Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.
Elissa Schappell is the author of the short story collection, Blueprints for Building Better Girls (coming out in September, 2011) and the novel Use Me. She writes the “Hot Type” column for Vanity Fair, she’s a cofounder of the literary magazine, Tin House, and she has co-edited the anthologies The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything.
Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?
Elissa Schappell: I’m not sure if this is the first, but I seem to think it was beer. I’d have been maybe eight or nine. My dad would let me take sips of his beer sometimes when we were watching sports on TV. I have a clear memory of sitting in the beanbag chair in our family room watching Muhammad Ali box and drinking my father’s beer.
How did/does your family treat drinking?
Everybody in my family drinks. The story is that my father’s parents and their friends built a little house—really more of a cinderblock clubhouse—within sight of their house, so they could drink and carry on without waking up my father. One night they were out there and it was particularly cold. Everybody was having such a swell time boozing it up, no one wanted to go out for firewood, so they chopped up the piano.
My father always had a cocktail–gin and bitter lemon—when he came home from work, or beer. My mom, if she drank during the week, I wasn’t aware of it. Weekends they went out, or entertained, and definitely drank. There were cocktails, aperitifs, wine and after-dinner drinks. When we were on vacation or travelled my parents always drank the local beer/liquor. You would no more pass on trying the homemade cherry brandy than the homemade cherry pie.
My husband no longer drinks, so I drink mostly wine at home, whiskey, bourbon and ginger, maybe an aperitif–most of my boozing is with my family. Some of it’s ritual. You have to have an oyster shooter at Christmas, or aquavit. When it’s snowing, cocoa with schnapps, Irish coffee. At the beach it’s box wine, blender drinks, anything with rum.
After we finish a bottle of wine, we roll it across the floor. When my son was in kindergarten they were asked to make a drawing representing a family tradition in art class. On parent teacher night there were all these “My family decorates a Christmas tree,” “My family makes latkes.” My son’s was, “In my family we roll a wine bottle for luck.” There was a cute little stick man hurling what looked like a firecracker. I framed it.
How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?
Since my husband no longer drinks, (sometimes out of curiosity he’ll taste my wine, if it’s particularly good, or a mixed drink if it’s something extraordinary) I don’t drink that much when it’s just us. I might have a glass of wine, or a hard cider with dinner two or three times a week, depending on how much work I have to do afterwards.
Sometimes I drink because of whatever it is I’m eating. Sometimes I drink because I have the chance to try something new (unless it’s something vile like a green apple martini. Those flavored martinis are the plastic-surgery whores of the cocktail world.).
Sometimes I drink to relax. Sometimes I drink to celebrate. Sometimes I drink in the hopes it will mellow me out. Sometimes I drink because it feels like an adult thing to do—a martini is sublime with a porterhouse steak; sometimes I drink because it seems the thing to do—tragedy demands a shot of whiskey; sometimes I drink because I’m pissed off—nothing like gin to kick the coals of rage into an inferno.
If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them?
My kids know their dad stopped drinking in part because he was afraid he was becoming an alcoholic, and then wanted to become a competitive bike racer. He doesn’t drink because it makes him unable to ride and compete at the level he wants.
My kids see me drink, although it’s not as though I’m doing tequila shots. However, I did teach my fifteen, near sixteen-year-old daughter, who doesn’t drink, or hasn’t had any desire to yet—how to play quarters. The reality is she’s going to more parties, and at parties people get hammered and stupid. Everyone, certainly every girl, should have at least one drinking game she is a master at. How else is she to keep her wits about her?
Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?
I seem to recall that I drank a lot in college, and in my twenties. Although my memory might be faulty.
What’s your drink of choice? Why?
It changes with my mood/time of day/year/setting.
Given the choice of one last drink, I think it would have to be a Death in the Afternoon, which is champagne with a drop of absinthe. However, if I were to be put before a firing squad on a hot August afternoon at the beach, it would be a frozen Bacardi-mixes pina colada (fresh from the kitchen blender) which I’d drink in the outdoor shower.
I could go on, and on….
Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?
When my husband and I first started going out, we were living on the Lower East Side and we’d stick the stereo out on the fire escape of our shitty apartment, go up on the roof with a few friends, and drink plonk, or beer or whatever. It was magical, we had drinks in our hands and the world, so to speak, at our feet.
What about the worst time?
Wow. That I remember?
Has culture or religion influenced your drinking?
As a WASP, drinking is sort of a religion.
What do you like most about drinking?
I like how democratic it is.
Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?
The Thin Man. I used to worship Myrna Loy. I remember the first time I saw that movie—the scene where she finds Nick sitting in the bar and asks how many drinks he’s had and he says, “This will make six martinis,” and she says, (to the waiter) “All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.”
They make boozing seem so bloody glamorous…
