Dear Long Island Iced Tea:
You are shit. You are an unholy dysfunctional marriage of four liquors, triple sec, sour mix and devil semen. You are a barely ingestible brown poison that should be driven from both Nassau and Suffolk counties with singular focus and extreme prejudice. You are holding the fine people of my great slender island hostage in a sickly sweet game of cat and mouse that I suspect will only be fully understood by well-educated historians in future times. I seriously have had just about enough of you. Do you hear me, Long Island Iced Tea? I seriously have had just about enough of you.
People say it's the vulgar way we Long Island people talk and dress but I tell you it is you, you vile toilet bowl of a tipple -- you Porta Potty potion -- that is the true reason the world hates those of us who hail from this fresh green breast of the new world, from this longest of islands.
I can picture the night of your conception vividly. The location: A crowded bar in Yaphank. Maybe it's Mattituck. Maybe even East Quogue. The music: something awful. The scene: An overmatched, low IQ'ed adult-refreshment slinger, from out of town, fields drink orders from the fine upstanding denizens of this 516 area code. These are people I know and like. These are people whose cousin saw Billy Joel at a restaurant once. This guy wants a tequila. This one a vodka. She'll have a rum. Her sister wants gin. It's all overwhelming for said bartender. Remember: he's not originally from Long Island. He's about to walk out, to quit and go back to Moron McDum-Dum's Home for the Barely Functioning but... he thinks of a solution. Fuck it. I'll just throw all those things together with some Coke and sour mix and call it a day.
Manhattan got a great drink. Two parts bourbon, one part vermouth, a dash of bitters, a cherry, a true goddamn masterpiece of cocktailian architecture. I love the Manhattan. I may be from Long Island, but I am also human.
But we get you. We get you head-banging your way down our throats, belting out some cheap forgettable commercial jingle and stopping every few seconds to sleep with our mothers or to lift your leg, like the dog you are, in order to urinate on all our hopes and dreams. Thanks again, Long Island Iced Tea. Thanks again for nothing.
I only drink you because I want to appear as something I'm not... super cool and man enough to be with any woman I want. But deep down I know the truth. That I, like you, am an impostor. I'm just hoping against hope, with everything I've got left, that one decent, big-hearted, bagel-loving female won't see through that. Thanks to you though, it's not looking good on that front.
Maybe I need to ask myself why I'm drinking you, you excrement beverage, you beverage that tastes of excrement, when I could easily be drinking something better. Or maybe it is you, you ass-faced liquid, you liquid with the face of an ass, that needs to ask yourself why you even exist, why you were even concocted/aborted in the first place and why you continue to fill so many oversized glasses just east of the great Gotham.
In conclusion, it is for these reasons and more that I hate you so, Long Island Iced Tea. Wait. I'm sorry. Is that too deep for your smorgasbord of a forever booze-filled mind to comprehend? Because if it is, then, you know, I guess I apologize. I'm just really super upset with you right now.
Best,
Scott Rothman