The Lotos-Eaters by Carol A. B. Warren

Author:Carol A. B. Warren [Warren, Carol A. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138193680
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 30901748
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

Alcohol/Intoxication

This ethnography’s central metaphor of the Lotos signifies not only a general summery island lassitude, but also the intoxicating effects of Lotos-eating—or drinking. Since the beginning of known time, humans have altered their consciousness with various forms of the Lotos. In the Sands and the Yacht Club, the forms I have encountered are “medical marijuana” and alcohol—nobody has ever offered me, say, heroin or crystal meth. Although I have not observed marijuana use in the Yacht Club, I have heard that friends offer one another medical marijuana—the term “medical” always ironically stressed—in the Sands private homes. And in both private homes and the Yacht Club there is the drinking of wine, beer, and spirits.

Team Bourbon’s name highlights the backdrop to sociability in the Yacht Club: the consumption of alcohol. Food is served at certain times—dinner and bar food every night, lunches and brunches most weekends—but alcohol is served for 12 hours daily, and it is cheap in comparison with restaurant settings. The sparkling conversation expected in encounters at the club is facilitated and lubricated by the intake of alcohol—up to a certain point.

Not all club members drink alcohol, but most do; indeed, by the standard of the early twenty-first century (as opposed to the wistfully remembered 1970s), most of the members who spend time in the bar are fairly to very heavy drinkers, and have been so all their lives. Drinks and drinking are not only engaged in to generate sparkling conversation, but highlighted in that very same sparkling conversation.

The bocce tournament was well under way when we arrived to watch at 11.00 am; there were eight teams playing and about 20 observers. On the table were plates of cheese, crackers, and fruit, and bottles of champagne and water. Almost everyone (except those playing bocce at that moment) held a champagne flute. One of the players said to another, ‘It’s getting more and more difficult to play the more I have of this!’ The other player responded, ‘drink up then!’ Much laughter.

A great deal of “expert” attention in our culture is paid to questions of the line (or not) between heavy drinkers and alcoholics, with the latter framed as a sort of species-being. The same dialogue can be found among Yacht Club members, speculating upon their own and others’ problem or not-problem drinking. Some members are called drunks or alcoholics by other members, distinguishing them from “normal” heavy drinkers; this label may also be self-referential.

Nicole and Carl are drinking their third glass of red wine. Nicole points at a woman who has just entered the bar area, and says, ‘she says I am the biggest drunk in the club!’ Esther says, ‘are you having a competition?’

Drinking heavily, even to the point of drunkenness, is normal trouble (Emerson, 2015) in the Yacht Club, so long as it does not tear into the fabric of sociability, or bring an end to the sparkle of conversation. But at times such tears do occur, and the trouble turns from “nothing unusual” to “something unusual is happening.

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