21

No, that's not... It has NOTHING TO DO with that at all, god damn it.

You know what, laws? Fuck you. I’m old enough to drink and I don’t care what you say about it.

Mike called me up a few weeks ago. “Hey, Truman!” He said. “There’s this theater in town called The Laurelhurst where they serve food and show old movies, and this week they’re showing Chinatown!”

And I said, “Holy shit, that’s my favorite movie! We should totally go see it!”

And then Mike, salivating as he anticipated his upcoming feast on my dying dreams, said, “And the best part is, they’re only showing it after 3:00, when no minors are allowed because they’ll be serving beer.”

Now, Mike isn’t what I’d call a regular reader, but if you ever do happen to see this, old chum, mark my words: You’re ugly, and nobody likes you.

Alcohol has been something of a constant in my life. For years, Mom and Dad have designated the hall closet in every house we’ve lived in as a wine cellar, wherein they store cases of wine they buy at Costco and Trader Joe’s (along with our parkas, an environmental factor of the storage which lends to the wine a certain Gore-Tex aftertaste). When we eat at brew pubs, each parent will order a different sort of beer and sample one another’s throughout the meal, commenting on the differences, similarities, and variable “hoppiness.” And every Friday and Saturday night for as far back as I can remember, they’ve made gin martinis (one each) as part of a grander relaxation ritual.

I grew up watching this happen and came to believe that all families greeted their weekend with a stiff drink. When in 4^th grade we were tasked with making Christmas cards for our parents, I drew a picture of two martini glasses in front of a Christmas tree accompanied a sentence pointing out that Christmas that year fell on a Friday and was thus “martini night.” I later found out that this gave my teacher the impression that my parents were insufferable boozehounds. I’m pretty sure they aren’t.

And me? As I’ve said before, I don’t really like alcohol. Whenever I drink a rum and Diet Coke, the first thought that pops into my head is, “Damn, this would taste a lot better without rum.” Bailey’s Irish Cream is admittedly delicious, but it’s tough to get really enthusiastic about a drink that half the time will give you explosive diarrhea thanks to lactose intolerance. The closest I’ve come to actual beer is a few sips of Hamm’s that Mike has bullied me into. I’m learning to love it, but there’s clearly still a long road ahead.

Yet I’m not allowed to go into bars or movie theaters showing my favorite movies, and my friends who are over 21 have learned the hard way that they can’t buy alcohol when I’m within sight of the cashier. This is because society, God bless it, believes that if I’m allowed into these places I will in turn deviously get my hands on as much of the stuff as I can and, as a minor who lacks the maturity and wisdom necessary to handle alcohol, will fly into a drunken rage and kill the Pope, perhaps by beating him to death with a flaming orphan.*

*Speaking of alcohol, Flaming Orphan would be a badass name for a drink.

This is what’s so painful about the whole drinking age thing: Society thinks that they can’t cut me any slack because I’ll just get drunk and be corrupted, but in all honesty, if I never had a taste of alcohol again I really wouldn’t feel like I’d lost that much. I might be the only 20 year old who doesn’t want to get his booze on; I just want to be around people while they get their booze on, because that’s always where the fun is.

And I know that everyone points this out, but I think I should too: My Main Guy Alexander* is currently in Afghanistan with the Army. He’s only a few days older than me; thus, it’s legal for the government to send him overseas to kill terrorists and be shot at by them in return (like energy, Alexander cannot be created or destroyed, although he will sometimes make your hair stand on end and your laundry stick together) but if he wants to drink after all that, it’s suddenly not okay.

*Who doesn’t give two fucks about anything, or even one fuck about a lot of things.

At age 18 we get handed a whole bucket filled with rights and privileges, but alcohol, for whatever reason, is conspicuously absent. When I turned 18, I got the right to vote, which I was very happy about, along with four other abilities I wasn’t so thrilled with: The ability to buy cigarettes, the ability to be drafted, the ability to buy pornography-

Well, okay, three other abilities I wasn’t so thrilled with: Cigarettes, draft, the lottery…

Call it two – two abilities I wasn’t so thrilled with. Cigarettes, which are vastly more harmful than alcohol, and the draft, which implies that the government has no qualms about sending me off to my death but can’t get behind letting me see Chinatown while people around me drink beer.

Truman Capps can’t wait to turn 21 so that he can get carded and then triumphantly produce his ID, preferably while yelling, “BOOYAH!”