Kid, listen. I know you just threw a barstool through a flatscreen because the 49ers dropped the ball in the big game, and I know you’re crouched over the victorian era super chilled coupe filled with a lipstick colored elixir called a Taylor Swift with your eyes widening and your fingers curling into a fist, and look, kid, I know the girl who bought you this drink is sporting a KC jersey and smirk you could pry open a door with, but maybe, just this once, maybe you could settle the fuck, as they say, down.
Cause holy shit the grrr in you, man. The grrr in you. You need a hug worse than anyone I know and you need it from a dude 20 years older than you and we both know who that is. You need to nuzzle your noggin into the neck of a father figure, bristling with little white hairs like a frost, and when I say father figure, I mean your dad, and when I say your dad, I mean the archetype, not your actual father, because he was the untamed masculion that made you this way by withholding his love—
Are you crying? Hey, little broflake, guess what? Nobody cares. Look around the bar. Look at the people looking at you right now. It’s nobody. Nobody is looking. It’s cool. Take your tears. Cry your shit out, man. It ain’t yours anyway.
And when I said nobody cares, I meant nobody cares that you’re very quietly losing your shit staring at that pinkish deliciousness the bartender has laid before you, ordered by the girl in the Jersey, who saw you a minute ago and thought, shit, I got my Kelce, or whatever his name is. Because she’s a Swiftie and yeah, she’s 31 and yeah, she’s two years older than you, and yeah, she feetballs, and yeah, she idolizes Miss Swift because Miss Swift is the absolute, Queen of the known world, mogul level fleet of warships megawatt, as they say, shit. So she ordered you a drink cause swifties don’t play and now you’re crying because you got all caught up in wondering if this drink was a girl drink and if you drink it will it make you gay and wait does your dad really love you?
Your father doesn’t love you. That’s a truth you need right now and also, yes he does, but he has no idea how to tell you because his father couldn’t tell him he loved him and so on and so on until the point in your family’s origin story when your bloodline crawled up out of the saltine sea. And that feeling you’re having right now? The one that started with a girl drink drink check and ended up in patriarchal disillusionment tears? It’s important. You need it. That feeling in your chest that’s setting off all the alarms you laid down to defend the perimeters of your emotional corpus, that feeling that something is coming detached that had been fastened on with steel rivets for all these years? That’s. Your. Fucking. Dad.
Oh shit, dude, tighten up. She’s coming over. She leans into the bar, real close to you, the sleeve of her Kansans City jersey mingling with the sleeve of your 49ers jersey and the bartender is right there because she kept her eye on you in case you popped a glock and Jersey girl says I’ll have what he’s having and what. The fuck. Just happened?
She doesn’t say shit to you. She doesn’t say a fucking word. She just brings that luminescent cocktail to her lips. Then she turns to you and looks right into your eyes, no game, no bullshit, no strings, and says Wanna go to my car?
And you kill that fucking drink—and it’s goddam delicious. It’s smoke and warmth and chocolate and caramel and she takes your hand and you follow her out to a snow-white Jeep and she shuts the doors and she turns on the music and a perfect song slices through you like a fucking machete and then she grabs a sweatshirt from the back seat and hands it to you and it smells like her hair and you look over at her, confused as all fuck, and she says, frankly, soberly, with a universe of empathy finish what you started and you bury your face in her shirt and she turns the music up and it takes a while.
Later, you dry up and you make a joke about the sweatshirt and she makes a joke about the game and you take a beat and she reaches over and takes your hand and that’s all. No grope. No heat. No push. She just holds it for a second and time stands absolutely still, like a deer in the forest with its ears up and something inside of you stands and looks around and sees her and you freeze and you stay that way for hours, for years, for decades. Then she lets go and you say what was that song? And she tells you it’s willow by Taylor Swift and you say play it again.
So yeah, kid. Yeah. A Taylor Swift is a girl drink. Yeah, it fucking is.
A Taylor Swift
An original cocktail from the house bar at All American Whiskey.
1 oz of Swift Single Malt Texas Whiskey
1 oz of E.H. Taylor Bourbon
a scant teaspoon of Sorghum Syrup
ONE drop of Fee brothers Turkish Tobacco bitters
ONE dash of Fee Brothers Mole Bitters
Build into a rocks glass with a big ass cube. Stir and let it sit for a minute then serve with a small red pepper pinned in an orange peel with a toothpick or whatever.
