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  BEER MILKSHAKES

Just what the Doctor ordered.
(Book Review.)

Cannery Row. John Steinbeck.

Two suicides in the first twenty pages, but what else would you expect from Grapes of Wrath author Steinbeck? The main character of Cannery Row is Doc, a lonely, intense biologist, an alcoholic who throws hitchikers out of his car if they question his drunk-driving abilities. He finds the body of a grey-eyed dead girl while looking for sea creatures to study, but wont accept the bounty for it. He is good at deflating the egos of the proud and raising the spirits of the weak. He loves to tell the truth, but finds that people rarely want to believe the truth, since it is, after all, stranger than fiction. So he takes to lying:

"And so he stopped trying to tell the truth . . . Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, 'You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milkshake.' It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milkshake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn't let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like shrimp ice cream . . . If a man ordered a beer milkshake, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milkshake in a town where he wasn't known . . . they might call the police. A man with a beard was always suspect. You couldn't say you wore a beard because you liked a beard. People didn't like that truth. You had to say you had a scar so you couldn't shave. People liked that . . . Doc walked angrily to the counter stand. The waitress, a blonde beauty with just a hint of a goiter* smiled at him. 'What'll it be?' 'Beer milkshake,' said Doc. 'What?' Well, here it was and what the hell. Can't tell the truth. The blonde asked if he was kidding. Doc knew he couldn't explain. So he lied. 'I've got a bladder complaint,' he said. 'Bipalychaetorsonectomy the doctors call it. I'm supposed to drink a beer milkshake. Doctor's orders.' The blonde smiled reassuringly. 'Oh! Tell me how to make it. I didn't know you was sick.' 'Very sick,' said Doc, 'And due to be sicker. Put in some milk, and add half a bottle of beer. Give me the other half in a glass- no sugar in the milkshake.' 'It sounds awful,' said the blonde. 'It's not so bad when you get used to it,' said Doc. 'I've been drinking it for seventeen years.'"

-- Cannery Row, 1945, John Steinbeck.

*"a chronic enlargement of the thyroid gland, often visible as a swelling on the front part of the neck" (Websters.)

If your California is not the hard glittery state of Ahnold and LA, but instead the sweat and dust California of the Okies, read this book. And visit Moneterey.

xoxoxo

  ¶ 6:16 PM

  HUSH NOW . . . DON'T EXPLAIN -- Billie

So it's the night before graduation and I'm drunk. So is the boy in the black leather jacket. We're both drunk and laughing. He's carrying me piggyback and we sneak over the biohazard orange DO NOT ENTER tape. He's running through the skeletal structure of the unfinished dorm. the 5AM moonlight is slicing through it, painting everything in midnight and silver stripes. We were giggling and running and being romantic (you only live once, we're young, we're in love, we're in california . . .) And then we fell head first into an elevator shaft.

It's HARD to convince someone you don't have a concussion when you're drunk.

He was slapping me lightly, saying things like, "I'm SO serious, wake up--" when we heard it. And I was slurring things like "I am PERFECTLY fine, really. RRRREAAALLY." When we heard them.

We weren't alone.

There were others in the abandoned structure.

Sh!

We crouched in the dirt, boots digging into the crevices as we listened. Two sets of footsteps running and a voice, a shriek, feral . . .

I looked over at the boy in black leather and motioned my head toward the doorway. He shook his head and put a single finger over his lips. I gripped the rough pine in the moonlight and listened to one man crying and cried with him. Because I felt just as desperate and no one but this faceless voice seemed to understand.

The crying stopped. There was a drunken apology. Then the two men above us started to talk.
"She's just immature, man," said one. My friend. Was he talking about me? Somehow I knew he was.
"But why is she with HIM?!" the other yelled.
The boy in black leather stiffened. He knew. We both did.

The men continued to vivisect. It got too painful. I ran. The boy in black leather followed me. Cigarettes never fail me, even when friends do. I shook one from my pack. "Well, that was lucky," I exhaled, and smiled. The boy in the black leather jacket wanted an explaination, as usual.

"You don't often get to know what people REALLY think," I explained.

I graduated two hours later, hungover, a little wiser, and humbled beyond all recognition.
  ¶ 11:31 PM