I haven’t always loved beer. In high school, I scorned the kegs at parties in favor of cheap, flavored vodka like any other normal girl (read: basic bitch.) That was a trend that continued throughout college. Beer just tasted gross to me. It tasted more like water mixed with dirt than anything I’d want to sit and sip on for longer than three seconds. My dad taught me to shotgun a beer and told me it was an acquired taste when I spit half of it into the grass in our backyard. In this, unlike in most things, he was absolutely correct.
I started slow in my love affair with beer. We danced a few slow dances, worked our way up to a tango, and then simmered back down into a waltz that would last forever. I stopped drinking the cheap, watery beer that was so prevalent at every college party ever, and I started drinking beer that actually came in a glass bottle and had a really weird name. I worked my way up, little by little, to the place I’m in now—I’m a total beer snob. I love hoppy, bitter IPAs, and I turn my nose up at anything less than about 6% ABV. I taste beers at the bar before I choose which one I want. I have favorite breweries. I scorn all other types of alcohol, from vodka to rum, in favor of beer. The last time I took a shot was at my little sister’s twenty-first birthday and I’m pretty sure I filled the shot glass with beer a few times. When did this happen to me? I’m honestly not sure, but it did, and now I’m stuck between a rock and a cold beer, or however the saying goes.
Here’s the problem. Girls aren’t supposed to love beer. I don’t mean this in a dainty, stereotypical way; I mean this in a totally legitimate, probably medically supported way. Because the fact that I love beer is slowly but surely ruining my life.
First of all, I only love good beer. And good beer fucks you over. It has a much higher alcohol percentage than cheap beer, and I love it. One of my favorite things to do is sit on a porch on a sunny weekend afternoon and have a beer. Beer is also way more adaptable than other drinks—ever had a shower martini? Didn’t think so. But I don’t want to just have one or two, I want six, and then I wake up with a hangover so bad I want to shoot myself in the face. Also, the calories—dear God, the calories. Light beer sucks. Low-calorie anything sucks, but especially beer. I want the good stuff, and the good stuff wants me to be a huge fatass. Beer also makes me incredibly sleepy; giving me one is the equivalent of giving me a sleeping pill. Drinking one on a weekday pretty much always results in me waking up feeling a little hungover and very confused at nine in the evening. To top it off, when I get drunk off of beer, I seem to go a little more insane than usual, like the time I drank Torpedo and took my bikini off with my girlfriend’s mom.
Lastly, I’m a girl. I don’t metabolize alcohol quickly, or well, and I’m quite simply not big enough (yet, give it a few more beers) to handle the pure volume of alcohol I consume when I drink beer. My guy friends will buy round after round, and I get sucked into the trap of trying to keep up with them. In college, the same basic situation happened plenty of times, but this was during my prime vodka tolerance stage. I would take shots, and I would do okay. Still not great, but okay. This is not the case with beer. I’m out of college now, and my alcohol tolerance continues to fall, for whatever reason. Life telling me to try and be an adult, or whatever.
If I could go back to hating beer, I would, honestly. This irresistible attraction I have to it is proving nearly impossible to handle. It’s making me fat and sleepy and drunk when I really only want to be one of those things. I know why girls aren’t supposed to like beer, now, and this is why. Our bodies can’t handle it. I’m in too deep now to go back, though, so… happy hour later?.
Nice Move867
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Shannon Layne
My favorite things are tiaras, compliments, and free drinks, which are becoming harder to come by the more I tend to show up at the bar in sweat pants. The proudest moment of my life so far has been landing an actual, paying job that allows me to Facebook stalk people for a living. I tweet about my mom way too often, who is constantly trying to remind me that I'm not nearly as cool as I think I am. Please send me funny stories to read at work here: shannon.laynee@yahoo.com
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