, among them boxers deliver low blows, men drink and quarrel, and women get angry.  We revel in our own idiocy.