Why I Can't Have Mojitos for Breakfast

A meditation on intensity, Spain, and taking everything too far.

For some odd reason, both my daughters are at school camp this week. And both are in different locales. They’re in different grades, of course, but somehow both these school camps were scheduled to occur in the same week. Hattie is now a few hours drive away, and Boudica is up in Cairns, which is in the tropics and roughly a thousand miles away. She’s snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, apparently.

And I’m here by myself, which basically never happens.

Off they both went on their respective trips, each in a different direction. Boudica went to the airport. Hattie departed on a bus bound for Redland Bay. I stood and watched the bus disappear around the corner, feeling appropriately melancholy.

My first instinct, of course, was to get drunk immediately. My wife gave me one of her looks.

Above, when I mentioned I was alone, I should have mentioned my wife is with me; I just felt alone. I gave her, now, a bit of searching look.

“Mojitos,” I said. “You know, rum, lime juice and cane sugar. I seem to think. Also...” I thought very hard for a minute. It’s been some time since I had a mojito. “Mint leaves, I seem to think.”

“We’re not having mojitos. It’s only 9am.”

This is what I meant when I said I felt alone. It seemed to me, in that moment, that nine in the morning is precisely the best and most ideal time to enjoy a mojito.

“Because it’s always ‘now’ when I drink mojitos—the hands on the clock always pointed to ‘now.’ I remember that vividly!”

“How many mojitos have you even had in your life?” asked my wife, in a rhetorical sort of way.

“It was one time when we went to Madrid, remember? I think we drank two each, didn’t we? Which seems insufficient. And also sad, as I think about it now. We should definitely have mojitos for breakfast.”

“I can’t. I have to work, and you have to write a newsletter.”

“I have nothing to write about! But if I drink mojitos for breakfast, I can tell everyone how I did that, and explain the entire thing.”

But the memory of drinking mojitos in Madrid sent me spiraling into reflection. I thought about Spain, a country where I’ve spent a considerable amount of time. I haven’t been drunk since I was in Spain, and that was before Covid. And here we are already in 2025, and Boudica is now twelve years of age and on her way to Cairns.

I was born in Cairns, you know. It’s hot and humid and tropical. A good place for mojitos, if you ask me. I remember my mother taking me to school one day—I was in first grade—and we had to pull over and wait for a crocodile to cross the road. Now I think about it, I haven’t been back to Cairns since roughly 2002—the year before I moved to the United States.

Actually, the first time I got drunk was in Cairns. I was four years old. No really, my parents had some cask wine, which is some sort of cheap grape-like alcoholic beverage they used to sell in cardboard cartons and no I’m not making this up. The baby-boomers were a weird generation. But to make the cask wine more classy for guests, my parents poured it into an emptied-out bottle and, you know, one of those bottles used to contain something called cordial, which is a concentrate made from sugar and preservatives. Cordial is probably as bad for children as alcohol would be, but they used to give us cordial all the time, back in the day, and nobody knows why.

So, on this one particular evening while my parents were entertaining guests, four-year-old me helped myself to what I believed was a bottle of cordial in the fridge. It was a hot night—Cairns is in the tropics, as I mentioned—and I was thirsty. So, I drank the whole bottle.

That’s how I became completely plastered on cheap wine before I’d even started first grade. Nowadays, and in consequence to that, I somehow think, I don’t much enjoy drinking wine. The problem is, not liking wine is one of those things that people make you explain to them. It always seems odd to them, somehow.

The problem is, you can’t generally say to somebody, “Oh, no thank you, no wine for me. I haven’t enjoyed it since I was four years old”. So I never say that. But again, if you say you don’t like wine, people squint at you and expect you tell them why, and so what I sometimes lie and tell them I’m alcoholic, and then they drop the subject.

To be clear, I’m not alcoholic, but I’m prepared to lie about it if it’ll get me out of certain social situations. Because another thing about not drinking wine is that you somehow end up being that one sober person at the table and... Here’s a secret I rarely divulge: I have never met anybody on this Earth who has become somehow more fascinating with half a gallon of wine in their bellies. So again, sometimes I lie about being an alcoholic. It’s completely untrue, but it makes life a little easier.

