John Cameron Mitchell, my new favorite cocktail and the John Cameron Mitchell cocktail.

John Cameron Mitchell, my new favorite cocktail and the John Cameron Mitchell cocktail.

My new favorite cocktail just got a name on my freezing cold rainy bike ride home from work:  I shall call it the John Cameron  Cocktail.  Just in case you don’t want to hear another 3 pages of stupid ramblings, here is the drink:

The John Cameron  Cocktail

Build in glass over 1 rock

2oz carpano antica formula vermouth

.25 ardbeg single malt 10, or the beist if you got it

1 dash of regan’s orange bitters

Done

I look up from my vermouth on the rocks, a gift wrapped wig still in the box- the John Cameron Cocktail- The opposite of the Rob Roy

Anyway, in was in the Rob Roy a few nights ago, perhaps slightly buzzed and desiring a Carpano Antica on  the rock, which is the preferred and only after shift drink of choice at Mistral Kitchen.  But I felt that I needed a little more, I was in the mood for a touch of sea brine and smoke so I requested of the good bartender Brin that he toss a dash of Ardbeg atop my Carpano  Antica on the rock*. Bam. Ahem, I meant BAM!

But I wasn’t sure, was this a good drink?  I loved it, but what do I know.  The next day I served it to Jon Santer of Martin Miller’s, Future Bars and what not fame the next day and said, “It’s a two-fer.”  To which he replied, “you know what I say ‘ four ingredients?’ that is one too many.”  Contrary to what you may think, Jon is the boss of you.

This brings me to the opposite of that: naming the cocktail the, “John Cameron Cocktail.”  I was in the Rob Roy, less than 48 hours later and trying the same drink, on the rock again (one rock, we’ll come back to this) and it was great.  It was upon leaving, and my cold ride home that humbling thoughts float through my head, as cars and buses pass me on my bike in the cold and wet I feel as though I know what it is like to swim with sharks and whales.  Though this is a crappy Sisyphean task I do nightly, my mind drifts to my very fortunate life and that though this trip home is hard my life is sweet sweet candy, simple, and full of people that care about me and love me, other people, not so much.  This is when, Wig in Box*, a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch,  pops on to my iPod, the line, “I look up from my vermouth on the rocks,” has all new meaning to me, Hedwig knows hard times for real and I have become someone who enjoys vermouth on the rocks too. Like Hedwig, I enjoy, a stiff esoteric drink, unlike him or her, I know not of hard times, struggle, or cutting of my penis to escape communist Germany.  I know it is a stretch, but when I serve people at work, I do spend a great deal of brain power considering their personal struggles. With this sincerity in mind, I thought John Cameron Mitchell, the film maker behind Hedwig and the Short Bus deserved his own cocktail.  Also,   Jon Santer said the recipe was like a reverse Rob Roy, and what is more reverse Scottish outlaw folk hero  than profound little gay boy film maker?  They are both my heroes.

**Lyrics by Steven Trask