Liquid Assets
The Drink: "Rude Boy Cosmo"
The Location: Gallery Restaurant and Lounge, 1115 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, (301) 589-2555.
The Price: $9
The Buzz: Rule No. 20 on Modern Drunkard magazine's "The 86 Rules of Boozing": Drink one girly drink in public and you will forever be known as the guy who drinks girly drinks. Drinks don't come much more girly than Cosmos. They're sweet; they're tart; they're pink; and they were, at one point, the go-to cocktail for those girls on Sex and the City. Bartenders might as well smear lip gloss around the rim of the glass. So when I saw that Gallery Restaurant and Lounge in Silver Spring was offering a "Rude Boy Cosmo," I had to admire the place for having, ahem, balls enough to re-contextualize the drink. The main difference between a Rude Boy and a regular Cosmo is the dominant spirit: Tequila replaces the more neutral vodka, which is smart. Think of those vodka labels with stately mansions, cursive scripts, and flocks of geese soaring over blue tides. Weenie stuff, that. Tequila brands prefer drawings of scorpions, cigar-chomping skulls, and angry eagles with talons ready to strike. Tequila sends the man-meter deep into the red zone. Gallery takes the added step of serving its Rude Boy in a stainless-steel martini glass, which is like drinking from an old bucket. Very manly. Truth is, even with the smokier, straw-colored Jose Cuervo tequila, the Rude Boy is still pink, still tart, and still sweet, but, really, what's wrong with that? Screw Modern Drunkard. Guys should be able to enjoy a sweet cocktail without being forced to wear a scarlet letter for the rest of their drinking lives.
7:04 pm
I was once in a workshop where a guy told me a scene I'd written was unrealistic because the male character was getting bombed on pina coladas. "No straight man drinks that girly shite," he opined, clanking his large man-nuts angrily against the discussion table. The straight male professor clanked back, saying that he'd been bombed on pina coladas many times. (Granted, this was a professor who'd also spent a good part of the '70s in an extended methamphetamine binge, but I don't think that necessarily influenced his pansyass drinking choices.) And since the first guy was regularly trying to fist-fight girls on campus, I took his sex-and-cocktail opinions with a large boulder of salt. He had issues. You like what you like. And I still don't like Cosmos, but boy, if I could have had the optional extra of a pina colada hose installed in the dashboard of my car ...
12:29 am
I'll side with Modern Drunkard. Real men don't need sweet drinks, ya big girls blouse, ya.
12:15 pm
Real men drink Johnny Walker Red!
1:25 pm
When someone can prove to me that Rupert Holmes isn't a real man, I'll stop drinking pina coladas in the summertime.
2:44 pm
I happen to just like getting caught in the rain.
3:48 pm
But do you like making love at midnight
In the dunes on the Cape?
(This has always seemed a recipe for sand in the crotch, frankly, but to each his/her own. After having read a recent piece on the fetish of "feederism," a thing for sand-in-the-crotch seems deliciously normal.)
Also, doesn't the Pina Colada Song cut off pleasantly at the moment when both members of the couple are still amused that their partner has planned to cheat? It fades to black before the verse Holmes left out:
But as we walked home our place
My lady started to pout
“You were trying to leave me
What the hell’s that about?”
And I said, “You're a ho-bag;
Who's the one placed the ad?”
And she shot me a death-glare
I could feel in my ‘nads.
It's just like an 80's song to leave us at the happy moment when the bitter cycle of escalating emotional recrimination has yet to kick in. I'd love to see Updike or Salter write the aftermath of this song, because you know this couple would be bringing it up at tipsy tearful family Thanksgiving dinners for decades to come.