Now, I mentioned Spain before—the first time I went to Spain, I went there alone, to visit Paco. Paco was, and is, frankly, a rather eminent scientist doing important work. He’s published far more than a hundred scientific papers. Possibly two hundred at this point. He’s sort of an expert in his field, but I won’t get into that here, because we’re talking about mojitos, and I want to stay focused. Oh, but I will mention that Paco used to run ultra-marathons. And this was odd, really, because he also smoked cigarettes. One time, in Boston, he went out jogging during his lunch break, and I saw him go by with a cigarette in his mouth. And ironically, if you ever said to him, “that’s a bit unhealthy, don’t you think?” he would be uniquely qualified to explain to you precisely why it was unhealthy. As in, he is possibly far more qualified to talk about it than absolutely anybody you have ever met. So, one never said anything like that to Paco. We just observe him living his life, and say nothing at all.

I arrived in Spain and took a bus to his city. I was tired when I arrived and wanted to lie down, but Paco insisted that we go out and have at least one drink with his colleagues to celebrate my arrival. His colleagues were his lab members at the university, and you know—I worked at Harvard, and had this weird feeling I had to make a good impression on everyone.

So, we got to the tapas bar; there was a television above the bar, people were all smoking cigarettes and watching the soccer. Paco’s entire lab turned up to meet me. They asked me what I wanted to drink and I said I’d take a Coca-Cola.

“I’ll get you wine,” said Paco.

“No, thanks, just the coca-cola.”

“My friend, you’ll like the wine here, I promise you.”

Paco is a friend, so I had to explain the matter in detail. You know, that I don’t really drink wine and hadn’t since I was about four years old.

“I guess,” I said to him, “if you experience alcohol poisoning as a small child, you wind up with this fierce aversion—”

Paco waved his hand before my eyes, and looked at me as if I was daft. “But you haven’t tried Spanish wine!” he told me.

“Again, I don’t seem to like any wine and—”

“But my friend, you haven’t had the wine here, so how would you know?”

“I’m an alcoholic,” I told him, giving up. Because that one always works... except, I was about to discover, with Paco.

“Then I’ll get you a beer. The beer here is not very strong.”

“I don’t really like beer all that much,” I admitted. “Again, when I was four—”

“But my friend,” Paco interrupted, “you haven’t had Spanish beer!”

We went on like this for about ten minutes until I finally accepted that Paco would be personally afflicted and aggrieved if I didn’t drink at least one beer with him and his lab. Dutifully, I drank the beer. Then another appeared in front of me.

To be polite, I drank that one and stood up, waving my hands and talking about jetlag. But two more beers appeared; apparently Paco and a member of his lab both bought me a beer at the same time, by accident. So, I drank these out of politeness, and then told Paco I wanted to head back. I was tired and jetlagged and really needed to sleep. But Paco looked at me as if I was mad. “It’s only eleven!” he told me, and ordered me another beer.

Here’s an odd thing about me. I don’t get drunk very easily. I inherited from my mother a rather unusual tolerance of alcohol. One time—well, I was back in Boston with Paco, in fact; he and I sat up one snowy evening and drank an entire bottle of whiskey between us. He went to sleep and I stayed awake until dawn reading Cloud Atlas. I was completely sober. Genetics are a strange thing. Paco, incidentally, is a geneticist, and he explained my tolerance to me, but I wasn’t listening because... well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

Now, we were twelve beers into the evening and it was midnight. The streets were packed with families, out for a stroll. The tapas bars were filled with elderly people and middle-aged couples, and families and small children. A few mothers held babies in their arms. But my mind was far away—in Cairns, which you’ll remember, is far hotter than the South of Spain. I was thinking wistfully of the tropics, far away.

The twentieth alcoholic beverage that night was a small plastic cup of wine. Paco had evidently forgotten about my dislike of wine. I was lightly tipsy at this point. Paco gave me another glass of wine and then set about explaining the genetics of my tolerance to alcohol, as I mentioned.

No really—there’s no reasoning with him. I didn’t listen to his genetics lecture. I’d come all the way from Harvard to Spain to get away from that sort of nonsense. And the wine made me think of beaches and coconut trees and crocodiles and me, of course, throwing up all over my parent’s coffee table while they were entertaining guests.

