In Vino Veritas Michael B. Tager
“Never trust a man who doesn’t drink,” my father told me the night he pronounced me a man. He’d had one beer and was already slurring his words. Until now, I’d thought he didn’t drink at all. I’d finished a watered-down vodka-and-ginger ale and was eyeing the beer my father had thrust at me. It was my 15th birthday. “I’m a girl, Pop,” I said, holding the bitter-smelling, unwelcoming can of Pabst. I tugged on my ponytail. We were quite a sight, I’m sure: a slight blond girl in a black hoodie over pink pajamas and her huge, bald, red-faced father sitting together at the scarred bar. Ivan’s was a neighborhood place; just a long, narrow room with a row of stools, a jukebox in one corner near two black women, a scattering of mismatched tables. Everyone knew everyone. It was … unusual to see a girl my age at Ivan’s, but not totally out-of-place. Ivan’s is still there, from what I hear. “If I knew how to make you a woman, I would.” He signaled the bartender. “Shots this time, Mickey,” he yelled in his booming foreman’s voice. The old man behind the bar nodded, his long gray hair waving. I hoped none got in our drinks. “You’re old enough to realize, Casey; the world ain’t gonna treat you like the lady you are. It’s gonna call you a chick but expect you to act like a man.” The shots arrived and my father gave a curt nod to my full beer, untouched. He pushed one of them to me. “Take it like this,” he said, and tilted his head back. I did my best to mimic.
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“Good man,” he said, laughing and pounding my back until I stopped coughing. “There’s truth in this,” he said, holding his beer. “It shows the world how we act and what our demons are. It shows who you are when your defenses – when your walls are down.” My father laughed and took a long gulp. I followed suit: it tasted better than I expected. “This is how you stare out into the dark. And it stares right back.” He stopped for breath. I asked what he meant. “You know me, right Case?” I said I did. “Who am I?” “My … pop?” He grinned, hooked a finger to his cheek and pulled. I saw the holes on the left side of his mouth where his teeth should have been: the upper teeth from the incisor back to the molar were gone. He let his cheek snap back with a spray of spittle. “Bullshit. That’s only part of who I am and it ain’t the biggest.” He pointed at his mouth. “You know how I lost those?” “Yeah, in the army, right?” I took another sip of beer and it tasted kind of good. I looked forward to the next taste. “That’s what I told you, and what I tell everyone. And it’s true, but only kind of. I lost these teeth cause I told two big ol’ colored MPs that Marvin Gaye was a dumbass jungle bunny.” He slammed his empty beer down and turned to me. He arched one eyebrow and motioned to my beer. I steeled myself, tipped my head back and drank it all. A trickle leaked from my lips. He ordered two more and I stifled a belch. He continued. “You’d never have known that without me being drunk right here. But that piece of shit is part of me, part of most people, just the part we hide under masks.” The beer arrived and Mickey looked at my dad with crinkled eyes. “Only one of us is a father, Mickey, and you sure as shit aren’t mine,”