Obituary Beer

I know these blog posts are coming slower. I’m afraid the quality has declined a little and I’m sorry. Turns out writing is hard. Writing’s much harder when your entire family has been violently ill at some point in the past two weeks. After five years Covid somehow finally hit our family and despite the vaccine and boosters we’ve been laid low. Not only haven’t I been writing much or well, I’ve barely left the house so I have nothing to talk about but the internet and politics, subjects that are somehow both horrifying and incredibly dull and yet…

Saturday afternoon I was sitting on the couch fighting another headache while my spouse was upstairs fighting a fever and our kid was laying on the living room floor playing video games in their pajamas for the third day in a row. I was scrolling Bluesky on my phone when I stumbled on one of those reposts of a repost of a repost where some folks were discussing how sad and angry it made famous billionaires like Elon Musk and President Trump when they realized some people truly, deeply, hate them. An anonymous account posted that a “lib vineyard or distillery” should make a custom bottle for folks to keep in the cupboard or behind the bar only to be opened in celebration of their inevitable deaths.

Now some folks will clutch their pearls at this idea. “How dare you celebrate the death of someone you don’t know” all my Republican relatives who joked about terrorists and Trayvon Martin for years will squeal. “So much for the tolerant left.” But I’ve been open and honest about my disdain for Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the army of fascist pricks who emulate them. I almost bled to death in the desert. I’ve watched good people die. I’ve lost loved ones, decent, caring people who did good in this world. I won’t lift a finger to physically harm these fascist fucks, even if I was so inclined I’m too old, tired, and broke for all that, but I won’t shed a tear when they die. I read this conversation and thought to myself, “I’ll probably crack a beer and celebrate.”

In fact I posted it on Bluesky: “I’m not a wine, champagne, or bourbon guy so I wonder what’s a world class, once in a lifetime beer I could set aside?” Someone else suggested: “something made by monks in a remote monastery that[‘s] not reachable by donkey train or some janky cable car system” and we had a brief discussion about what would constitute a special beer for celebration. There were recommendations of a California microbrew stored in Port barrels and a local Massachusetts brewery when a gentlema…when a gentle person I only know as “The Dread Pirate Sex Badger” commented:

“The wonderful thing about beer is it doesn’t need to be set aside. There’s no such thing as a once in a lifetime beer, as that beer is almost entirely contextual with what it is and where it is drunk.”

They then went on to describe their once in a lifetime beer as a pint drawn in an English pub and drunk with their stepfather. It was such a staggering, brilliant insight. So much so that just reading the words changed my mood. For a moment I forgot about the fascist fucks whose (hopefully natural and soon) death I was planning to celebrate and I immediately began thinking back to all the beers I could remember drinking and what they meant to me.

My first beer was a Budweiser. I was eight years old on my uncle’s boat on a lake in East Texas and I don’t know if I asked or he offered but I took a sip from his long neck. It was so foul and bitter to an eight year old's pallet that I swore I’d never drink another. That promise lasted barely seven more years, until we discovered a Junior Food Mart in Abita Springs, Louisiana that didn't card for beer. In High School we drank what we could get our hands on. Sometimes tall boys of Budweiser, but mostly off brands and cheap brews with "Ice" in their name.

My first legal beer was a Four X brewed and bought in Brisbane, Australia when I was barely eighteen years old. We drank Victoria Bitter in the 6th Royal Australian Regimental pub and Tooheys on dollar beer night at the clubs but Four X was my Australian brand. When I was broke and living in the barracks at Schofield and Fort Drum I drank Keystone Light. I once had a Rolling Rock on tap in a bar in Washington DC that was so fresh and cold it felt like a totally different brew than what they put in the bottles. In Kingston Ontario I drank Coors Light and got into an argument one night with a pair of Canadian lesbians who swore it was a Canadian beer despite “Golden, Colorado” being printed on the side of the can. I drank Shiner Bach in Texas dance halls and Abita Amber in New Orleans dive bars. I drank Covington Kolsch after mowing the lawn in New Orleans in July and a microbrew Kolsch from Cape Cod after mowing my lawn in Massachusetts.

They're all "good" beers in their own way. Lord knows I've got a story for each of them. But none of them will ever be as good as whatever’s left in the bottom of the ice chest after a long day on the water fishing with my buddies.

I don’t drink when I’m fishing. It’s dangerous, and the truth is I find fishing pleasurable and relaxing on it’s own. A buzz just ruins the experience for me. But there’s a moment, when we’re back at the launch and the gear is packed and all that’s left to do is clean the fish when a cold beer from the bottom of the ice chest just hits perfectly. Especially on a hot day on the Gulf Coast when temps are in the eighties and humidity is at a hundred percent. Just thinking about it I can almost taste it. I can almost feel the sunburn on the back of my neck and the sea salt on my clothes and the sweat on my skin and the ocean breeze and the cold water and fish slime slush at the bottom of the ice chest.

