Social Lubricant

It’s no big secret that Jim liked his women, his wine and his whiskey.  Anyone who spent any time with him knows the effort it took to keep him from practically pouring the booze down your throat, especially if he wanted something from you or if he sensed you wanted something from him.  And, let’s face it, Jim saw the world in rather stark black-and-white terms, so who wanted what from whom and why was pretty much the the name of the game with him.  If you didn't like it, well, he was more than happy to tell you where you could stick your opinion. With his typical obsessiveness, Jim really didn’t have an “off button” about drinking.  But, unlike his coke addiction which made him mean, paranoid and dangerous, Jim was mostly much happier with a drink in him.  Also, back in the day when he and I were together, he really didn’t get sloppy drunk.  It was only later that he turned into the sloppy, sappy, grabby drunk of legend.  It was never a big deal to me to fend him off (part of our lifelong bond really) but I always felt the worst for any recovering alcoholics who unsuspectingly met Jim in a restaurant, at his apartment, or a party.  He would ask them “What’s your poison? Scotch or bourbon?”

And, god help them when they’d tell Jim they didn’t drink …  Jim’s stock answer?  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”  I would watch him watch them stutter and flush trying to figure out a way to answer this crazy man and not piss him off.  Sometimes they would take a shot and pretend to sip it.  Sometimes they’d leave.  Sometimes they’d realize he was just fucking with them, and then maybe they, too, would have a friend for life.  But that was just Jim.

Irish Margaritas

Where booze was concerned, Jim had a distinctly on or off view of things.  You were either cool with it or a a drag, and he didn’t seem to be able to wrap his mind around little things such as you maybe a couple of years under age.  I was 19 when we met downtown at the Cadillac Bar for our initial approval session before he agreed to let me interview him. The first thing he did was ask me if I wanted a drink and, when I demurred, he just cocked his head in that way he had, sized me up and went ahead and ordered me one anyway: a margarita (dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day).  I think we might also have had food, but in those days when I got agitated I couldn’t eat.  And, believe me, Jim agitated me, big time. After we “took up together,” as he would say, some of Jim’s favorite times involved taking me to Mulhern’s in the Marina (nice glass or two of Napa Valley “Cab Sav”) and then back to the now-famous 16^th street apartment he had just moved into a few months before so that we could cozy up in the bedroom and watch “Hill Street Blues” with a nice glass of single malt, usually back then it was 18-year-old Glenlivet or Macallan … which I could NOT abide. I think I may be allergic or something to scotches and bourbons, they just don’t sit right with me.  Jim, again, could not fathom this, found it hysterical.  I recall he would pour two fairly substantial shots of single malt (he might not have been able to eat well, but he ALWAYS had great single malt around) and he would grab me and pretend to try to pour it down my throat, cackling like a hyena.  Then, to add insult to injury, he would “sing” this little ditty he had come up with in this horrible faux-Scottish brogue: “Brown whiskey, brown whiskey, yon, Michie and me…” you get the idea.  If the booze didn't make me nauseous enough that certainly did.  Although I never did succumb to brown whiskey's charms, Jim and I discovered I had a taste for Cognacs and Armagnacs; thus, he was appeased.

Amelia told me the other day that she has discovered a reality show that she knows Jim would have really gotten into; in fact, the whole time she's watching it she imagines what Jim would be saying, wonders if he knew any of these guys, etc.  The show combines his love of outlaws and whiskey and moral codes.  We like to think it could have competed with Jim's obsession with police procedurals such as “Law and Order,” which seemed to be on the damn TVs in his apartment (with volume on 11!) every single time I came to hang out. The show in question?  “Moonshiners,” of course

Tell Us Your Stories

In our ongoing quest to keep Jim’s memory alive and his legacy moving forward, we’d love to learn more from you all about Jim, as always.  And, specifically, we’d like to hear any stories you may recall about sharing Jim’s favorite social lubricant:  What was the first drink you ever had with Jim?  What about the time you and he “had one too many?”