Journal Entry No. 001

Journal Entry No. 001

August 2nd, 193-something. Latitude unknown. It’s hot. There’s whiskey. That’s enough.

It Begins (More or Less)

I never meant to become what I’ve become.

In truth, I was only looking for a decent drink and a good chair when this whole damned adventure started. Instead, I’ve found myself careening across the globe with little more than a half-filled flask, a battered compass that only points south, and a questionable understanding of how border patrol works.

I suppose introductions are in order.

My name’s not important—what matters is what they call me now: The Whiskey Idiot. Not because I don’t know my way around a bottle—hell, in that regard, I might be the last authority worth listening to—but because I’ve a talent for finding trouble in the pursuit of a pour.

In the Beginning, There Was Bourbon (and Poor Decisions)

My first real taste of whiskey came in a dusty bar outside Amarillo. The floor stuck to your boots, the bartender had a glass eye, and the bourbon was older than the jukebox. I was seventeen, with a fake name and a real thirst.

From there, it spiraled—Kentucky rickhouses, Irish cellars, Japanese tasting rooms hidden behind vending machines. At one point, I may have traded a pair of boots for a bottle of Highland Scotch distilled during the Blitz. Might’ve been urine. Jury’s still out.

I’ve scribbled these entries in every corner of the map—on train tickets, napkins, even once on the inside of a camel’s saddlebag. Somewhere along the way, the journey became the journal, and the journal became everything else.

Did I Mention Hemingway?

People don’t believe me when I say I once shared a dram with Hemingway. Said he was fishing off the coast of Cuba, growling at the sea like it owed him money. I offered him a pull from my bottle of GlenDronach 12. He took it, swirled it, and muttered something about sherry casks being “the literary devices of the spirits world.”

Then he headbutted a marlin and vanished into the mist.

Could’ve been a hallucination. Could’ve been Tuesday.

Today’s Whiskey: GlenDronach 12-Year Highland Single Malt

It smells like an old library that's just caught fire in the best possible way.

  • Nose: Sherry-soaked raisins, roasted walnuts, campfire in autumn

  • Taste: Spiced fruitcake, bitter chocolate, a touch of orange peel

  • Finish: Lingering and warm, like a story your grandfather told twice

  • Best enjoyed with: A rusty knife, a broken lantern, and time to kill

Closing Thought from a Drunken Fool

There’s no map for this kind of thing. No compass for chasing ghosts across continents or finding the soul of a bottle in the hands of a stranger. There’s just the whiskey, the road, and the story you swear you’ll remember in the morning.

Until next entry,
—W.I.
(Initials only. Names are for passports and gravestones.)

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