The first time I had a fish cleaning beer was in Grand Isle Louisiana in 2004 on the last day of my brother’s bachelor party weekend. His ex-wife had lectured me and had other people lecture me for months “no strippers” but women had never been in my plans. Instead we camped on the beach in the State Park, drank beer, and went fishing. I'd booked us a fishing charter for Saturday morning but severe thunderstorms rolled in overnight and we spent the morning sitting in the marina bar eating oysters and drinking Bud Light while waiting for the weather to clear. I paid $500 for that charter and we spent six hours on the water but we caught nothing. Instead we found success fishing from the bank that evening, and drank beer while we cleaned Speckled trout at the fish cleaning station in Grand Isle State Park.

The last time I had fish cleaning beers with my friends was in Marathon, Florida sixteen years later. We had enough money then that we’d rented a house with a pool and a 23ft boat. It took us three days to figure out the fishing in South Florida and even then I never figured out the blue water species. We didn’t catch any Mahi or Tuna. Bonefish and Tarpon evaded me, but we managed a limit of mangrove snapper and Chuck and I cracked our first beer of the day as we cleaned them while our wives and my kid floated in the pool. That evening Jess made fish tacos on the grill and we drank a case of beer and somehow I still woke up at daybreak the next morning, feeling fine and ready to get on the water again. I stayed three beer buzzed every second we were in the Florida keys, only sober when I was on the boat, or on the last day when we drove out, but I never once got hungover.

There’s always a tale to be told in that moment. Who caught the most fish. The one that got away. The alligator we saw or the porpoises we blame for not catching enough or the one time John was reeling in a Redfish and Chuck had his line in the water and that stupid thing stopped mid fight to bite Chuck’s shrimp and ended up with a hook in both corners of it’s mouth. I’m always tired but happy. Happy to be with my friends. Happy to be on the water. Happy to have caught fish. Happy that the day isn’t over. In fact there’s hours left to go after the fish are cleaned and packaged. But those hours mean zydeco music and tall tales in the truck. There’s still gas station po-boys or bait shop hamburgers to look forward to and a hot shower and cool air conditioning at the house once all the gear is put away. On the really, really good days we can call the wives on the way home and let them know not to cook anything for supper because after that shower and a nap we’re going over to a friend’s house to grill up the day's catch and have an impromptu backyard party. I know I’ll have one too many. I know I’ll get too loud. I know I’ll wake up Sunday morning hungover, sun burnt, and tired. I know it’ll be worth it.

In 2016, when Trump won his first campaign my fishing buddy and his wife came by our apartment the night after the election. I grilled wild caught Louisiana redfish. They brought wine and beer and pie. We ate and once the baby was asleep we drank and it was a raucous, rowdy thing, the perfect New Orleans dinner, like a wake for the world that came before. I don’t remember what beer we drank, I just remember we all woke up hungover and miserable but ready to face the future.

Our friends are in New Orleans still. They won’t be able to stop by the day President Trump dies. Most likely it’ll just be me, my wife, and the kid. Right now I have Dos Equis in the fridge. An imported Mexican lager is fitting I guess. Dos Equis is by no means a “special” beer but it's crisp and cold and there, which makes it about as good as a beer gets. There’s nothing special in the death of evil men anyway. President Trump or Elon Musk or half the cabinet could croak before I finish typing this sentence and it won’t mean much. There’s six more just like them waiting in the wings and the evil that spawned and nourished and elevated them is still in this world. We'll still have to fight them. We'll always have to fight them.

The more I think about it I’m not sure I want to toast the bastards demise. I’ll cheer. Oh man will I celebrate, but as I write these words it strikes me that Donald Trump and Elon Musk and all their ilk don’t deserve a toast. They damn sure don't deserve to be associated with fish cleaning stations, back alley bars, dance halls, and date nights, all the simple pleasures that their ilk will never understand but make life worth living for guys like me. It seems to me that associating their deaths with even Keystone Light might cheapen the beverage somehow. I don’t want to think about these motherfuckers when I crack open a cold one. I want to think about warm days and salt water. I want to think about dancing with my wife. I want to think about laughing with my buddies. I want to think about deer camp and backyard barbecues and Mardi Gras and all the good things that make this world worth sharing even with pieces of shit like Donald J. Trump. Beer deserves better.

It's a sad note on the state of this country that I'm worried about posting this. Here I am, born and raised in Louisiana, a veteran, an ex-cop, a former Republican and I'm genuinely nervous about this little essay. I considered using screenshots of the Bluesky conversation in the essay and decided against it because while I'm willing to face a visit from serious men in cheap suits, I don't think it's fair or right to potentially put those other folks in the crosshairs for what is, at it's heart, a silly little essay about drinking beer. Y'all know who you are and I thank you.