Different Cocktails

You’re out with friends and someone buys a round of cocktails. Everybody drinks up and comments on how great the cocktails are, but you’re thinking everyone is crazy, there’s way too much alcohol in here, or maybe it’s too spicy, or lacks any flavor at all. This shit is watered down and you can’t taste a thing!

You watch everyone dancing around and sipping on their little red straws like it’s the greatest thing in the world and you’re thinking: I call bullshit. I’m not feelin’ it.

And what if this happened to you every time you went to a bar? You might start feeling a little weird about it, pretending you actually like the drink, fooling your friends (and yourself) into thinking you’re catching the same buzz. Or, you might embrace the different drink you’re served, the tastes you were forced into from birth. Or, you might stop going out altogether.

One thing we’d all do, regardless of who we are or where we’re from… we’d send the drinks back. We’d get up in the Great Mixologist’s face, with a combination of rage and sadness and ask her to tweak the levels, to play with the balance.

And it’s annoying that we have to do this little extra step every time! We hate to leave our friends to walk behind the bar, tap the Bartender, and give her an additional instruction or two. Every time.

Sometimes our friends notice this and talk about it, sometimes they ask us directly and, though it may be coming from a place of concern, we wish they could taste what we taste, feel what we feel, and just for once have the same chemicals coursing through their brains and bodies as we do.

We work hard to get our cocktail right and we hate that extra trip to the bar, but it gets us out, which is always better than staying inside.