Tokyo, June 2018. I pitched Vice Munchies (RIP) a story on drinking all night for the sake of finding a remedy for the resulting hangover. This was my bread and butter for years: international travel, alcohol, food, hangover cures, questionable adventures. I covered a mix of those themes regularly for Vice, GQ, Playboy, even Bon Appetit (okay, it was just the one time for them).
My beat was heavily influenced by my early (absolutely cliché) writer idols and influences Anthony Bourdain, Hunter S. Thompson, Chef’s Night Out. Put yourself in an edgy, interesting situation, see what happens, write about it, and voila! I had a winning formula that my 20-something-year-old body could handle for the better part of a decade. Somehow.
My Tokyo night started at an izakaya with my friend Miral and a friend of his. We ate bacon-wrapped kimchi, scrambled eggs with green onions, a bok choy dish that was served frozen. We smoked cigarettes inside and drank lemon sours (shochu, lemon juice, soda water).
We parted ways and I went to a whiskey bar recommended by someone on Instagram. The staff asked if I wanted to play a “tasting game.” I didn’t know what that meant but said yes anyway and had a ball laughing, drinking and ultimately losing with the staff. (The game was a blind tasting of different — not cheap — whiskies and guessing which one came from which bottle). They didn’t charge me for my humiliation, thank god.
Onto the next spot: Golden Gai, a maze of a neighborhood of tiny, old bars. I turned a corner and a man was standing in the middle of the narrow street. He struck up a conversation in English, and went from stranger to romantic interest (everyone was a potential partner when I was a single freelancer). We went to second dinner, drank more.
The night went on like that until it wasn’t night anymore. The next afternoon, I peeled myself out of my Airbnb bed and went hunting for hangover cures. That was the story. It wasn’t my only all-nighter of the trip, either. Exhibit B a week and a half earlier:
My assignments and how I tackle them look completely different now. The change happened over time.
First, I got a job at a newspaper, one that does not encourage breaking the law for the sake of content. My bosses have no interest in sending me to far flung locales to eat and drink whatever’s most shocking. Instead, I cover travel mostly like a grown up. I do still get thrown into shenanigans that remind me of my rip-roaring gonzo days. Like my truck stop story, or pulling a near-all-nighter to write about the World’s Biggest Pizza Convention. I also turned 30. Then 31, and 32.
The way I travel is unrecognizable to my freelance days. Going to the airport used to mean stopping at a bar near my gate for a beer or bloody mary. On the plane, I’d get a gin and tonic, and when I landed, I’d throw my stuff down and find a place to get a drink and talk to locals. Drinking and debauchery made me feel like a real journalist. I stayed out late, said yes to everything, and still found time to do my job and maybe hit the hotel gym.
In between the reporting and writing, I was constantly on the lookout for my soulmate. I was rarely in one place for long, but I convinced myself I’d meet someone on the road. So I took the midnight dinner invitation in Golden Gai, went on the second date in Guadalajara, logged onto Tinder in New Delhi and Taipei and Paris. I never found the elusive “one,” but met plenty of nice almosts (and exponentially more definitely nots).
The partying and the dating and the late nights took a toll. I got sick all the time, felt terrible.
One of my last trips done “the old way” was covering the Mardi Gras before covid. I was newly single (and so sad about it) and hell-bent on reconnecting with my former self. I stayed out late reporting and even later dancing only to get up a few hours later to report on parades. The story turned out great, but I was wrecked by the time I got home.
Compare that to my most recent assignment. A few weeks ago, I was sent to Washington state to write a profile on a very nice, very famous man (stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). On my way to Seattle, I chugged water, drank Vitamin C goo and liquid zinc, wore a mask and worked on the plane. When I landed, I went straight to the Airbnb and got to sleep early.
Before we met our star, I took my frolleague (friend/colleague) Mo to yoga; the morning after that we went to a barre class. We did not party. We did not stay up until 4 am. There was as much dedication to the assignment as there was to wellness. It was amazing.
Maybe it wouldn’t have gone that way if I hadn’t met Dan. So much of flinging myself into wild situations was driven by the pursuit of ~love~. Now that I’ve found it, I don’t have the same instinct to chase extremes. The occasional night out works. The one-off wild goose chases do it for me. Staying healthy is intoxicating.
Or I could be wrong; maybe we’ll get really into raves and I’ll pivot to nightclub journalism. Who knows!!!!!!! If we’re lucky, we get the chance to have many life phases and keep growing and changing.
In the meantime, I’ll be hitting the goo packets.
Not a journalist, but I was a Sailor. Spent the bulk of my enlistment hard charging the party life. Weeks of 2-3 hour naps between partying and work. Now? Almost 50 and a drink with dinner a few times a month is good enough. I enjoyed your post. Thank you for writing and sharing it! I just subscribed.
loved reading this!!
i remember coming home from a girls trip to NOLA wrecked in the same fashion. all four of us twenty somethings got home with different pains, bruises, ailments. it was debauchery that took days of recovery! it's nice to reflect back on those times and think "you did it right!", now that you don't have to / physically can't do it that way anymore.