Shindig!

OK, I will come to your tiki-themed block party/fundraiser/faculty mixer/barn-raising/gallery show opening/Golden Globes viewing party/masquerade/barbecue/house-moving event, but I will tell you right now that no, I would not in fact like a drink. No, not even a light beer, thank you. Oh, I appreciate the offer, but I'm completely fine. I understand champagne/mimosas/keg-stands/daiquiris are traditional at gatherings exactly like this, but you know, I'm driving so... Yes, I agree, one would not kill me, that is medically true, however, I still respectfully decline. And it is clear to me that everyone else is, but still... No, I'm afraid I must counter-insist that I not. Really. Really. Yes, seriously. Look at my face: yes, I'm sure.  No. No. No thank you. I don't drink.

I try to avoid getting into the real reasons I don't actually drink. For one, it involves the type of minute-level personal introspection that makes for incredibly bad conversation, especially with people you've just met. Would I like a drink? Let me answer that by pulling up this spreadsheet I have on my phone of all the people in my family physically, emotionally or financially ruined by alcoholism. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name the first time...

And I've never had the courage to share the actual, deeply secret reason, that I have to be careful because someday I might be married to Jennifer Garner and I don't want to blow it.

I'm not currently a drinker and, with a few incredibly minor yet importantly confirmational instances in my mid-teens, never have been. I've always been fascinated with the way this sort of freaks people out. My pet theory is that drinking is something most of us try out in adolescence, usually in the exclusive company of other adolescents, as an act of either rebellion against parental restriction or as an aspirational imitation of adult behavior. Either way, it's a hugely important but particularly swayey bridge toward independent self-identity and emergent (perceived) agency. Opting out of it is confounding not only because of the inability to imagine a separate self without it, the brown-glass chrysalis, but it's an inherent challenge to the personal and social centrality of booze as a thing.

I realize it's my problem as much as it is their problem, though. Any attitude of abstention carries with it a default posture of judgment leaning toward sanctimony, an ironic choice of words when one considers this definitely includes atheism. The challenge for the abstainer is to a) be possessed of a modicum of self-awareness, knowing that your personal choices passively call into question some bedrock personal value assumptions of others and b) shut the fuck up about it unless someone asks you directly. This comes up most amongst the three principle classes: atheists, teetotalers (by choice and those in recovery) and vegans.

The first time I was exposed to this phenomenon was, like most things I've learned about the human condition, in an episode of M*A*S*H, where Hawkeye gives up drinking for an indeterminate period* and immediately becomes a grating, braying evangelist for sobriety. In the end he is [SPOILERS] correctly and loudly upbraided by late-series broom-stache not-Trapper roommate BJ, saving him at the last minute from being swallowed up into his own asshole. If you're not sure about the real-world consequences of this posture, consider that this behavior kept Hawkeye from totally boning Shelley Long. And this is 1980 Shelley Long, too, way before she was spoilt by her association with that rake and scoundrel Sam Malone.

I was on the other end of it when I dated a vegan for awhile. One of the conditions of the early relationship was that I watch this film called Earthlings, which yes, did expose me to the horrors of factory farming, but is also a really shitty film. Apparently the quality of the filmmaking was not the point, it was later pointed out to me. It relies entirely on the self-convinced rightness of its cause to carry it, abandoning any attempt at rhetoric or even coherence in favor of a Joaquin Phoenix voiceover rolling out tepid variations of the message "Look how on-point we are about shit." After a while you really start to empathize with the pigs and the cows and the chickens, not because of their brief lives of cramped darkness, but because they're lucky to have been killed and won't ever have to listen to any of that, even accidentally.

Most of the vegans I met are great people really, with loads of other interests, as are the atheists I know and yes, even the teetotalers. The simple trick in relating to us is just never bring up the thing we're abstaining from. Or really talk to us about anything else, because we'll probably find a way to steer it back to that. And for me, my only other conversation option is my three kids (so tiring! And do they grow up fast?  Answer is YES!) so yes, I will come to your bat mitzvah/bowling league/engagement party/album launch, but just know that I'll judge you for having even invited someone like me.

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*roughly 22 minutes, padded out to 30 by commercials