How to build a drink with ice without your wife noticing

I want to tell you about something that happened to this dude named Porkchop and how he’s trying to come to terms with it.

When Porkchop came back from a vacation this summer, Porkchop’s wife was not very happy with him. It seems he acted ugly in many ways and drank enough booze in 10 days for Porkchop’s brother and brother’s wife to call mom and tattle. Then Porkchop’s wife, “We need to talk about our future together.” Anyone who is married knows what this veiled threat is all about.

So it’s cutback time for Porkchop, who knows how good a gig he has, working from home and slapping his yambag all the time. So now he can’t drink on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, which represents a turmoil that’s significantly less than sporadically amusing. And when he does get to drink, he has to be responsible and quit before Porkchop morphs from Professor Porkchop into Fuckface Porkchop. The probability of this happening, he explained to me, indicated a potential statistical anomaly based on past performances. So that means when Porkchop’s lovely wife and family are in bed and he’s supposed to have stopped slugging back his cups, he has to sneak, which seems like a perfectly cromulent thing to do at the time. And yes, he says, before you raise your goddamned accusatory eyebrow, he knows is one of the classic indicators of alcoholism. But nevertheless, he is not going to AA because Porkchop will not submit to religion because he believes, as Einstein taught, religion is a bunch mumbo-jumbo and there probably is a god somewhere but he really isn’t interested in whether Porkchop can have another drink or two before he goes to fucking bed.

The rest of this essay is based on the assumption that a good liquor drink must be served in a glass rocks glass with plenty of ice. Otherwise, just guzzle it out of a bag, wino.

So he says the first thing to be careful of is slamming the cabinet door. Porkchop has those kinds of hinges where the door pops up about ¼ inch before it closes, and it makes a loud bang even if he keeps his hand on it. Then, the careful opening of refrigerator, which, depending on his paranoia, may include slipping his fingers beneath the rubber gasket that seals the door to break the airlock quietly. Now, one must remove the ice bucket from the freezer (not sliding but lifting and pulling) and carefully retrieving one ice cube at a time without disturbing those ice cubes contiguous to the original. With a dish towel wrapped around the glass to muzzle the clinking noises of ice falling into a rocks glass, carefully place one cube at a time inside, making sure not to upset the tedious balance of cubes already at rest. Of course, you don’t close the refrigerator while doing this so you don’t have to open it again. Quietly replace the ice bucket, then tip the glass to the side while the warm sweetness pours into thirsty vessel. Some nights, Porkchop must open another can of Sprite Zero (three to four drinks can be created per can) and this is quite difficult, because when the tab pulls and the interior gasses escape according to the laws of osmosis, it makes a loud cracking sound easily detected by the motherhearing of a wife even when she is sleeping. So place the unopened can under the shirt and wrap the non-opening hand around the outside. Slowly pull the tab while hiding in the downstairs bathroom with the poop fan on, then skulk back to the kitchen carefully avoiding the floorboards that squeak in the middle of the floor where people have been walking for 60 years.

Mix the bubbly with the marinated ice and happy juice. Almost anyone can handle the rest, including quietly installing the rocks glass in the back of the dishwasher’s top rack after you move the glass that was back there to the front so it will throw the dogs off your scent trail.

If you see Porkchop on that terrible TV show Intervention, he’ll be the one swinging punches at those in his family and friends who try to keep him from leaving.