Relationship Challenges With An Unyielding Beer Geek
He sees you at Craft Beer Cellar standing by the sours. He doesn’t know that you’ve just run in to use the bathroom. You figured a place with all that beer would have one. That night you hook up. As he’s licking your neck he says, “Just the right amount of hoppiness. Not too citrusy. I think this can work.”
When first dating, you find it charming that he samples three tiny beers before deciding on his first big beer.
One night when he is trying his fifth little beer while checking online reviews, you gently remind him that you were hoping to use this time to talk about your father’s recent death. “I know,” he says firmly. “But you’ve got to understand that there’s a beer for every conversation, and my job is to find it.”
One evening shortly after moving in together, you casually mention that you’re going out with your buds tonight. But he hears “Bud Light” and punches the wall. “You’re kidding me?” he says. “I told you never to drink that piss water!”
While home alone one day emptying the dishwasher, you line up all of the glassware he’s brought into the relationship. When you read it out loud, you sound like you’re calling attendance at a sex workers convention in Vegas: Soft Dookie. Hoppy Ending. Heady Topper.
One day you say that you’re thinking about taking a course at night, but he hears “Coors Light.” “Seriously?” he says. “There’s a puddle in the driveway that probably tastes better than that crap.”
It’s been a while since you’ve been intimate, so one day when he moans that he’d love a Focal Banger, you start doing a sexy striptease. He turns away and says, “Sometimes I feel like we don’t speak the same language.”
To try to make things right, you take him on a road trip to Trillium Brewery. You buy him two four-packs and a flannel shirt that brings out the amber color in his eyes. That night he pleads with you to have his baby.
You are pregnant. On the short list of baby names, he adds Thrace, Allagash, and Dark Lord. You bite your tongue.
Sometime in the second trimester, you hide in your closet and take the tiniest sip of Miller Lite. It tastes so much like beer you could cry. You do cry. Then you drive the can three miles away, wipe off your fingerprints, and bury it in the woods.
He takes you on a babymoon to Belgium. When he thinks you’re asleep, you catch him trying on a Trappist robe that he’s stolen from the brewery. You watch him as he stands in front of the mirror, takes a muslin bag from the pocket, and starts rubbing himself with a handful of hops.
When you get back to the States, you’re done and move out. You are mostly doing fine until one day while strolling past a brewery with your baby, who you’ve named Sammy Adams, you pause. All those happy couples playing corn hole. The nutty scent of malted barley drifting from the sticky cement floor.
A tear forms in your eye. You have to admit that you miss him.
That night you show up at his house with a four-pack of Marshmallow Handjee. When he opens a bottle and holds it out, you accept. “Nice,” you say, after taking a sip. “I love me some slow mocha head.”
He looks at you like you’re the only woman in the world.
