negroni music
part two of my mixtapes for cocktails series
I can’t remember the first time I ordered a negroni or what inspired me to select it from the cocktail menu. I probably thought it sounded fancy. Negroni. I liked the word. It felt like a grown-up’s cocktail order. It turned out to be a solid choice. I loved the medicinal bitterness and ruby color. I liked sipping gracefully from my glass while playacting as a chic socialite. I reveled in the way some friends tasted it and then complained it tasted like cheap cough syrup. Their disgust only made me feel more sophisticated. I appreciated the negroni. It made me feel cool.
There’s a scene in the 1961 film The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (which I watched in preparation for writing this post) where Vivian Leigh’s character Karen drinks a negroni in a stylish midcentury Roman restaurant. She wears a metallic jacket and delicately removes her gloves from diamond encrusted wrists. She is a picture of coolness. This is the vibe I’m channeling while sipping a negroni on my couch in ratty pajamas.
This is my second playlist dedicated to a cocktail and this week’s selections conjure that mysterious chic coolness I feel while drinking negronis. A musical ode to a deceptively simple combination of gin, Campari, and sweet red vermouth. No need to even link the recipe. Just 1 oz of each ingredient. As always, a few musical highlights: Make sure to listen to the criminally underplayed “Don’t Leave Me Baby” by She. “Paul’s Theme” is great but it’s just one of many standouts on Men I Trust’s recent release, Equss Asinus. There might be a bit too much French on a playlist for an Italian cocktail but you’ll have to forgive me because “Que la nuit” by Juniore is just too cool not to include. Everything wraps with the crescendo of Jarvis Cocker’s “Aline” which is the perfect moment to make a second negroni and start the playlist all over again.
You can also link to the playlist by clicking here
Despite my devotion to them, negronis have been tied in my memory to a person I haven’t spoken to in two years. An old friend who disappeared from my life in the kind of explosive breakup that makes you hyperaware that you will never see or speak to that person again.
I think he liked negronis. Isn’t it strange that I can’t remember for sure? After we parted, every time I went to a cocktail bar and ordered a negroni, I thought about him. It was a bitter cocktail that conjured up bittersweet thoughts. Did he actually drink negronis? Was it his drink? Did he introduce me to them? Why couldn’t I remember? He had morphed from a longtime friend to a ghost and the only sharp details that remained were ones I wasn’t even sure were accurate. Your mind twists things around when someone becomes defined by their absence from your life.
During our last ever interaction, we drank $5 negronis. Was that the reason this cocktail was meshed together with him in my mind or was it because when I knew him, I thought he was impossibly cool with impeccable taste? In my mind, that kind of person drinks negronis. But maybe he never drank them. Maybe he was never the person I thought he was, either.
Time softened the anger and dulled my sadness. My memories of this person have faded into background noise and negronis lost their emotionally bitter punch.
A few months ago I was dressed up and out with a friend at a dimly lit and beautiful cocktail bar. We were looking at the menu and she said, “I bet you’ll order the negroni, right?” It was in that moment I realized she thought of the negroni as my drink. All this time I had associated a cocktail with someone from my past and here it was, being associated with me. It was an offhanded comment, but the realization severed some lingering bitterness that still clung to my memory.
It also made me feel impossibly cool with impeccable taste.
As a reminder, all songs from all mixtapes are available in the mega-mixtape.