On Raspberry Long Islands

An Irish pub in The Middle of Nowhere, Midwest promotes a special on Wednesdays, half-price bone-in chicken wings, and half-price Long Islands. This special has been cleverly alliterated to Wing Wednesday. The pub is a dimly lit space brightened mostly by widescreen tv’s always playing some form of a men’s sport. They employs servers that always ask for ID’s when we run up a large group service charge like we have most Wednesdays for the past two years.  

The first Long Island comes before the food ticket even gets to the kitchen. Vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and triple sec mix with some sort of syrup - raspberry, blueberry, strawberry, pineapple, orange, and lime are the just the one’s we’ve tried - and and gets poured over ice in an old glass with some variety of beer logo or pun printed on the side . We never remember ordering the first Long Island, maybe because our regular server only has to ask yes or no in a circle when taking drinks, or maybe because the night starts to get foggy around that time we try to think back on it. The first sip is never easy, and always a wakeup call that you haven’t eaten in eight hours, and that the wings aren’t coming out for another twenty to thirty minutes.  

The second Long Island gets ordered when the food comes out. The server brings out wings and asks for refills. It may not seem significant in the moment, but it is the most important 10 seconds of the night. Whether or not you get a refill dictates whether that essay you really should write tonight gets done, whether you go to your 9am class on Thursday morning, and whether your leftover wings sitting in the white Styrofoam container in the fridge get eaten at 1am, or for lunch the next day. Most of the time, the second Long Island gets ordered. 

The pub becomes brighter, and everything apart from the table you’re sitting at and the people you’re sitting with starts to disappear by the time the third Long Island arrives. Your food is nearly done, the clean chicken bones sit next to the celery sticks, because honestly who cares for celery sticks at this point in the night? This is around the time you realize that the third Long Island includes a clause; if you order the third then you must, by law, order a fourth.

The fourth Long Island is the warmest part of the night. I remember sitting at the big table on the second floor overlooking the street. It was early December, and snow fell outside the window, each flake distinct with help from the neon signs buzzing next to our heads. Our plates had been cleared, and the fourth raspberry Long Island was halfway gone. I knew I had drank four, everyone had drank four since we all ordered at the same time. This didn’t stop the argument that some people had only had three, while others felt as if they were on their fifth. None of this was ever true. Even with the biting sub-zero wind picking up, and even with the mountain of assignments piling up on canvas and the mountain of dishes sitting in the sink and the mountain of clothes waiting to be folded on the bed, everything was slipping away, everything except us.  

All that matters during the fourth Long Island is E.C’s face getting more red by the minute. All that matters is everyone trying to get A. riled up to the point where he snaps and goes off on some sort of sports or video game tangent and waves his arms expressively and moves his head much alike the path of the snow roller coaster outside. All that matters is listening to D. tell stories we’ve heard him tell every Wednesday since he graduated last spring, because I I’m not sure he’s made memories as fond since.   

This brings me to the questions we ask ourselves every time we sit at the big table in the pub. Are the Long Islands a necessary part of Wing Wednesday? Does this post-practice dinner in the middle of the week require increasing our odds of liver failure to have a meal and enjoy each other’s company? Are we alcoholics?  

These questions bring me to the answers, that no, we don’t have to drink four raspberry Long Islands on a Wednesday night. In fact we probably shouldn’t. But we do because it’s fun, and we always have. Tradition is a powerful concept. Why do we blast Rockstar by Nickleback in an AirBnB every Saturday morning of a tournament? Why do we make a silly mustache themed movie every year? Why do we play the new freshman that song every year - the one that’s poorly written, vocalized, and produced by those almost-forgotten alumni? Because it’s fun, and we always have. I the feel of absence of tradition during the summer, on a Wednesday night hundreds of miles away from The Middle of Nowhere, Midwest . I think of E.C’s increasingly red face or D.’s same old stories. No, I don’t yearn for four glasses of poison poorly masked with raspberry syrup. I yearn for the feeling of warmth that comes along with them.