I just realized something. I have no current drinking buddies near to me.

I was reading some Douglas Adams tribute stuff, when it hit me that I should go out with a buddy and we should drink Gin and Tonics and talk about Douglas Adams, writing, and whatever. We should do this because the Gin and Tonic is a very British drink, and because Douglas Adams claimed that every civilization in the universe comes up with a drink under that name.

And realized I had no one to go do this with.

This has never happened to me. I've never been a huge drinker, but there was always someone who, in an emergency, I could combine science fiction, literature and alcohol with. Back in Boston, this would have been Matt or Robin. More likely Matt, as Robin never drank much, but either would do it out of the sense of the appropriate and to give us something to hork Andy off with. In Ithaca, it would have been Frank (naturally). Karen would go and if I insisted she'd have drunk a Gin and Tonic, but her alcohol choices weren't very ginny. (Neither were mine -- but this is Douglas Adams here. I'd choke it down.) Or, if I were closer to Syracuse, I'd hit the pub with John, and maybe Christie and Becky. A nice little coterie of insobriety in the name of a writer.

In Modern Ithaca, some years later, I could still go with Frank (though he couldn't have much) and perhaps Becky (does she drink Gin? I don't know) or John and his wife Lisa up in Syracuse if we could find someone to sit Molly, or Karen and Rob if we could pull them over (not that Rob would bismirch himself with gin, but he'd sit and nod knowingly while drinking scotch).

In Seattle, I'd go out with Dominic and T for this, and Bill if we could talk him into it. (Bill is, of all of us, the only one who actually likes Gin, and he certainly liked the book, and he'd enjoy drinking gin and saluting science fiction, Douglas Adams, and literature, but we'd still have to talk him into it.) If that didn't work, there'd be Anne and Tamera Dutton -- Tamera would have read the book and done it out of a sense of pride. Anne would do it so she could complain about her hangover later, in a good natured way. Hell, in Maine my Dad would probably go out and raise a Gin and Tonic with me purely because I wanted to do it and he would accept the reasoning. But that doesn't count so much -- he's not a fan.

But here in Wolfeboro... no one. Jon doesn't drink. Mason doesn't drink. And the folks I know at the Academy who do drink wouldn't know Douglas Adams.

It's an odd feeling.
4:16:57 PM

Wednesday, May 16, 2001