......because everyone needs 3 quarts of Long Island Iced Tea
Seriously, I have a hysterical story regarding aforementioned cocktail. I was 17 in 1979, my future husband was 19. The drinking age was just 18 at the time, and very little proofing going on in little northern NJ bars. Marianne and Jim kept me on a very short leash (is it any wonder at all, I ask you???) and I had an 11pm curfew (in the summer, just before seniour year, and every friend had a 1am curfew
). They liked my boyfriend, he was nice, clean, polite, a mother's dream. But, no getting around that curfew, though.
He wanted to take me to a local bar, called The Cuss from Hoe (of all things!) in Paramus. Looking like a trampy 17 year old hottie, walking in with a hunky guy who lifted weights, I didn't get proofed. I also had never been in a bar before and had no idea what to do next.
He walked us to the bar and asked me what I'd like. I'd only had some wine in the past, and experimented with screwdrivers with a few girlfriends, and had beer with pimply guys from Fair Lawn. Rummaging around in my hormone revved brain I recalled classmates mentioning Long Island Iced Teas.
We got to the bar at 9:30. I drank 4 of them in an hour and a half. True, they were only 6 oz or so...but to a novice and fledgling alcohol abuser, it was more than enough. He got me home, walked me to the door, saw me in and said good night. While I was relieving my father of guard duty (which is what he sat until I returned home from any date), Ivan was busy driving around the block a couple of times.
I remembered, in my drunken stuper, more words of wisdom from the peanut gallery that comprised my classmates....never vomit in the bathroom when you are drunk.
You're mother will hear you, come to your aide and smell booze, in which case the gig will be up. So, with all the grace of a gazelle, I
out my bedroom window. Several times.
I mentioned that Ivan was driving around the block a few times.... He did that after every date we had. He'd drop me off, I'd go to bed. He'd park his car in the county park behind the house, sneak through my backyard, and climb through my conveniently low bedroom window for a night of mooney mooney tootsie tootise
, always leaving just before dawn and the time my father would wake for work. Muscular guy that he was, it wasn't all that difficult to lift himself up onto the window sil and climb in, but he sometimed kicked the side of the house with his Frye boots with the effort it took to shimmy in the window. So, he got in the habit of removing those pesky cumbersome boots before he heaved-ho in his stockinged feet. I, on this particular evening, was sufficiently puked out and passed out at the foot of my tiny twin bed. He woke me easily enough....and queried, as he was pulling his damp and fetid socks from his feet if my father watered the lawn last night...
No, I said....I did.