Interview with Angela Elson, author of the upcoming memoir, “I Want You to Like Me: A Foreigner’s Memoir of Bravery, Beer and Japan”

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.

Angela Elson is the author of I Want You to Like Me: A Foreigner’s Memoir of Bravery, Beer and Japan, a (soon-to-be-finished) humorous depiction of the three years she spent teaching English, falling in love and making an ass out of herself in Osaka. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Spalding University, and her work has appeared in Oil and Water and Other Things That Don’t Mix, a charity anthology benefiting the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Angela Elson: I was six. My mother had come home from work and decided to unwind by practicing the piano while sipping a generous glass of Coca Cola on ice, which she kept on the coffee table behind her to mitigate the risk of its spilling on the keys. Coke was forbidden in our house, and I remember being—in my sneaky, stubborn, childish way—jealous. I wasn’t going to let her get away with flaunting her adult-derived ability to drink soda on a whim, so while she played, I drained the glass in one long, deliberate gulp. It was possibly the grossest thing that ever happened to me. I blame the developers of Kahlua for making it look just like Coke. Who does that?

How did/does your family treat drinking?

My family loves to drink! It’s partially in the genes—my parents grew up in European homes—but also I think my family uses booze as an excuse to get together and shoot the breeze. Now that I am “of age,” we drink together all the time. But even when I wasn’t, I remember my parents having cocktails every night after work, and my brother and I would sit in the living room with them like adults and talk about our day. When we were teenagers, we were allowed a beer (if we wanted one) during these occasions, or wine with dinner—it was no big deal. When I tell people this, I fear they’ll assume we’re all a bunch of alcoholics who can’t have fun without sauce. But then I think, “Growing up, sure, my family drank every day, but we also talked every day, and we still have a great time together.” How many families can say that?

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

When I was 21, I moved to Osaka, Japan, to teach English for three years. This was done with the intention of finding myself and becoming a responsible, all-loving citizen of the world, but on my first day there I discovered you could buy whiskey at convenience stores, and the situation devolved rapidly from there. I attribute this to many things: I was young. I got off work at 9 in the evening. I was alone overseas in a land where I couldn’t understand the TV. I belonged to a thriving ex-pat community of mostly handsome young pub enthusiasts with British-derived accents. But mostly, I think I drank because it made the stranger parts of being a foreigner overseas seem less surreal. I loved Japan, but it’s hard not to belong anywhere. Get enough 7/11 whiskey in you, though, and every place can feel like home.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

I was trying to screw up the courage to seduce this Australian guy who taught English with me in Japan. We were with a bunch of friends at our favorite 50-square-foot bar in Osaka, where everybody literally knew our names. Five beers, four gins and tonic, three tequila shots, two flasks of sake and a bottle of wine later, I was having a blast. I went home with the Australian and never left: we’ll be married five years next June.

Has culture or religion influenced your drinking?

Culturally, the Japanese are firm believers in the bonding powers of getting sloshed with your workmates and friends, which is a custom I adopted with gusto. It’s easy to trust people and tell secrets when you’re half in the bag: you can skip whole years of friendship development with a good night at the bar. Sometimes now when I meet people, I think, “Hey, we should all go out and get tanked!” But then I have to remind myself binge drinking beyond a certain age is frowned upon in the States, and I confess that’s a small disappointment. Because sometimes (not often, but sometimes) it hits the spot. It really does.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

Growing up watching Mr. Rogers, I think I developed this whole complex about the “come-home” ritual: you take off your shoes, you change your sweater and then you have a drink. OK, I made that last part up, but I think there’s something psychologically satisfying about getting home and having a beer—maybe because it’s not coffee or soda or anything you can have at work. My husband and I usually have at least one drink in the evenings, and we see friends for a beer maybe twice during the workweek as well. Life’s too short to save the good times for the weekend. As long as you continue to be a functioning, well-liked adult, I don’t see the problem with having a drink every day.

How has alcoholism affected your life?

Mostly I worry that I might actually be an alcoholic, but I’ve been told that if I was a real alcoholic, I wouldn’t be so self-conscious about it. So that’s cheerful.

What do you like most about drinking?

I like the social aspect of drinking. It’s really one of the only pastimes in the world (besides eating—another favorite) that hasn’t evolved. All you need is a porch or a pub and a few pints and some people to pass the time. In these days of texting and Facebook and other forms of faux communication, I think it’s crucial to the preservation of society that we continue the time-honored tradition of hanging out and hoisting a few. It’s civilized. It’s fun. And above all, it’s real.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

Being from Kentucky, it has to be bourbon on the rocks: easy, clean, respectable, earnest. I am still of an age where some of my friends don’t like their alcohol to taste like booze, and for some reason I judge them for that. With bourbon, there’s no escaping the taste: it’s there, it’s intense and it takes a while to sip, which is good because you can spend more time drinking with the people you love (or the people you just love to drink with).

Tagged as: Japan