TKOG Who tackles a New York tradition

NTKOG #205: The kind of boozey, hard-bitten New Yorker who wakes long after sunrise, then spends the prime hours of the day soaking endless mimosas.

I am: a big drinker, yes, but…

I am not: a day drinker. There are too many other things to do!

The Scene: Harry’s Cafe and Steak in NYC’s financial district, where Justice, Muscles, Brogre and I meet up for a spot of brunch. Though Justice and I have been long-time brunch fiends together, today we were trading in our usual solitary kir royale for the restaurant’s trademark: free endless champagne, champagne cocktails, and bloody marys. At, y’know, noon.

When we checked in with the maitre d’ to meet Brogre, who’d been holding our table, found out the whole restaurant was so dead that every single person on staff knew Brogs by name. Apparently New York is a ghost town over Fourth of July. The restaurant echoed with the spectral clinks of two. occupied. tables.

For some reason, our waiter decided to take our his boredom by ensuring that our table single-handedly maintained the restaurant’s normal weekend booze ingestion. After he filled our champagne flutes for the first time, he winked back over his shoulder: “Y’all are going to get wasted, if I have anything to do with it.”

Unfortunately, he had everything to do with it.

All I remember of the next six hours: champagne; getting mad at Justice’s absolutist view of art; more champagne; thinking the waiter was kind of cute; four mysterious bloody marys appearing; someone dipping a business card in ketchup; after we’d paid our bill, me — quivering germophobe and avowed tomato hater — picking up Muscles’s abandoned bloody mary and draining the twelve-ounce glass in one sip.

Later, pull-ups on the subway bars, recommending a broadway show I hadn’t seen to a woman from Arizona, then, finally, blessedly, a pained and fitful sleep on Justice and Muscle’s bed. (See also: germophobe.)

At one point during the meal, I looked at my place setting and saw a bellini, a bloody mary, and a glass of Riesling, all halfway gone. “Dear fucking god,”I thought to myself at the time, “this is debauched. You need to get out of this life. You need to join a secular monastery, like, right now.”

Which was probably just the alcohol talking. But maybe not.

The Verdict: The brunch was enjoyable at the time, and obviously it’s nothing but a delight to spend time with my beloved friends, but I won’t be hitting heavy day-drinking again any time soon. After we got home, we all took naps (except Muscles, who is a machine), and spend the rest of a languid day feeling dazed and pecking grouchily at one another. It reminded me of the first third of Brideshead which, in turn, reminded me why debauchery is so much more fun to read about than to experience.

Tagged as: also justice and i have had this argument about art before so don't worry i think we'll survive it, bloody mary, brunch, first world problems, hate hangovers that kick in while you're still awakeb, I really can't deal with situations in which drinking is issued as a challenge because I'm a tank but like a fuel tank that sometimes blows up, never going to drink again, new york brunch, ugh i still don't feel great