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.
Mary Morris is the author of fourteen books – six novels, including Revenge, three collections of short stories, and four travel memoirs, including most recently, The River Queen. Her numerous short stories and articles have appeared in such places as The Atlantic, Narrative, The Paris Review, The New York Times, and Travel+Leisure. The recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, Morris teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. For more information go to her website, www.marymorris.net.
Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?
Mary Morris: Do Shirley Temples count? I had a lot of those. I can’t remember my first actual drink, but I do remember being in my early teens at a slumber party where we ransacked a stash of champagne. The next morning wasn’t a pretty sight.
How did/does your family treat drinking?
Well, I’m from Chicago and my dad grew up during Prohibition. That is, he grew up spending a lot of time in the speaks with black and tans. So drinking had kind of a nice cache. When I was little, my parents gave big parties. Lots of cheese puffs and Rob Roys which was my mother’s drink of choice until one night I think she had one too many. I remember her being very sick. And she never drank again. My father, however, until he was over 100 years old (he lived to be almost 103) had his vodka with a twist of lime every night. So alcohol has always been in my life.
How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?
For better or worse I drink coffee every morning and wine every night. This became more the case after I quit smoking about fifteen years ago. I’ve tried to have alcohol free days, and I’ve certainly had them enforced upon me when I’m on the road in certain places like Morocco where in the souks as I walked by men whispered, “Grass, hashish,” and I was wishing they were whispering “Merlot, Chardonnay.” But it’s rare that I end my day without a glass of wine.
If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled?
My drinking never bothered my daughter that much when she was small or even now. (She did hate my smoking which I quit for years but took up again when she was about five. I had to sneak smokes because she was like a narcotics agent so finally I just quit). But the drinking she saw as something social that I enjoyed and didn’t interfere with our lives. Once, as a wise teenager, she said that she felt I had a wine habit, but not a wine problem. And I think this is true.
Do you drink in front of them? With them?
Both.
Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?
I’ve gone through various phases of mild substance abuse. Nothing horrific, but stuff I could have controlled more. I definitely drink more now since I stopped smoking.
What’s your drink of choice? Why?
I have come over the years to love a nice dry, crisp bottle of rose. Hard liquor makes me sick. I don’t like red wine and white doesn’t usually do it for me. But there’s something about rose. Whenever I tell friends who invite me for dinner that I’ll bring a bottle of rose, they invariably say, “Oh no, we don’t like sweet wine.” I have to prove to them that rose isn’t a sweet drink at all.
I find it so satisfying to eat chicken or fish on a summer night with a really good rose from say, Provence or Umbria or Navarra.
Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?
Also I travel a lot, and travel, food and wine come together for me. Many of my best memories are tied up in journeys. The vineyards of Sancerre, and Napa where I went on an amazing assignment, the North Fork of Long Island. We have friends who have a wonderful vineyard in Eastern Ontario. Some nice white wine I enjoyed in Turkey. I love all of these experiences. But there is one that stands out…a few summers ago Larry and I were staying in the town of San Pedro near San Sebastian in Northern Spain. We’d taken a little ferry across a channel to the town of San Juan where there were some good seafood restaurants. We went into one where we sat by a porthole, overlooking the town where we were staying and the sea.
We ordered fish – the local catch – and asked if they had a bottle of rose. The waiter, who was also the owner, returned with a perfectly chilled bottle without a label. It was from his grandmother’s vineyard. 3 euros. Not sure I’ve ever had anything that good – before or since.
What about the worst time?
Well, this is just one of those I’m never going to forget. And I’ve never really told…but it definitely stands out as the worst. I feel as if I am confessing to my sins, but here goes. Many years ago I was engaged to be married to a Frenchman. We were both graduate students in Cambridge and we’d gone to France together to meet his friends and family. We were staying with a friend of Marc’s. A really lovely man who had an incredibly kind manner. I liked him a lot and I think he liked me. He had a kind of loft bed which he gave to us. He slept on the sofa downstairs.
One night I went to Les Halles with Marc and some friends. It was one of those dinners I’d never really had before that starts with Champagne and moves on to lots of courses and wine pairings. The kind of thing the French do. Actually the rest is so embarrassing I can’t finish…but let’s just sum it up by saying I was sick all night. My boyfriend passed out and the friend with whom we were staying helped me clean up. At one point he turned to me and asked, “Why are you with him?”
It was, quite literally, a sobering moment. I stayed with Marc a few more months before he left me. I always thought that I would have liked to have been with his friend and I’ve wondered over the years what became of him.
Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?
Not really.
Has culture or religion influenced your drinking?
No
Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?
Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
What do you like most about drinking?
I like the taste. I like the way it relaxes me.
How has alcoholism affected your life?
It’s something I think about. I’d like to drink less.
If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why?
A dry, crisp rose from Italy or Spain, preferably by the sea.
