Four hours into an open bar at a wedding, this is what I ask for from the bartender.
 
It’s a joke about me slurring the word “please.” I’m not sure if it works, really, particularly as I feel the need to explain it here (at least I didn’t use a hyphen!), but I mostly wanted to say something about this pint’s name because I wanted to share the following anecdote:

At a friend’s wedding, a couple of years ago, during the cocktail hour reception thingy, I went to the bar and ordered a whiskey. I’m a beer guy by trade. Not as in, I can talk about pretentious IPAs or how to stir malted barley or something like that, it’s just my preferred alcohol medium, primarily because it’s the largest quantity of liquid out of all the alcohols. While alcohol serves all kinds of purposes (read literally any other essay on this website for my takes about these purposes), my favorite thing a drink does is that it gives you time. In these social settings when you have to mingle, or perhaps when you’re on a date, there’s tremendous value in the act of drawing the glass towards your lips, holding it there, swirling the liquid in your mouth, then gulping it down. The act gives you a couple of seconds that justify a silence; gives you time to think of a response or a question or a new conversation topic or an escape route. Because beer is always the most liquid, it provides the biggest number of these movements, and the most time to think. I fucking hate making small talk or catching up with people who used to be proximate in my life yet no longer are. There’s a reason why, bucko. So, a beer in hand always helps.
Alas, at this wedding, I opted for whiskey. I’ve never bought the whole beer before liquor you’re gonna be sicker thing or anything like that, that wasn’t the reasoning behind this decision. I just thought it’d be cool to sip whiskey.  Don’t ask me why. You know I’m a whore for acting out male cliché performances (read literally any other essay on this website for my takes about these purposes). Also, it was going to be a lot of drink and food for the next few hours, so I didn’t want to bloat up early on, risk being too full or throwing up or what not.
Anyway, after I asked for my whiskey, the bartender asked me what kind I wanted, and, honestly, he may as well have asked me to recite The Iliad. I don’t know what’s whiskey and what’s bourbon and what’s scotch and what’s brandy and what’s cognac. The only thing I know for certain is that dry whiskey is wry. (That’s a rye/wry pun, in case you didn’t get it. It’s a perfect pun, really, because puns are *dry humor* which is exactly what the word *wry* means, and, in case you haven’t noticed, *wry* and *rye* are homophones, and rye is a kind whiskey. See, like I said earlier about the Chocolatey Love A-fair, puns don’t require hyphens to be easily understandable.)
Anyway, the bartender asked, and I remained as silent as the G in cognac or the spot in a woman’s body during intercourse with a straight man. I eventually blurted out something along the lines of Honestly whatever dude I just want to walk away and forget this ever happened. He asked if Maker’s is okay, except because this wedding was in Israel he pronounced Maker’s with a Hebrew accent, which sounds more like may-care, as in, “I feel about Israeli occupation in the West Bank the same as I do about locating a woman’s G-spot during intercourse: I may-care.”
Fast forward a few hours: I threw up. Not sure if it was because I ate too much and wound up too full, or because I mixed—give or take—three hundred and twenty nine different types of alcohol. The jury it still out. I guess the fact that this was the outcome means I could’ve just started with beer and avoided that awkward moment at the bar, but then I wouldn’t have had a wonderful anecdote to share with you all, one that hopefully made you smile despite the fact it came at my personal cost. And I wouldn’t give that up for the world. That’s how much I love you all. You, your smile, is the reason I write; the reason I put myself through awkward moments; the reason I drink too much. And you always will be ❤
How did the night end, you ask? By me saying I wanna go home, biz.