Experimenting on Cinco de Mayo

These past two days I’ve been trying to increase my tolerance for alcohol by drinking. Yesterday I only got buzzed. Throughout the afternoon yesterday, I drank hard iced tea. What surprised me was that I actually liked it. I remember the first time I drank it – adding alcohol seemed like the most corrupting and horrible thing to do to such a sweet and fresh drink! But when I drank it yesterday, I didn’t think anything was wrong with it. It tasted awesome to me. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had more experiences with alcohol now, and so I’m kind of used to the metallic taste of it. Oh gosh, but not that used to it. I’m more accustomed to it. Well, borderline friends.

You will have guessed correctly if you thought the reason I chose to try to increase my tolerance specifically right now is because of cinco de mayo. And you will have guessed correctly also if you thought I drank alone. Well, alone but partially; I had a book with me. Ironically that book was Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas. It’s on the syllabus of my “Fiction of Drug Addiction” literature class.

As I was looking to see if we had anymore hard iced teas, I just realized yesterday that our basement has so many alcoholic drinks on display in front of useless boxed mirrors against the wall; that is, we have so many choices for me to choose from when experimenting with alcohol. Some wine, some whiskey, some rum, some vodka, some Heinekens, and some hard iced tea, which I had run toward in the afternoon.

After I was finished with the hard iced tea, and loving the shape of the bottle, I decided to make a mixed drink with the coconut rum Ate Sherry brought home one night after hanging out with her friends. There were some still left over. I mixed it with sunny delight (which I was surprised to find in our fridge, as we rarely have orange juice in the house since it scares my parents’ arthritis. I’m guessing Ate Sherry also brought that home as left over when she was hanging out with her friends). I poured the equivalent of a shot and a little more (I think) into the empty hard iced tea bottle and about less than a cup of sunny d.

It tasted like there was hardly any alcohol in it. Consider it downed within minutes. There wasn’t much left in the coconut rum bottle, so I poured the rest of it (which actually turned out to be a little bit more than the first helping) into my now again empty bottle, and added the same amount of sunny d that I did last time. When I sat back down in the lazy chair, my book in hand and sunlight pouring through the storm door of our sala, I took a gulp of my drink. Now there’s the metallic taste that I missed the first time! This one took me longer to finish as I was more engrossed in my book, which had begun to intrigue me; the memoirist told of the time she woke up, totally naked next to a sleeping naked guy, in a fraternity house after a night of heavy drinking.

At around 8-ish, I make myself some dinner: left overs from the Filipino restaurant my mom and I went to for lunch that day. Actually that restaurant was on Portion Rd. Yup, we visited Ate Ila’s old house while we were in the neighborhood. I ate my dinner with my book.

Afterward I continued experimenting with alcohol. I went downstairs again and scoured the bottles on the wall. They looked like men with huge egos. Either that or they looked like majestic pyramids that only seem to put me in awe – not because of how they look like, but because of how long they can last against the prodding of time. I do some math: these bottles have been here for more than twenty years now.

Because the other ones smelled ridiculously bad (though my opinion of this may change as I drink more in the future), I chose Smirnoff, which I’ve tried once with Kuya and Liz. I poured a little more than a shot into my now empty bottle yet again, and when I get back upstairs, I add the sunny d. Yes, everything I drink will be mixed with this because we don’t have anything else to mix it with. When I sip it, I can taste the alcohol almost immediately. There’s no hiding it anywhere in the drink. Not only that, it tastes sweeter than the rum and sunny d because there was the added flavor of apple that the Smirnoff contributed.

Throughout the night, I repeat the Smirnoff and sunny d three times . . . I think. I kind of lost track by the time it was midnight. By that time, I was only buzzed. I think it was because I spread the drinks throughout the day, starting at around 4ish in the afternoon, and because I kept pigging out eating whatever snacks were around the house. In any case, I wasn’t going for drunk. I was only experimenting.

Today I continued with that experiment, but I didn’t get too far. I had to stop because my dad had suddenly decided to come home from a novena to play majong with my Lolo, Tito Monte, Tita Celia and Tito Albert – relatives on my dad’s side of the family.

Still, the idea of experimenting is securely planted in my head. I can’t wait for the summertime so I can experiment more freely. In the summer, I plan on taking little sips of the many different kinds of drinks we have downstairs. I’ll try mixing them with different juices to see which combo tastes the best.