There is something more holy, more wondrous, more bitchin than a good Manhattan, the kind a friend of mine makes (always better than I can) so well that I'm convinced my wife wants to sleep with him, and I would let her--they're that good. Still, I digress, there is something better than a good Manhattan, Willet Rye on the rocks in a buckettt. I don't normally resort to that "repeated letter for emphasis" shit, but I had to here. I am sitting, as I write this, in a sweatsuit, with the window wide open on the first rainy day of the year, watching college football I don't care about and drinking whiskey I can't afford. The wife and kids have given me the day off, an evening to myself and I am grateful for their sacrifice.
It has been a shitty month, in a shitty year, or two. My paycheck has gone down for three years in a row. The house, as of today, is worth $200,000 less than it was four years ago, and everyone, even the nice good ones, is pissed at work. Pissed at the kids, pissed at me, pissed at God, pissed. There is a near total breakdown of government at all levels in our country. One side unwilling to do anything because the President is black, if not liberal or progressive and the other side too afraid to be what they fucking claim to be. That was not a good decade, the "zero's". I'm tired, a bit melancholic, middle-aged, and starting to wonder if this is it. Alright that's bullshit, I know this is it. This is all we will have, will be, and we'd better make the best of it. Which brings me back to Willet.
115 proof, small batch Rye Whiskey is the Crack of alcohols. One sip and you're on that wax encased glass tit for the ride, and the ride is smooth. Whiskey has always been a man's drink. It tastes like straight gasoline the first time you drink it, but gets better with age--yours and its. You develop a taste for the stuff because you know, below the belt, in your man eggs, that it's right. Your father drank it, his father made it, and it's your birthright/responsibility to drink it and enjoy it. So you work it, 10, 20 years. You mix it at first with 7up, though you discover that this is for pussies, so you move to the Manhattan, The Old Fashioned and so forth. At some point, the time is different for everyone, you find yourself pouring a three finger bucket of the stuff, on ice (you don't need to be a fucking cowboy), and lifting it to your mouth, smelling, tasting in addition to drinking. Then you need better shit, because you can taste it; it won't be mixed, or even fucking stored, with 7up. You know, because you can't go back, that you are ready to spend $35 on a bottle of Rye and not think too much about it. You know too, that it will be around for a month, you won't be drinking it all tonight and puking it all over Howard Miller's driveway (sorry Howard, did I ever say that?) So here's to you Willet family. May good bless you and your magical grains. The rain has stopped and my glass is empty.
