Maturity

Maturity! I've heard great things about it. It was never my bag. But as I now enter my 30s four years ago, I see the virtues of adult behavior, like saving for retirement, using a tablesaw, and not passing out on the 7 train to work after chasing it a half-mile in the freezing dawn with last night's booze still sloshing through my veins.

When I was a college graduate working on ferryboats to develop those rope-and-knot skills so crucial in the digital communications job market, I worked with a guy named John. On John's last day, at the end of the summer season, we were the last deckhands standing, so I took him out for a fare-thee-well drink. And being a latecomer to the demon drink, I was still indulging my sweet tooth. I ordered a Midori sour (go ahead and judge), then went to the bathroom.

When I came back, no neon green cocktail awaited me. There sat a bronze beauty in her place, beaming.

"This is called whisky," said John. "It's what a man drinks and it's what I drink and it's what you're going to drink because I can't watch you sip any more candy."

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There's a reason we stop crybabies by rubbing whisky on their gums.

From then on, I was a whisky man, whereas before I'd been a glucose gal. And don't think you won't experience your own version of that moment just because your coworkers aren't sailors. Anyone can enjoy the dulcet kiss of the highland drink. In fact becoming a whisky man is as inevitable as puberty.

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But far less awkward

Uses

Dear other people: why can't you be whisky? Unlike most of humanity, whisky never trolls YouTube and instead chooses to be valuable to society in these ways:

Whisky gusses up your palate overall. No longer will you sip the pisswater beers of your college parties because they're all you can stomach. A roasted stout might taste like burnt popcorn to you now, but after a toot of whisky, they're as smooth as water. And in an era when IPAs run rampant and roughshod over the beer scene, you need that whisky.

Sign of goodwill

Whisky is a currency of respect among men. A bottle of it presented to a fellow says "I acknowledge you as a man and have no plans to stab you."

When Cracked heartthrob Gladstone published his first book, it was a diary of drinking whisky and secondarily investigating the internet apocalypse. To celebrate, we, his friends, got him whisky stones emblazoned with his name. That way he could mark all the whisky in the world as his own, and with all that drink in him, pee on everything. That, of course, would give him ownership of all that his mighty flow touched. So basically that gift acknowledged him as our rightful lord.

Gladstone and I have a friend--let's call him Nigel since he's so English you'd never believe his real name is Nick--who threw me a lot of work when I was freelancing, desperate to pay my rent and if there was any money left over that month, perhaps eat. Time and again, I'd be scraping bottom on my finances, and in came a plum assignment from Nick. When I reached the relative security of a day job, my only mission was to find out what Nick's favorite whisky was and present him with a bottle and a "Thanks for keeping me alive."

When giving thanks to your savior, only a bottle of whisky will do.

Mark of taste

Whisky also makes an excellent housewarming gift when meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time. A mellow, smoky whisky says to these people, "You may relax in the knowledge that someone thoughtful and competent is fucking your daughter."

Eliciting poetry from the elderly

I asked my old man why he drinks whisky. He said, "When you've been out walking all day it feels good in your joints and bones. It's better on the rocks. Always better in front of a fire." That's about as concise a thesis for this article as I can find.

The Ratio of Whisky to Manly Virtues

What is a man? Is it testes? No, Fight Club proved otherwise. A Y chromosome? Pfffft. There's tons of dames with a Y chromosome and some guys without one.* Upholding socialized gender roles? I would remind you we're praising a drink from a country that gave us both Groundskeeper Willie and man-skirts.

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A rose by any other name would still be terrified of Scotsmen.

Conclusion

Whisky! To warm the body, soul and heart. You are once again alive. Though a stiff wind batters the door, you have a happy hearth and the louse-obsessed poetry of Robert Burns to keep you well.

Yea, the night is long and dark and the wind will rip the heat from your bones. But ye are tucked in your home with whisky and strength and you abide. For there is a secret to happiness that only the whisky-drinking man knows, and it is--hang on, the results are in on what makes a man...

According to this it's "his ability to nurture eggs with prolactin after the female's ovipositor deposits them into his brood pouch." Hunh. Turns out the definition of manliness is "seahorse." Tough luck, everybody.

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Except you seahorses. Good job.

So join me in raising a glass to seahorses, the centaurs of the ocean. There is much we can learn from them about what makes a man, and we'll do it with a drink in hand. We may grow up, and we may even let death happen to us one day, but we'll never get old, for we are preserved in whisky.

Brendan interviewed Epic Meal Time's Harley Morenstein about whiskey and bacon. You can tell him how much you enjoyed it on Twitter @brendanmcginley.

Related Reading: Brendan taught you the secrets of classy drinking and classier sobbing at the bar in Martini-a-Go-Go!