Gluten

Wild Turkey and Three More Things

I got a blood test three or four years ago — I had been more consistently tired than a 20-year-old should be, and we were trying to figure out what was going on. It turns out that I was deficient in the same nutrients that basically every US adult is deficient in: Vitamin D and Iron. The doctor said that the sheer fact I was awake at the consultation was due solely to “testosterone and willpower.” I was instructed to get a series of IV infusions. Needles going into my bloodstream is the foremost source of panic in my life (I have a reasonably panic-free existence), but the IVs were administered by a cute, dark haired nurse with a slender nose and seaglass eyes. I got over my fear of needles that day. During the third infusion, I learned that she was dating a firefighter; sometimes I wonder if they’re happy.

More relevant to the story here, I was told that I had one of the two genes for non-Celiac gluten intolerance. Celiac disease is a condition whereby gluten in the gut causes your immune system to attack the gut tissue itself — eating gluten can take literal years off your life. Non-Celiac is different. Your body simply stops making the enzymes that break down gluten as you age. Gluten, as an un-broken-down molecule, causes inflammation in the gut, and gut inflammation can lead to a variety of icky feelings.

A few weeks ago, I ate a shitload of pasta, and my stomach started acting up. My stomach had been acting up once-in-a-while for months, if not years. My best guess was too many seed oils. But, after the pasta, I started putting the pieces together: that fried chicken was one of the worst offenders, that I started getting sleepy and nauseous after 3-4 beers (after twice breaking the 30 barrier in college), and that I’d been feeling a lot better as of late for switching my primary source of carbs to potatoes. There was no denying it anymore. It had caught up with me.

We had Princeton Reunions last week. This is why you didn’t hear from me; I was preoccupied doing my part in consuming the second largest private alcohol order in the United States.

Reducing myself to the way tangential acquaintances know me, I was known for a couple things in college, especially my Senior year. I was known for having a robust catalog of random hypothetical questions. I was known for wearing jorts and no shirt while playing beer die in the backyard. (Aside: more adults should play dye — if you’re unfamiliar, get familiar.) And I was known for really, really liking beer. Maybe this makes me sound like an alcoholic — I should clarify, I wasn’t known for drinking a ton of beer, but I was known for enjoying the beer I did.

Guys who drink seltzers instead of beers tend to be made fun of. I know this because I’ve ruthlessly mocked guys who drink seltzers instead of beers for my entire life. So I was presented a dilemma: I could either be a hypocrite and drink seltzers, or I could drink beer, protecting my dignity but detonating my stomach and my ability to enjoy the weekend.

I found a remarkably simple solution to this problem: Wild Turkey.

The first time I went to a bar after going gluten free, I ordered a Jameson neat. Jameson, to me, is fine for mixed drinks, but it’s not what I’m looking for when I drink whiskey by itself. We ended up going to another bar, and I flagged the bartender to order another drink. I hesitated, then ordered a peach High Noon. As soon as the words left my mouth, two things happened: I got a sense in my stomach that I’d violated my principles, and I saw a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 on the second shelf. I called the bartender back and changed my order: Wild Turkey neat. He gave me a look to say, “those were the two you were deciding between?” and went and got a tumbler glass, which he filled nearly water-cup level with Wild Turkey. I’ve learned this as well: whiskey is more expensive on a per-glass basis, but you get more bang for your buck.

A woman next to me, horrified, asked if I was going to take that as a shot. I assured her I absolutely wasn’t. I told her that I’d just gone gluten free, and that people would make fun of me if I started drinking seltzers, so I started drinking bourbon instead. She admitted that she definitely would have mocked me for drinking a seltzer. I asked if she wanted to mock me for drinking bourbon. She didn’t. We’re getting dinner at some point soon, so it’s working out for me pretty nicely.

Halfway through this booze talk, I realized it was a lot of booze talk. I’m not sure if a disclaimer here to say “I really don’t drink that much” makes it sound better or worse. Really, there’s two things going on.

First: I didn’t write a newsletter last week, and, in all honesty, this was because I was spending my Thursday, Friday, and Saturday hanging out with my college friends and consuming roughly 1000ml of Wild Turkey 101 from a frequently refilled hip-flask.

Second: I’m not sure what to write this week. At all. This is probably worth some further discussion, because I’m starting to realize that having a job, playing pro golf, and also writing a newsletter is really, really difficult. I keep trying to massage time such that I get all the work done I want to, but, at some point, addition is addition, and you don’t get more than 168 hours in a week.