That evening, Paco introduced me to approximately one hundred people. I had to kiss about fifty women on each cheeks which, by the twenty-first drink, was almost embarrassingly difficult to coordinate. I kept almost falling over. But in fairness, I wasn’t properly drunk until drink number twenty-two. Everyone was incredibly nice to me... you know, me, the poor alcoholic Australian that Paco had brought back with him from Harvard University. Everyone was remarkably understanding of my alcoholism. I would explain it to strangers and they’d buy me a different sort of beer each time. You know, I think to a Spaniard, beer isn’t so much of an ‘alcohol’ as much as a way of staying hydrated and fed.

I mean, Paco and his colleagues didn’t even seem to eat at home; they ate in tapas bars instead. And these, of course, are actual tapas bars and therefore nothing like those pretentious ‘tapas restaurants’ you’ll find elsewhere in the world. A tapas bar in the South of Spain will give you a small serving of food with every drink. And each drink costs only about a euro or so, and so for many of these people, dinner consists of three or four beers and their accompanying tapas.

Anyway, Paco, the ultra-marathon runner, actually lived on food from tapas bars. Again, if you tried to tell him this was unhealthy, he would explain to you precisely how it was unhealthy for him, right down to the actual molecular level. So again, there was never any point reasoning with him. He straddles a few disciplines. Among other things, I think he’s a neuroscientist. He’s frustrating that way.

So, imagine yourself in a medieval town square lined with orange trees, and the locals just spontaneously throw a street party, because I guess that’s just something they do occasionally. Then, it’s almost two in the morning and your narrator has managed to drink twenty-six alcoholic beverages. The plaza is thronged with elderly folk and small children. Someone is playing flamenco guitar, and old people clapping in time. And Paco is shaking me, telling me we can’t stay out all night, and that we have to get up early.

“My friend, we have work to do tomorrow!”

I don’t remember getting back to his apartment. I just remember waking up three hours later with Paco standing over me.

“Kris, my friend! It’s time to go to work!”

I spent precisely four minutes getting myself dressed, with teeth brushed and all that. Paco, meanwhile, paced his apartment with ill-concealed impatience. Paco, I later learned, had already been out on a ten-mile run.

And so, off we went to the university. I settled into a corner of his lab, found my way onto the wifi, and got to work on stuff for Harvard. I spent the morning doing that, and then Paco dragged me away to a long lunch in a tapas bar. And, of course, he bought me more beer which I, frankly, did not enjoy because (as I reminded him several times) I don’t really enjoy beer. Paco told me it would grow on me, and bought me another beer. Then, back to his apartment for a nap. Paco woke me up for a second time that day, at 5pm, and took us both back to the university. More work, then at eight pm, off to the tapas bars once more.

It was my second evening in Spain. I argued with some well-meaning Spaniards that I don’t drink—a touch of alcoholism, you see—and then they kindly bought me more beer. Then, it was two am and Paco was leading me through a maze of medieval streets. On the second evening, I made it to the floor of his living room and passed out there.

I slept four hours. Then, there was Paco standing over me, wondering why I was still sleeping at 6am. Off to the university we went. More work. Then a tapas bar. Siesta. Work. Back to the tapas bar. Wandering home, singing through the streets at 2am. Being awoken by Paco at seven. Him looking at me incredulously.

“Don’t give me any nonsense about the Protestant work ethic,” I told him. “You’re all Catholics, first of all. And seeing the way you all live, I’m not at all surprised you didn’t have an industrial revolution.

“Historians will tell you it’s because you just squandered Incan gold, but my theory is that you all party too much. If I survive this trip, I’m going to write a book about it.”

To punish me for my remarks against the grandeur that is Spain, Paco bought me, like, thirty beers that evening. I survived the night. I survived every night, in fact.

Ten days passed like this. I don’t remember much of it, but I do recall my last evening in Spain. We’d spent the afternoon working at the university as usual. Then, of course, dinner at a tapas bar.

One more evening of drinking beer and wine and... no! Suddenly, I could stand it no longer. The waiter came to our table to take our order and everyone ordered beer and wine, apart from myself. I asked him for a coke. And, of course, everybody started to argue with me, including the waiter.

