Watching this hilarious video brought back ever so many lovely, hazy, blurred Austin memories. Sometime this summer I'd like to have a Mexican Martini party on my roof in honor of good old Trude's, but I'd dispense with the the cruel & unusual limit of two martinis a person & let my friends have as many as they felt like drinking, at their own risk as it were. I'd make a big batch of Mexican Martinis using the Trudy's Texas Star recipe, natch. Some people (idiots without proper tastebuds) claim that the best M.M. in Austin is to be found at the Cellar Door; this is utter bullshit, along the lines of Trude's bullshit claim that their shakerfull will yield about seven martinis. Christi Castillo & I called bullshit on that a long time ago, about five years ago probably, one hot summer nite at the Trudy's off Guadalupe, where we sat outside on the wooden benches, a pile of oilves between us, & made a bet as to how many of Trudy's crooked-stem glasses we could fill with our shakers. Christi thought it was about four, whereas I thought it was closer to five. Or perhaps it was vice-versa. I think we lost count after glass number three & had to order another shaker apiece & start counting from scratch. Needless to say, we never figured out which of us was correct, but we had a damn fine time trying, & I do know the number of glasses filled never approached seven. Of course greedy us liked to fill our glasses to the tippy-top, so the tequila hovered perilously round the rim & splashed salt into our drinks, & after a couple of glasses we'd be begging the waitress for new, freshly salted ones.
I was allergic to something in those martinis, but I loved them anyway. The offending ingredient was neither the tequila nor the cointreau, a Trudy's manager once informed me, but the fresh limes they used in their recipe. In the bathroom at Trude's sometimes I would pull my skirt down to pee & see a warm, spreading flush gathering itself across the tops of my thighs. I'd splash my face with cold water at the sink & go back out for more. Not having as many martinis as the Trudy's Nazis would allow was an unthinkable idea. There was something about downing those perfect concoctions in the sweltering heat, sitting opposite someone who was suddenly your best friend in the whole world, picking flaquities off your Botana sampler plate, wondering if you had enough time for a nap before you were off to Emo's, or de Ville, or the Drafthouse, that made you want to sit there all afternoon, confiding everything, in love with everything. It was a tease tho, because if you didn't watch out you ended up like those poor people in the video, stumbling across the lawn to the parking lot & slobbering on all over the nearest available dude. So maybe there's something to that limit, after all.