Further harsh realities emerge when you look at the work product output. My paid work is easily measurable: I either get done what I was paid to get done or I don’t. Similarly, this newsletter is either published or it isn’t. Golf practice, on the other hand, can be more ambiguous. I’m not much one for measuring all my practice, as I’m a recovering left-brained psycho, so I usually go practice until it’s time to go home and make dinner and get to bed. Which is to say, there’s not a finished product that emerges at the end, so it’s more ambiguous whether you “got it done” or not.

In the past few weeks, I’ve done a bit of an audit of my time, specifically relating to golf, and I realized just how difficult it is to get done all the things I want to get done. It’s really difficult to get done all the practice I want to get done while working on multiple different writing projects. And so I’ve been half-assing a bunch of newsletters, putting off that one longer project I want to dig into, and sometimes not writing at all.

I’m not folding Into The Weeds. It’s not going on any sort of prolonged hiatus either. This is mostly a look into the current goings on in my life, as well as an extended explanation for why you just read as much as you did about me drinking Wild Turkey.

I’ve discovered that this newsletter works better the less I plan it in advance — it’s at its best as a more conversational thing cooked up in the moment. However, it’s getting harder and harder to justify spending a full day cooking up a newsletter on Fridays. I’m going to figure out how to solve this problem, and the newsletter will keep coming out, and hopefully everyone is happy.

In the meantime, aside from the talk about Wild Turkey, I have three more Things That Are Worth Your Time. I promised that I’d have one of these every week, at the end of each newsletter. I’ve then promptly forgotten until three minutes after I hit send on the last two editions. You’re owed Three Things, and so here’s three things.

1. Lamb Over Rice, Action Bronson

Action Bronson is probably my favorite rapper. I’m in no way a rap aficionado, but I can tell you that listening to Action Bronson makes me happy and is a hell of a good time.

Bronson (aka Dr. Baklava) released a new LP, Planet Frog, a couple weeks ago. I really enjoyed it. But I still can’t recommend any work of his above Lamb Over Rice, which I find difficult to describe other than “a rollicking good time.”

Without spoiling too much, here are the opening lyrics to “Tear Away Shorts”

The falcon feather 250 got me looking like Lorenzo Lamas
Long trench, shotty in it, at least I'm honest
Six flips into the whip like a Russian gymnast
The tear away shorts, it's back to business

as well as to “Descendant of the Stars”

They tried to sign your boy to a deal like a Japanese pitcher (Uh)
I heard Barkley bought a Mazda for a stripper (Uh)
Yo, what a shitty tipper, that's where we differ (Yes)
I hand her the keys to the Bimmer to uplift her

It’s a damn good time.

2. The TrapDraw, “Project Año – 1959”

I’ve done some work for the NLU guys in the past, so maybe this seems corrupt, but damn did I love this episode. DJ and Neil dug around whatever sources they could find to give us a breakdown of what happened in the year 1959. Why 1959? Because it wasn’t the 60s yet, but it’s also not that long ago.

At some point, while listening to this episode, I got some weird looks in the grocery store as I audibly gasped when I heard the words “Dyatlov Pass Incident,” which I’d completely forgotten about but that I’d dug into a couple late nights in college. If you’re not familiar, and if you’re at all interested in weird unexplained Russian bullshit, this episode is for you (though DJ’s conclusion of “slab avalanche” is irresponsible and I’ve told him as much). Also, a bunch of random history and a damn good time. Fire it up.

3. Joshua Rothman, “Why Is It So Hard to be Ordinary?”

I got a New Yorker subscription recently, after I was sent an article about Infinite Jest, which is about the best way I can think of to get me to shell out seven bucks to get past a paywall. And, as I try to ween myself off all things phone (as I’m doing literally all the time, in a Sisyphean-boulder sort of way), I figure reading more longform stuff is a step in the right direction.

I read the above article last night. I’m not totally sure what to make of it. On the one hand, my job requires that I try very hard to be exceptional, because that’s the only way I make any money. So the whole premise of “ordinary” is one I’m conditioned to reject on its face.

But there’s something in here that resonated with me, specifically in that not every moment is supposed to be extraordinary. There’s supposed to be a lot of ordinary stuff in our lives. This is by definition. I’m also intrigued by the whole idea of “good-enough-ness,” even though I hate our contemporary practice of reifying random phenomena with made up terms, as if we’re the foremost experts in a burgeoning field of “the shit I just cooked up in my head.” I long for a day when an idea can be good enough without needing a term coined and a definition established.

In any event. I read this article, and I’m still thinking about it. I’m not sure if any of it is wrong or right — I haven’t arrived at any conclusive evaluation of its merits. But I also wonder: what if we don’t have to? The whole world seems to be complaining about polarization, siloed thinking, absolutism — maybe our foremost mode of resistance is to read something, think, “Hm,” let it simmer in our heads a while, and ultimately never decide what to do with it. Maybe that’s good enough.