1-1/2 oz gin
3/4 oz applejack
1/4 oz lemon juice
1-2 dashes of grenadine
1 egg white
maraschino cherry for garnish
Voila! The Pink Lady!
A perfectly wretched cocktail first made in the 1930s, designed with the idea of separating young women from their virtue.
I new a prim and pert girl in high school named Elizabeth who would leave heel-marks on the ceiling after two of these abominations . . . followed by twenty or so, minutes of ruinous projectile vomiting. Two Pink Ladies would induce nymphomania and nausea with equal ferocity.
In Japan. these girly drinks are very big, as is Karaoke, some bars locking you in from midnight ’til five in the morning to try out your pipes on classics like the Divynyl’s “I Touch Myself” and Meatloaf’s, “I Would Do Anything For Love.” Lots of cocktails are added for intestinal fortitude, as well as to clear one’s throat.
There are many oddball names for things in Japan for products aimed at the American trade. There are also stores that sell unusual things that can best be described as niche tastes. We found a store that sold nothing but John Lennon glasses; another that only sold pink lingerie, bras, panties, merry widows and thongs, all in varying hues of pink, from baby powder pink to screaming-hooker fuchsia. In Harajuku there are all manner of stores selling the baby-doll pink tights to teenage girls, as well as the ubiquitous “Juicy” sweatpants that only women going at least two bills seem to shoehorn their ample asses into over here. Sorry baby, if you tip the scales at 200 pounds, you’re not exactly the “Juicy,” tight-clothing wearing demographic. Yesterday, a plus-sized gal was power-walking down Damen Avenue sporting a cameltoe you could lose your keys in.
In Japan eroticized images have been around for centuries, as well as brutal and aberrant varieties of porn and comics. The female figure is at once revered and fetishized, not so differently than it is in religious art and American skin magazines. Who can blame us? There is nothing as beautiful as the female body.
As a kid, I made the nuns crazy because I loved drawing naked women. They would go bat-shit and send me to the shrink, call my mother and make me go talk to the priest. I started drawing naked nuns and then they really went out of their minds; one of the brides of Christ beating my ass with a knotted rope, telling me I was going to hell. I remembered saying I was feeling that it would be okay to go to hell, as long as there were naked women.