When I drink you can't call me an alcoholic because I know you're just doing it because I'm Polish and it doesn't matter if I drink one bottle or two or five or twelve or if I really am an alcoholic none of it matters because it's just that I am Polish

and would you say my grandfather was an alcoholic if he drank a cup of melted lard when his first daughter was born so that when his friends came to drink he wouldn't get drunk drunk drunk on tripe soup and fatty pork rinds that's what you gotta eat if you're going to drink like we do in my family the children were brought up taking shots because it was a matter of honor because it was something more than liquid fire liquor slipping down your throat drinking is always a matter of honor

he carried so much honor it grew in his hair and pierced through his leg right by the bullet wound from when his best friend shot him he isn't a drunk and neither is my aunt but the first thing she reaches for when she gets home is an ice cold beer to soothe a throat raspy from cigarette daydreams because she’s been smoking since she was six and she's almost sixty now and that's a damn long time in that time you got little ration cards for families

we were on the wrong side of the Wall so we got more liquor than chocolate the kids ate raw eggs with sugar sometimes with a little kick too we call it kogiel mogiel and it's actually pretty good but not as good as menthols in your lungs and beer in your belly

and at Easter we cooked eggs I mean we don’t eat everything raw only the things you don't expect like herring and onion and eggs but not eggs this time and at Easter when the table was set and the eggs and the kiełbasa were blessed you said a prayer and went to mass hungry

we never had whiskey or gin or wine for breakfast instead we drank vodka before we ate and once when my mother didn't have vodka for Easter she put red wine on the table my babcia visiting from Poland was so outraged that she didn't talk for two days straight

and whenever anyone else comes to America they bring dried mushrooms that only ashen and war beat forests can produce growing on the sides of granite bunkers and AK shelters over graves the bunkers are still there and the graveyards shine for miles because here it doesn't matter if your body is dead your spirit is alive and maybe that's why we drink spirits

the graveyards are light glowing orbs we visit the dead every day and there are almost as many melted wax candles stuck onto graves as there are mushrooms in my grandma’s suitcase they're all edible but some only once and that's why so many people die from poison fungi and not from intoxication

she also bring preserves that by Americans might otherwise be used for pie filling during the fall but no that's not what they're for they're to help make wiśniówka or malinówka you just add some spirit to make it through the cold winter

we have lots of those in Poland the cold winters I mean so we can't simply add milk or sugar to tea we add a little something to make you dance to warm you right up to burn you from the inside out so that you don't scream in madness

when an ignorant shithead who probably drinks mojitos and margaritas because he’s a damn baby and no one in his family taught him how to drink when he was young yes this ignorant fool calls you a fucking alcoholic because you know how to take a Goddamn shot

it’s just because I’m Polish I don’t actually have a problem and neither do the rest of us my hands shake if I don't drink half a liter of vodka before class but that's not because I'm an alcoholic it's just because where I'm from is a land full of potatoes but how long can you go on eating potatoes potatoes potatoes before finally turning them into vodka?