Last night I put on my coolest closed-toed heels, my nicest jeans, and my awesome mesh-and-lace top from Express and my roommates and I went out to buy my first drink in the U.S. Why "in the U.S." you ask? I've actually bought an alcoholic beverage before. Subcontinent and I were in Paris at age 18 and Dad suggested that we go out and buy ourselves drinks, since that's what he did at 18 in Paris. We went to a café on the Île Saint Louis (this café; it wasn't winter and it wasn't late afternoon but it was this beautiful) and opted for beverages we knew to be attractive, since we couldn't guarantee that we'd find beverages we'd like the taste of. We got Kirs. They were very photogenic, but Subcontinent didn't finish hers and I finished mine out of a sense of duty more than anything else. On the way back to the apartment we stopped at a bakery for a palate cleansing pain au chocolat.
The afternoon with Subcontinent was all about location, and the gutsiness we felt entitled to, but the drink wasn't memorable in a positive way and so I was determined to not make the same mistake in America.
I took a survey of my friends from Florida two summers ago, and Neighbor C and Intern D suggested a Cosmopolitan. This seemed perfect because not only is it the girliest drink known to man, it looks fabulous and I knew that if I didn't like it at least I could get a few photo ops out of my eleven bucks. We primped and headed over to Triumph Brewing Company, where we grabbed a table for four at the bar and ordered. HaHa, also 21, got an Irish Coffee, CC and Roommate J got Virgin Cidertinis, and I got my Cosmopolitan. None of us were carded, which was a bit disappointing, but it was probably because we looked so classy. Since we were a little hungry as well, we ordered two Chocolate Souffles (better known as molten chocolate cakes) to split between the four of us. This was the best idea we had all night, since pictures of beautiful friends holding beautiful drinks can only be enhanced by one thing: chocolate on the table.
So how was the drink? It was great. It took me about an hour and a half to drink it all, but at no point did I feel as if I were doing it for some undefined sense of duty. Afterward, I was totally unaffected--my Irish/German heritage is handy for many reasons, not least of which is winning sunburn contests--except for a warmth in my stomach. On second thoughts, I did have extremely vivid dreams last night...but I attribute that to reading a play about Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Byron, and Coleridge doing weird things and then watching fifteen minutes of Brideshead Revisited before going to bed.
It may not have been Paris, but it was all right. :)