Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The bottle of crystal clear Ketel One sits chilled in the freezer, along with a single martini glass. At last I am alone, arriving before my friends return, ending where it began – in solitude. That’s the thing about drinking: it begins and ends alone, and the whole point of it – to get closer, to connect, to feel at ease among others – is ultimately rendered fruitless and barren.

I am visiting Missy and Joe, who will be back in a few hours. The house is quiet. After writing a few letters, I amble up to the kitchen and pour the vodka into its glass. No vermouth today. No olives. Only clear, transparent alcohol – in appearance like water, even as it goes down like fire. It’s a delicately wicked sting, taking me away from my tears, my failings, and my friends. 

The next morning, in the bleak early light of day, I awake alone. A glass of water rests on the table before me and I hurriedly gulp it down in the hopes of easing the hangover and reviving my worn organs. In the kitchen, two unopened cartons of Chinese food sit on an empty plate. Had I been awake it would have been what I shared with my friends. Instead, I remember nothing, and repeat most of the exact conversation that we had during my black-out.

Repeating myself, repeating myself – losing brain molecules one by one, and these seem to be the ones that matter, the ones that once set me apart from everyone else, and in some insane effort to fit in I may have finally succeeded.

The same stories, the same lines, and I remember none of it. In the shameful silence of the morning-after ~ for what is there to say? ~ and the scary thought that no one knows what this is like – this secret, clandestine love affair with liquor ~ my own private addiction, at last admitted to myself – and what do you do with that acknowledgment? I don’t want to stop – I want to be able to do it forever – for the rest of my life. 

For now, though, the thought of vodka – of any liquor – sickens me like it always does after an evening of excess. But I will return to it, faithfully and true, over and over again, because it has proven faithful and true to me. It has been the only one.

{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}

[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans

Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY

Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco

Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown

Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA

Scene 6: Times Square, New York

Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, Maine

Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY

Scene 9: Holiday Cocktail Hour, Albany, NY

and Scene 10: My brother’s first house, Amsterdam, NY.]

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” – Edgar Allan Poe

A traditional, comfort drink – the Highball. Whiskey and ginger ale. It’s a lovely shade of amber, filled with fizz and clinking ice cubes, as it rests on the windowsill in the filtered winter sun. On this Christmas afternoon, I sit in my brother and sister-in-law’s home, where we’ll be having the holiday dinner in a few hours. Until then, there’s the highball. Family continues to arrive, the kids and dogs roam the floor, and a fire crackles in the fireplace, spewing wood smoke back into the room. A cozy scene with a cozy drink – all warmth and bonhomie and holiday spirit and in the midst of it all my senseless brain indicating loneliness and melancholy and a disconnect from everything that’s going on around me.

Surrounded by the people who love me the most, the people who love me unconditionally because we are family, I still feel like my one true companion is nestled in my hand, giving strength when called upon, and numbness when necessary. Soon, the golden liquid courses through my veins, traveling along the bloodstream, and warming me from the inside out. Cocooned and bound within myself by ropes of liquid fire.

{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}

[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans

Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY

Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco

Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown

Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA

Scene 6: Times Square, New York

Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, Maine

Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY

and Scene 9: Holiday Cocktail Hour, Albany, NY.]

“What stops you killing yourself when you’re intoxicated out of your mind is the thought that once you’re dead you won’t be able to drink any more.” – Marguerite Duras

The Vodka Gimlet is a pretty, light green thing for the holiday season. Alone again at one of my favorite haunts. Christmas music plays – the songs always so sad for some reason. Contemplative and filled with longing – for what? For faith, for Christ, for human failings. A lost childhood, a lost lover, a lost way. 

The bartender sets up, rubbing a lime around the rim of a chilled martini glass. He shakes the drink in the silver mixer – fresh lime juice and Ketel One – chilling it into its own winter wonderland – mottled citrus green perfection, dappled with slivers of ice. It is a glorious entity, the cocktail – and to the regal horn revelry of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ I raise my glass, saluting the season and the reason. The heart  – warm and incomprehendingly satiated at last – sends up a murmur of thanks and joy as the trumpets peel. Let us adore him indeed.

{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}

[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans

Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY

Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco

Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown

Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA

Scene 6: Times Square, New York

Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, Maine

and Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY.]

“How does a writer who drinks become a drunk who writes? In what way does an artist go so wildly off track yet continue to create?” – Kelly Boler

Silhouettes of faux banana trees line the walls, and shadows of banana leaves are painted near the ceiling. Outside, the winter winds rush wildly down Clinton Street, but here, in the Goddamn shade of a fucking fake banana tree, all is golden, warm, and glowing. A black and white movie plays on a flat-screen television behind me, something with Anthony Perkins in a bathrobe – but decidedly not ‘Psycho’. 

Faint echoes of old Hollywood – divine decadence and delicious depravity – of glamour gone ridiculously wrong and twice-removed in this snowy upstate New York winter locale – and through it all the cockles of my heart remain warmed by the drink in my hand. 

Older men greet each other with hearty handshakes and garrulous guffaws. This is how men of a certain age operate, and it’s charming to witness even as it’s going out of fashion. The days of the liquid lunch deal and, perhaps, of honor and a binding handshake, are quickly dissipating. I mourn that loss, as much as I mourn their inflexibility and their fading power.

The holidays are coming, and with them the requisite batch of parties and social events. It is enough to make me order another, and so I fortify myself against the onslaught. 

{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}

[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans

Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY

Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco

Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown

Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA

Scene 6: Times Square, New York

and Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, Maine.]