BK, Susan Dey? Woo Hoo!
I'm not much of a drinker. Rarely hard liquor and when I do, it's usually a gin and tonic, something with vodka, or a margarita. When I drink, I drink wine...and have lately been having a glass of red three or four times a week for a its purported medicinal efforts on the behalf of blood pressure and such. But I have no cravings for it...and can go weeks, sometimes months without a drink. Mostly I don't really prefer the taste of alcohol. I'd rather have a diet coke. I do like a glass of bubbly...probably my favourite alcoholic beverage.
I had my first drink on my twenty-first birthday. My father took me to the Playboy Club in Cincinnati (now long defunct) and I had a screwdriver. I had my picture taken with a Playboy Bunny to commemorate the occasion. What's amazing about the picture is the haze of cigarette smoke around it. I used to have the playboy candle holder off our table from that night.
I have been blissfully high, mellow, or tipsy on several festive occasions. Drunk only a few times in my life. The first time was when I was playing the part of McCann, the menacing Irish intruder in Pinter's the Birthday Party. The director had discovered the "Method" on a trip to England over the summer and it was a torturous rehearsal period where he made us play lots of theatre games and improvs and awareness exercises...and I hate all that shit! Just put the script in my hands, block me, and let me say the words. It was easy to tell the director didn't know what he was doing and how flatulent all this nonsense was, because everytime he felt I was "faking" it on stage, it felt "real" to me. And everytime he felt I was being really honest and true, I knew I was "faking" it.
Anyway, in the play, there was a scene where I was supposed to get drunk. When the director found out I didn't drink and had never been drunk, he said, "What? How can you play drunk if you don't know what it's like to be drunk (if one follows this logic down its ultimate path, you could ask how can you play MacBeth, if you've never committed regicide?). So it was decided we'd have a cast party that weekend and get me drunk...which we proceeded to do, on screwdrivers. Here was the problem...my character was a rather melancholy, wistful drunk. My first drunk was rather lively and happy, I was singing Fred Astaire songs, tap-dancing in the kitchen (and I don't tap dance), laughing a lot. So as a method object lesson...the whole thing was a abject failure. The next morning I was mightily hungover and did not move from my apartment...or the couch, where I had spent the night...until my director came over and said, "What? You haven't eaten anything yet. That will make you feel better." The idea sounded nauseating, but it turned out to be the one thing the director was right about it. After eggs and toast, I was feeling much better. Apart from the director and the rehearsal nonsense, I was very good in the play and got nice reviews.
The next momentual drunk I tied on was several years later, in Dallas, right after I had closed in some dinner theatre play with Rose Marie. The next week Elvis died. Another cast member and I were big Elvis fans. At first we thought of driving to Memphis, but instead we just decided to have our own wake for him. He had a membership to the Dallas Playboy Club (also now long defunct) and we went there. Unfortunately they had a coat and tie policy and I had worn a scarf (it was the seventies), so they reluctantly couldn't admit us. So instead, we bought some cheap wine and went to his house. About three o'clock in the morning, drunk as a skunk, I felt I had to go home to walk my dog, Hotspur...even though I was in absolutely no condition to drive home. I stupidly did so anyway. I remember driving down Lemmon Avenue at 3AM, no one else on the road, chastising myself. Even when one is blotto, there is that part of your brain that is crystal clear...sort of observing you. The crystal part of my brain was observing the drunk, sloppy me, saying, "If you're lucky enough to get home without incident, accident, or being pulled over by the cops, you must NEVER do this again!" Fortunately, I did get home safely, took the dog out, vomitted in the courtyard, and went to sleep it off, Hotspur showing great concern for me.
The next day my companion in drunkeness, called, we went out to breakfast to cure our hangovers and then sat through ANNIE HALL. So much for Elvis' wake.
Needless to say, I have never driven drunk again. One of the scariest, stupidiest things I have ever done!