“Alright, to hell with it!” I exclaimed. “Give me a shot of whiskey, please.”

The waiter blinked at me with astonishment. There was a hush for a moment, then someone from our table said: “Just give him wine”.

Everyone nodded approvingly—everyone except me, because I was so entirely done with drinking twenty or thirty beers or wines every evening, and I wanted something I actually enjoyed drinking.

“Give me whiskey,” I declared hotly, “or give me death!”

Then someone nearby quietly explained to the waiter that I was Australian, and he instantly relaxed and, looking like the world made sudden sense to him, went off to fetch me a whiskey.

But our table was subdued. Nobody would look at me, they were all looking away into different corners of the room and ruminating. And so, after a little while, I finally said, “Oh alright, you utter lunatics. Apparently, I said something wrong a moment ago. What did I do?”

Paco could barely look me in the eye. “People here don’t drink whiskey before dinner.”

I looked at my phone. “It’s nine o’clock in the evening!”

Paco looked at me with incredulity. “But dinner isn’t until midnight!”

A thought occurred to me. “What time do you think lunch is, in this country?”

“I don’t know. 4pm?”

“You’re mad,” I told him. “You’re all mad. I see that now. And anyway, what if I enjoy drinking whiskey more than, say, beer? Or wine?”

Paco replied, “Well, in that case... drink whiskey! But understand, only alcoholics drink whiskey before dinner...”

So I drank my whiskey, and then ordered another, and my friends watched me with compassion. And someone muttered something about me being an alcoholic, and as an act of sincere kindness, asked the waiter to bring me the bottle, and shared it with me. And, of course, we all drank so much that I could barely walk the next morning. Paco had to drive me all the way up to Madrid just to get me onto the plane. At that point, I could barely function, let alone walk.

And Paco? After he dropped me off at the airport, he drove to La Pedriza and spent the rest of the day climbing mountains.

Years later, I returned to Spain with a mutual friend from our lab at Harvard. And although I warned him, he went out drinking with Paco. Wisely, I spent the night with Paco’s sister’s family. But when I returned to Paco’s apartment the next morning, I found our friend face down on the floor of Paco’s bathroom. If I hadn’t gone over to check on him then the coroner’s report would have ruled the matter a ‘death by beer’. Where was Paco? He was out on a ten-mile run, of course. I poured water down our friend’s neck and revived him, then put him on a bus for Granada. Paco means well, but he does everything in an intense sort of way.

And this, I think, is something that self-help books never seem to mention. In my experience, people who are good at things have a certain tendency to approach whatever they’re doing in an intense sort of way.

Earlier this month, I made a firm decision about Vietnamese salads. I like Vietnamese salads, you see. In fact, I don’t like salad at all unless it’s Vietnamese, and then it’s my favorite food in the world. One day—I think it was October 1st—I visited a Vietnamese restaurant and thought to myself, I want to eat this every day. Then, like the time I got interested in sushi, I became very intense about the whole subject of Vietnamese salads. I spent days and days teaching myself to replicate the best Vietnamese salads I had ever eaten.

I’ll spare you the details, but the brief version is that I was completely obsessive for a few weeks there, until I sort of perfected nuoc cham. Only then could I bring myself to calm down. But this is how I am. This is also how Paco is. Some people just take everything too far; it makes us good at some things, just as it also makes us bad at other things.

Speaking of Paco, he’s still alive and healthy and thriving for reasons known only to God. I somehow think that somebody who works in medical science ought to conduct some research on the man and find out how he’s still alive. The main challenge, of course, is that Paco himself works in medical science, and on the strength of their mutual interests would no doubt insist on taking anyone who wants to research him out to a tapas bar.

Long story short, I didn’t have any mojitos today because by mid-morning, I happened to remember why I hardly drink alcohol. I remembered Paco, you see, and therefore I remembered myself. I can’t drink mojitos, not because I’m an alcoholic (I mean, not yet at least), but because some of us take everything way too far. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the sort of money that would allow me to approach the subject of mojitos with the passion and thoroughness which I undertake everything else, including this very newsletter about mojitos.

But what I did want to say is... well, thank you for being subscribed to my newsletter. It really does mean a lot to me. Thanks for being here, and thank you for being you.

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel