Me and the Martini

The first weekend long academic convention I went to was in St Louis and I was a new Ph.D. candidate nervous about this whole new world which I heard was pivotal to my socialization into the Ivory Tower.  One favorite faculty member promised to mentor me and we shared an immediate connection since we were both the child of a Baptist Minister.  We knew in a way that only a few readers of this blog will (and that few people in the world know) how profoundly this social fact had shaped our sensibilities, behavior and outlook.

At the first big reception the particular faculty member in question brought me over a martini.  She had one in her hand, too.   She had a toast all prepared - and I said to her that I had never had a martini.  I didn't have a James Bond inspired attraction to the drink.  It didn't have the sophisticated connotations it would have later for me.  It just looked like something from another world.  I was a midwestern formerly Baptist man who had only had a few beers, gone to see movies at a few movie theaters, only done the electric slide on one dance floor and worldliness was something that had equal parts horror and allure.

That martini looked like sin.

So I had a drink and I hated it.  It tasted vile. 

Or another way of saying it is to say:  I had never experienced tastes like that before. 

It may have been another 10 years before I tried again?  And this time?  It was destiny.  I mean fate.  I mean delicious.

For me the process of making a martini is as satisfying as drinking it only the pleasures are inverse.  The process of making it is engaging, familiar and nuanced.  The process of drinking is wound together with conversation, cooking, dinner, friends, a podcast, great music, someplace familiar, someplace new.  It's a slow luxurious indulgence. 

This is one of the #50thingsofvalue that's very unique to my adult life and a nice small indulgence.