![]() My mother enjoys wine but is teeny tiny and her tolerance is low. My own mother tried her first martini at my now in-laws house over one holiday weekend at the Jersey Shore. Like the Princess and the Pea on the mattress below her, and perhaps equally embarrassing, I can taste more than a whisper of vermouth in any martini now. After some time, a gin martini became my standard drink, and, like my mother-in-law, I got more hard-core and stopped drinking it dirty, but did insist on it being very very dry-just a “whisper” of vermouth, we used to say. It was a different universe from a vodka martini, and yet in a similar galaxy, and it would be the first of many fancy hotel-bar martinis I would share with my future mother-in-law (one at Joel Robuchon restaurant at some hotel lingers as a high one, with an equally high price point). ![]() I had surely had gin & tonic before, but never a gin martini. I ordered one too because when in Rome, aka meeting your future life partner’s mother for the first time, you have to nail the drink. I first met my new girlfriend’s mother at the Soho Grand, and she ordered a gin martini. So different from my family, and yet so welcoming to me. ![]() We would later refer to them as low WASPs, from central Pennsylvania. We had both moved to Manhattan that same year, dazzled by the skyscrapers, the publishing industry, book parties that served free appetizers so we didn’t have to eat cereal for dinner, the gay bars on Avenue A, the payphones where we would phone each other, tipsy, encouraging late-night meet ups at said East Village drinkeries.Īnd then I met her parents. And my next girlfriend, who would become my domestic partner, my common-law wife, my co-parent, my fellow New York City lover and adventurer. And, my roommate wondered? It didn’t go well? “He’s awesome,” I cried, bemoaning love past, love anew, the passage of time, and, really, too much vodka for one young, green, new-to-New-York lesbian.Īnd then I met gin. My roommate walked in and said, “What’s wrong?” I just met her boyfriend, I explained. I went home to my first NYC apartment in Chelsea that night, took off my clothes, and sat on the floor in my bra and underwear and began to cry. I loved the ex-girlfriend, loved the new boyfriend, and really loved the gigantic dirty martini. What does Ketel One even mean, I wondered? That one was served in a gigantic martini glass, like they used to do at Merc Bar on Mercer Street, probably closer to 10 or 12 ounces. We went to some bar in Soho maybe, and she taught me how to perfect a vodka martini order: Ketel One, dry, dirty martini, up. We as a we were over but she wanted to remain friends and introduce me to her new boyfriend (yes, boyfriend, that’s a different post). Met with a lover I had known in New York but before I moved to New York, an equally strong and passionate personality. Third martini memory: Same year, still same quarter probably. Knocks you over the head like a sack of bricks, kind of like first lesbian love. Delicious, briny, strong, impassioned-like the relationship that introduced it. What’s that, I wondered, and went along for the ride. We wound up one night at Bar D’o, which anyone who knew me in the ’90s and ’00s, and lots who didn’t, will remember was a terrific bar with a terrific drag show on the weekends, the kind of place where it was really dark, the drinks were fine not artisanal, possibly indiscreet things happened in bathrooms, and if you stayed there long enough-and a couple times, I did-you might find yourself dancing on the bar, Coyote Ugly-style. I was having a long-distance relationship with a woman in DC, who visited me in New York a couple of times. My second icy V-shaped glass of wonder was equally memorable. That first martini signified the beginning of my New York story. Glossy magazine publishing was still an aspirational career field, I had wanted to move to New York since I was a teenager, and finally, I had made it here. A martini at the Royalton in the late ’90s was emblematic of a moment in time. At the end of my first day of work as an editorial assistant at a fashion magazine for a major publisher, my friend who also worked as an assistant at the company insisted we go out and celebrate with a martini at the Royalton Hotel bar, then known colloquially as the off-campus cafeteria of our publishing company. I can trace my first martini back to 1997, to my one of my nights, in February, living in New York City. As I had my last martini of 2017 last night, it reminded me of my love for martinis-and my love for New York City, and love in New York City. Most who know me know I’m pretty predictable when it comes to a cocktail order: gin martini between Easter and Halloween, rye Manhattan otherafter.
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