Grappling With Green Bottles
For many years, I only drank beer in green bottles. Dos Equis. Stella Artois. The occasional Rolling Rock. Bear in mind that I came of drinking age in the years before craft beer was, you know, a thing — before beer flights and before hops (or lack thereof) could make or break an entire meal. Plus, I grew up in flyover country — Lincoln, Nebraska to be exact — where domestic anything reigns supreme, so my Green Bottle Rule was actually quite revolutionary.
I had my first sip of alcohol while studying abroad in Spain. I was 16 and in a dimly lit discoteca when a much older man dressed in head-to-toe black approached and offered to buy me a drink. I was 5,000 miles away from home. The Spanish legal drinking age is 18, but that was loosely enforced. I could’ve asked for anything, and I could’ve had as much of it as I wanted.
“Heineken,” I responded.
Having been raised by the World’s Most Worrisome Mother and having seen my fair share of date rape scenes in movies and on TV, I knew to carefully observe the man as he ordered and transported the green bottle from the bar to my hand. He didn’t try anything shady, and I believe we had a semi-decent conversation all things considered (my broken Spanish, his broken English, the loud music). He probably did try to get me to go home with him because, let’s be real, that’s what all guys are trying to do when they offer to buy you a drink.
Instead, I left around midnight. I’d had one or two more green bottles, and I sauntered along Toledo’s 400-year-old cobblestone streets back to my host family’s home.
Although that had been my first official alcoholic drink, it wasn’t my first encounter with a Heineken. In fact, that green bottle and I knew each other quite well. Over the course of my short 16-year lifespan, we’d spent a lot of time together. He popped up frequently, often without warning. On a Tuesday afternoon. On a Saturday night. Whenever I was trying to sleep. Whenever my mother was trying to sleep. At school functions. At my quinceañera. He was an inconsiderate bastard, that one.
I can’t tell you how old I was when I realized that my father was an alcoholic. For as long as I can remember, the words “alcoholic” and “father” have simply been inextricably linked. I don’t know how to untangle the two because I’ve never known what it’s like to not have an alcoholic for a father.
His drink of choice? Heineken.
I have more memories involving that green bottle than I’d care to admit. He would show up at dinner, unannounced and unwelcome. He’d suddenly appear in the fridge and scare the shit out of me, because he was a precursor to a few days of hell on earth for my mother and I. Every time my father ordered a green bottle at a restaurant, I had to look the other way. It always felt like a storm was coming — a storm from which there was no shelter or recourse.
Those green bottles really messed me up. They made it impossible to have any semblance of a normal childhood or upbringing. From a very young age, my life felt like a soap opera. My mother and I stayed in cheap hotel rooms with rotary dial phones and shag carpeting for nights on end when my father was on one of his benders. I had to come up with half-assed excuses for why my friends couldn’t come over when my father was drinking. I distanced myself from other kids because I didn’t want them to get too close and find out what my home life was really like: volatile, unpredictable, and full of drama.
One night, I was out with friends when my father called me. When I didn’t answer, he called again. And again. And again. This was usually a clear sign that he was A) in the process of getting drunk or B) already hammered. When I called him back, my suspicions were confirmed. He was several green bottles in, and he was upset that no one was home. Apparently he’d locked himself out. I told him to hold tight until I could get there. But by the time I finally made it back to our house, I was too late: He’d punched through our (glass) back door and blood was everywhere.
During the entire drive to the hospital, my father insisted that he was “fine” — although the rivers of dried blood along his right fist clearly indicated the opposite. He was so fucked up that the ER doctor couldn’t hold any kind of meaningful or substantive conversations with him. Instead, he communicated all of the medical babble to me.
Deep lacerations. Lost a lot of blood. Needs several stitches.
At one point, the doctor leaned in, lowered his voice, and asked, “How many drinks has he had?”
I didn’t know. How could I know? Was I supposed to know? Was I now my father’s babysitter? It was bizarre and embarrassing to be 16 and responsible for your parent’s well-being because they couldn’t — or wouldn’t — take care of themselves.
“I… I don’t know,” I said, ashamed that I couldn’t be more helpful and also mortified that this doctor had gotten such an intimate peek into our familial drama.
But the doctor didn’t say anything. He just pursed his lips and gave me a look. It was a look of both pity and understanding. Maybe I wasn’t the first kid-who-just-got-their-driver’s-license to come in with their so-wasted-they-punched-a-glass-door parent. Maybe. One could hope, anyway.
Green bottles wreaked havoc on my life. But they were omnipresent, even if painfully so. That night in Spain, I was in a strange place with strange people speaking a strange language. When presented with an opportunity to break free from those green bottles and create a different path forward for myself, I buckled under the pressure to reach for something familiar. Something that felt like home.
And whether I like it or not, green bottles will always feel like home.
