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| Eve Babitz, novelist |
Two Cans of Rainier Ale |
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I got deflowered on two cans of Rainier Ale when I was seventeen. It's a local product sold up and down the coast originating in Seattle (where Mt. Rainier is) and in those days a small can cost about twenty-six cents. So all this time a handsome, flashy young man had been pouring Courvoisier and champagne into me only to become the tool, in the end, of a can and a half of Rainier Ale. He'd pursued me, done everything — told me he loved me in eight different languages, introduced me to café society and movie stars, covered me in gardenias and telephoned me four times a day, besides which he had a convertible and was rich and had tawny curly hair. It was the Rainier Ale that did it, though, and in the end he became just a pawn of the fancy properties known to exist by coastal natives who have always called this special liquid "The Green Death."
They'd told me I would bleed and it would hurt and it would turn me into a woman. But it didn't hurt. I didn't bleed, and instead of turning into a mature person, I began to wonder what else there was out there that was like Rainier Ale. (Hollywood, 1960)
from Drinking, Smoking and Screwing ed. by Sara Nickles (Chronicle Books, © 1994)
© 2000 Nerve.com, Inc.
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