Women toasted

We all have had our "Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?" moments. The cross-eyed glamour of indulging in a slack-knuckled fistfight with your beloved, screaming obscenities and then making up ferociously like wild rodents, only to feign ignorance of the whole episode the very next day.

There is not a more absurd combo than that of women and booze. When a fun time out becomes deadly, you can count on it that women are not just biting the bullet but drinking it. Despite the dangers ranging from the mundane to the fatal, we all still toast to the woozy charms of liquor. Women have been tagged as the number-one "victims" of binge drinking. Basically it’s drinking yourself to a Helen Keller state of mind, where the world is kind and you’re dumb and blind.

Taken with a fashionable measure of discipline, booze serves as the perfect companion in otherwise-die social attractions. It will keep your lips occupied when you crash a party and no one is talking to you, it will keep you entertained when your date has "excused" himself to go to the bathroom for the fifth time in an hour and it will help you survive a sit-down dinner, especially when sandwiched in between two halitosis agents. It has a comforting effect, like grandma’s oatmeal cookies, only it’s served in a more precarious setting.

A few years back I wrote an article on how to read men through their choice of snifter. It’s the same for women, only with a more intriguing, manipulative edge that women are celebrated for. Their choice of tipple gives us an idea – not of who they are, since women are effortlessly complex creatures – but of what their agenda is, at least for the night. Wednesday night is ladies’ night, so ladies, hold on to your men and men, hold on to your wallets.

Champagne is an interesting choice. Even if the arbiter of good taste Paris Hilton slammed it for being the drink of losers and poseurs (which in some measure may be true), it also says a lot of other things. It’s a drink of showmanship – when one is too blasted and possessed by the spirit of Dodi Al Fayed, champagne is a tipple for celebration.

Have you ever seen a married couple toast to scotch? I’m hoping not. A champagne Charlie who likes it all the time because it’s glam can be easily be written off as pretentious or "feeling" (as the Filipino colloquial would have it), or as a moocher. I must ask, Whatever happened to good old expensive taste? If this is your agenda, make sure your stocks and trust are intact (or more importantly, existing) because no one is going to marry you. Smart men are so over high-maintenance women, and like the saying "having a face only a mother could love," you could be the girl whose habits only a father can shoulder. If you want to be loved for who you are, including your fetish for ridiculously overpriced booze, then count on drinking it alone in a brown bag as your poodle licks your ear. If you love it because it doesn’t taste like alcohol, then you suck big time. This is the most annoying reason.

Boys, if your date says this, just order a beer and she won’t know the difference because they both bubble anyway, and we both know that for her that’s what makes it a fun drink. Champagne screams spoiled, spoiled spoiled. In the romantic timeline of life, it will start with that and end with half of your net worth. Boys, if you’re willing to Zeta-Jones it, then fine. Always remember, if you do decide to still tie the knot with a serial champagne drinker, remember this: PRENUP, PRENUP, PRENUP. Just kidding.

Vodka is the good-time-girl drink. What beer is to men, vodka is to the ladies. It’s a no-brainer. A vodka girl is easygoing (and with enough, she gets easy), versatile, not necessarily high-maintenance and pretty straightforward. Or she could just be counting carbs (like me!). Those who drink flavored vodkas (with the exception of mandarin and currant, maybe) are still little girls at heart (okay, with the exception of mint – that’s just plain sick). Most vodka drinkers just don’t want to be bothered with choices.

Mixers (as in juice bombers) fall into two categories: they want to take it easy or sugarcoat their drink so they can get drunk faster. Vodka drinkers, for some unfounded reason, believe that they won’t get a hangover, that’s why they see it as a safe choice. It’s an urban myth, like Balete Drive or something. I don’t know if it’s because the damn thing is clear (giving the impression that it’s as innocuous as water) or because it has the most clever ads known to man, but these puppies can kill and leave you with that dull buzzing feeling (much like a cheap vibrating massager that won’t stop) all day long the next day. Anyway, hard to tell about the vodka girl; my advice is to pay attention to what she is saying while she is lucid and not when it kicks in. Vodka, in my opinion and from empirical experience, can bring out the Stephen Glass in all of us. Let the girl have her embarrassing moment and you can just torture her the next day.

Trendy cocktail drinkers are quite predictable. It’s the ultimate girly-girl drink, the type who still believes in love at first sight and has slumber parties. Like any girly girl, they secretly order it because it’s cute and sweet, and an added point if it goes with their outfit. The damn drink is treated like an accessory. We had cosmopolitans when pink ruled the runways, lychee martinis when silver was searing and mojitos when green was the color of last spring. Coincidence? You be the judge. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with trendy cocktail drinkers; mostly it’s a sort of guilt-free way of getting sloshed.

Drinks with fruit floating on top hardly look like weapons of mass destruction, but drink enough and they are – not only do they get you wickedly and blindly sloshed but they also make you fat. (You might as well have had that baked ziti, you fashion plate, you).

Beer is for the guy’s girl. As in, the ultimate no-maintenance chick. After Atkins, the world was divided into two kinds of beer drinkers: those who would drop 20 percent of their income or give up their child’s college payment for a lipo those who were naturally hot or didn’t care if their waistlines rivaled the diameter of the equator drank it steadfastly straight from the bottle. Don’t think they’re delilah-free, though. These are tough chicks, whether addled with noble intentions or hidden agendas, they will leave your balls blue with their knees. Generally they’re tough.

Scotch drinkers are those bad girls that men can’t resist. Anyone who can swallow anything that tastes like kerosene is either brave or extreme trouble – basically, chicks who can drink you under the table. Date with caution. The same goes for flaming Ferrari shooting girls (ah, there you go, agendas in a shot glass).

So, booze may be a jerk’s best friend – a way to get in your pants. But for the rest of us, it’s the KY Jelly of the soul. Use sparingly and let the important first moments or business deals happen after downing a mocha latte instead.