I have lost my taste for alcohol. That greatest of all social lubricants is lost on me. I no longer want a drink, even at events where I should be drinking more than anyone. Like a straight mate's 50th birthday party.
I should have been leg-less. I should have drunk until I could no longer hear Cliff Richard, Elton John, Phil Collins and some guy called “Gonzo” or “Bozo” (or whatever the name was of the guy who was playing guitar and singing like a cat whose tail had been pulled) sounded vaguely acceptable.
I was in a local football clubroom with 30 people who I largely didn't know on a rainy, windy, typically feral Tasmanian spring night trying to smoke cigarettes around a nearly empty outdoor gas heater whilst eating cut-up sausages that were designed to look like meatballs.
Everything on Saturday night was geared towards a bender worthy of song. But no. I had a couple of cans of Bundy RTD and that was it. I even tried that god-awful green Cruiser crap. Still nothing. I finally resorted to water out of sheer desperation, in the hope that someone might have finally poisoned the Mt Franklin spring. But no. It has finally happened. I really have lost my taste for alcohol.
As I recall my relationship with alcohol over the past 15 years (I was a very late adopter of the devil-drink), I remember nights of dancing, singing, laughing and crying. I remember walking up a major arterial road in inner Sydney leaving red puddles of Rosé along the way. I remember falling out of taxis in Darwin and vomiting into the long grass after about ten too many Jager Bombs. I recall birthdays, anniversaries, farewells and, probably my fondest of all alcohol fuelled memories... a week-long bender when I left Darwin for Hobart oh so long ago.
All my partners, dates and one-night stands were met over a drink. Most of my Friday nights after work were spent drinking. Most of my birthdays were celebrated with a drink. Wherever I have lived, when friends came to town, we would drink until we'd fall asleep, and then wake up and drink again. Hell, there was one point in my life when I would drink a schooner glass of Vodka each night just to get to sleep because I was so stressed out and messed-up.
And now I have lost my taste for it. Yet I should have seen it coming. Hubby poured me a generous Vodka and Diet Coke (a favourite of mine for a long time) before we headed out on Saturday night. I drank perhaps three sips. We got to the party, and the footy club bar only sold RTDs in Bourbon, Bundy, Scotch and a couple of colours of Cruiser. The rest of it was Cascade beer. Not the premium stuff that we send over to the mainland. No way. They only had that horrendous stuff that never makes it across the Strait. The stuff that comes in cans. The upmarket bars and restaurants of Sydney and Melbourne would be horrified if they knew about fancy Cascade Premium's bastard cousin that no one talks about.
Nothing behind the bar drew me in. So I went safe and got a Bundy. Big mistake. When you don't want a drink, Bundy is perhaps the worst thing to go for. It is a strong-flavoured drink, and when mixed with Diageo's generic cola-equivalent mixer, it is so ridiculously sweet that you develop cotton-mouth after the first swig.
When we got home with me stone cold sober and hubby just shy of legless I turned to the grog cupboard in the kitchen and spied the Smirnoff, the Baileys and a few fortifieds, I gagged then and there. The thought of any alcohol at all made me feel physically sick.
And that is when it hit me. I really have lost my taste for alcohol. I just don't enjoy it any more. When I do drink it, I don't enjoy it. When I at a social gathering, I drink because it is “what you do”. But I don't like it any more. I have never been a heavy drinker. I am more a “binge” drinker, who will have maybe three benders a year and be happy. But the thought of a bender now makes me screw up my nose. The thought of the taste of that crap in my mouth makes me nauseous.
What have I become? I have no problem with others drinking. In fact, given the state of most of their lives, I actively encourage them to drink as much as they can. But what does a gay man do if he doesn't drink? I don't think I have ever known a gay man who didn't drink. They may skip a drink with their dinner purely out of respect for their lightweight bank account at the time, but you can guarantee that same queen is at Flamingos that weekend knocking back spirits like Clint Eastwood in some wild west saloon. Alcohol is, to the gay man, what Serapax was to mothers in the 1970s.
We celebrate our coming out with drinks. We celebrate every birthday with drinks that help us to forget that we're getting old. We drink to get over relationships gone bad, and to relish the new relationship that has so much hope. We are a tribe of imbibers. Drinking is a core gay activity.
I am in so much trouble. I already had my tribal membership suspended when I admitted that I couldn't stand Madonna or Kylie. Now with no alcohol to back me up, I could be forever expelled from the Order of the Pink Triangle.
After all, what in the hell does a gay man do in his spare time when he doesn't drink? Take up decoupage?
I have lost my taste for alcohol. That greatest of all social lubricants is lost on me. I no longer want a drink, even at events where I should be drinking more than anyone. Like a straight mate's 50th birthday party.
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