A Letter from a Beer Drinker

by Nathan Graziano

Note: This is an actual letter I sent a little over a year and a half ago. Sadly, very little has changed in my life in this time. I remain the same fatuous lush who, in a moment of unequivocal bliss and beer-bloated bluster, sat down to pen this shit. And who says the epistolary form is dead?


June 11, 2006

Magic Hat Brewing Company
5 Bartlett Bay Road
South Burlington, VT 05403

Dear Good Folks at Magic Hat,

In my sixteen years of beer drinking—I’m thirty-two years old and, regrettably, I imbibed before the laws in this fine country deemed me responsible enough consume…shit, look, I’m already digressing. As I was saying, in my sixteen years of boozing, nothing really good has come of it. It would be taxing to recall a single “good” (I realize this is, indeed, a relative term) incident that has come from what my wife, family and friends refer to as my “excessive” drinking.

That was until today.

This morning I picked up a Summer Variety Show twelve-pack at the supermarket in anticipation of the Red Sox double-header with the Texas Rangers. I’ve long been a fan of your beer, and once received a free pint-glass at a promotional venue at a local bar. Again, regrettably, I don’t recall when this was, or anything about the night when brought it home (although it may have been the same night I contracted that pain-in-the-ass venereal disease). So the pint glass simply appeared in my life. Just as mysteriously, it vanished. The pint glass is now gone. Perhaps, it broke. Perhaps, I smashed it in a drunken storm. My point being: I miss that damn pint glass.

I, again, apologize for digressing. It’s the result of exuberance, as well as being buried seven beers deep into the aforementioned twelve-pack.

Where were we? Yes. The double-header. The first game is not looking so good, as the Sox trail 4-2 in the top of the ninth.

Anyhow, I purchased the twelve-pack today, looking forward to some tasty beers, as well as twelve illuminating remarks that you so cleverly print on the inside of the bottle caps. As a self-proclaimed existentialist, I generally rebuff pithy philosophy and universal “Dr. Phil” life advice; however, I have not found your bottle cap aphorisms either didactic or offensive. Having established my receptiveness to the bottle cap witticisms, you can only imagine my surprise when I opened my first beer—a 374—and read, You’re a winner! (the exclamation point is my own insertion). When I read this, I squealed; a girlish noise that my wife confused with the terror of, say, discovering blood on my genitalia.

But she could not have been more wrong. It was anything but terror.

Once again, allow me to digress. The only other thing I’ve ever won was a raffle at fraternity gathering I attended at Dartmouth College (sadly, I was not a student there, which you probably find shocking). The fraternity—and seeing I was a member of a different chapter, I will refrain from saying it was Sigma Phi Epsilon—had hired three strippers. The names of all of the males in attendance were handwritten and placed into a glass jar (not to be confused with my pint glass). Three names from nearly fifty were selected. The winners were awarded the honor of pulling a stripper’s G-string off with their teeth. My name was drawn. Sadly, I was so intoxicated that I could not get a firm bite on the G-string, and the young woman had to feed me the fabric, like I was a nursing child, then I fell pathetically face-down on the ground. It was not exactly what one might consider “erotic.” This was my only other experience with winning.

That was until today.

After being informed of my good fortune by the bottle cap, I dialed the phone number, as instructed, and talked to very pleasant young woman at your brewery who congratulated me. Twice. I counted. She explained that I had won a t-shirt, and I could either pick up my bounty at the brewery or mail my winning bottle cap with my address and T-shirt size to your fine establishment. I’ve chosen the latter, seeing as I live two and a half hours away in New Hampshire and have no immediate plans to visit Burlington. Although, good friends of my wife and mine used to live in Burlington and I’ve always found it to be a fine city; however, there are a few too many String Cheese pseudo-hippies who have failed to come to terms with two obvious facts: 1.) Jerry is dead, and 2.) Phish was never an adequate substitute.

So, my new friends, I proudly announce that my T-shirt size is a large (grande in case the manufacturer is French) and my address is:

Nathan Graziano
301 Porter St.
Manchester, NH 03103

By the way, Big Papi just hit a three-run walk-off homerun for the Red Sox. This is fixing to be the best day of my life.

Sincerely,

Nathan Graziano


End note: The t-shirt was received two weeks after this letter was mailed. It is an exceptional t-shirt: gray, heavy, durable, made of 90% cotton and 10% polyester, assembled in some sweat shop in El Salvador, and pre-shrunk, so it has not shrunk—even slightly—after multiple cycles in the dryer. However, I have found that I sweat excessively while wearing my prize and need to be especially vigilant in regards to physical exertion when wearing it. Ironically, I tend to sweat while drinking beer so I can’t wear it while tanking up.