Some humans are not blessed with the ability to consume fourteen PBRs in one night and wow a room full of potential sexual partners by performing complex trigonometry without a graphing calculator.  Some do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of German beers, Irish Whiskeys, Russian Vodkas, and the various types of tiny straws/koozies/umbrella garnishes that are supposed to accompany said alcohols.  Some of us are shitty drinkers.  But fear not, my fellow alcohol ignoramuses! (Ignoramii?) For a life as a shitty drinker can still be full of sexy times and hard candies if you…

1. Drink whiskey.  I don’t care if it tastes like the day your dad drove away in his 1976 Plymouth Duster.  You’ll drink whiskey and every time you do you’ll say “Damn, I loves me some whiskey!” This works for either sex: whiskey drinking men are attractive in a rugged, mysterious sort of way like Clint Eastwood, and whiskey drinking women are attractive in a confident, devil-may-care sort of way like Clint Eastwood.

2. Always request rail. This drinking tip serves two purposes: one, it saves you money.  And there’s nothing sexier than frugality.  Two, it sidesteps the issue of having to identify a certain liquor.  As a shitty drinker, you don’t know any.  You probably couldn’t properly identify gin versus vodka in a blind taste test, who the hell do you think you are requesting Ciroc when it could just as easily be Popov?  If you have to be a douchenozzle and specifically request a liquor, make up a name.  I mean, like, a seriously unlikely name.  When the bartender politely informs you that they do not have “Lieutenant Vag-gasm,” “St. Bartholomew’s Prince Albert,” or “Penguino,” you can just roll your eyes, sigh, slowly shake your head, and then reluctantly order rail.

3. Never admit to not recognizing an alcohol name.  Closely tied to the logic behind suggestion #2, you can get away with not having actually consumed 99% of the alcohols you say you have if you start describing all of them as tasting “sharp” and “hollow.”  But Katie, you surely cry, Those words don’t describe flavors! Exactly.

4. Make up drinks and name them after yourself.  Let me give you an example. Any alcohol mixed with Mt. Dew is automatically a “Sisneros.”  Amaretto and Mt. Dew?  Emerald Sisneros.  Barton’s Blue Wave Raspberry Vodka and Mt. Dew?  Electric Sisneros.  Pimm’s, Mt. Dew, and some fresh tears after watching Love Actually? Tuesdays at Sisneros’s.  The fact that you’ve mixed the pansiest of alcohols with the nerdiest of sodas is secondary to the fact that you’re cool enough to have a series of drinks named after you.  Even if you’re the one that did the naming-after.

5. Drink quickly and infrequently. A less-than-stellar knowledge of alcohol usually stems from an inability to consume a lot of it.  You can get around this issue by drinking very few drinks, but consuming each at lightning speed.  That seems counterintuitive, Sisneros, you inevitably screech in your best skeptical voice.  Well Nay, I say to you! Drinking one drink very quickly gives the illusion that you’re a top-notch booze consumer.  Some might even start to think you’re developing a drinking problem, which is exactly the sort of image you’re going for.  Throw your whiskey diet (see #1) down in under fifteen seconds and then dramatically slam the glass down on the bar.  Take an ice cube out of the empty glass and suck on it for a while.  The following morning’s tweets will read something like: “Damn! @MyBFF really put ‘em away last night!” or “@HotChick must really be a wise, learned drinker!” or “WTF?! @OMGHardcore injected whiskey straight into her veins, punched a blind guy in the face, and then vaulted out of the bar Paul Hamm style!” Little do they know you drank only that whiskey diet, albeit very publicly and very dramatically.

6. Drink sexily.  The more time your straw spends perched on your bottom teeth, your tongue flitting out to swirl it around like a hummingbird near nectar, the less anybody around you is going to give a shit what or how much you drink.  Try licking the rim of the glass and then licking someone’s face.  Or taking a drink and then sexily spouting it into the air like a sexy fountain.  Or accidentally dribbling some down your low-cut shirt and asking someone if they could “get that for you.”  This is gender neutral advice.

–Katie Sisneros, as you can see above, is quite literally a shitty drinker.