Does This Soda Pop Make Me Look Wimpy?

It started with an innoucuous time-killing-at-work question: If you could drink only one particular liquid, besides water, for the rest of your life, what would it be? For me, coffee and Guinness finished distant also-rans to Tropicana Orange Juice, not from concentrate, straight out of the carton. For my co-worker, a woman, significantly, Fresca was her immediate choice. "Fresca!" I yeccchhhhedd. "God that stuff is awful. Do they even still make it?" I was informed they do, which means, I presume, one can somwhere still purchase Hadacol, PF Flyers, Model-Ts, Johnny Mathis 8-tracks, and season tickets to the WFL's Shreveport Steamers. "I love Fresca," my co-worker continued, as I tried to make sense of a world that suddenly was neither flat nor round but something in a hexagonal motif. "It's so refreshing and grapefruity." She sounded like the heiress to the Fresca fortune (sic). Grapefruit, ugh. Grapefruit is the exception to the rule that all fruits are delicious. They say everyone in the world has his or her double, but I was sure my co-worker, the one who not only knows Fresca still exists, not only buys Fresca, not only willingly drinks Fresca, but actually likes it so much it's her besides-water-desert-island-eternity drink, was the most unique person I had ever met in my virtually Fresca-free (we'll get to that in due time) life. "Hey, Female Co-Worker No. 2," I yelled across my place of employment, "Fresca. Your thoughts." "Oh, Fresca," she cooed, "I love it. It's so refreshing and grapefruity." Good God, I shuddered; I've been transported to a completely different universe. "Hey, Female Co-Worker No. 3," I bellowed across my work place, my grip on not only sanity but everything I purportedly know about life sliding through my hands, "please don't tell me you like Fresca." "Oh, Fresca," she sighed dreamily, "I love it. It's so refreshing and grapefruity."

Women. Fresca is the dividing line between genders. It has to be. "I bet if you Googled 'man drinking Fresca' in Google Images," I challenged Female Co-Worker No. 1, "nothing will come up." Next thing I know she Googles "man drinking Fresca" and gets nothing but blog entries about Fresca being unmanly, no self-respecting man would ever drink Fresca, etc. "See," I argued, "it's not just me. The world knows Fresca is for women, not men." Then she hit me with the ultimate Catch-22 challenge. "I bet you're not man enough to drink a can of Fresca right here at work in front of everyone." Holy Saspirilla! What was I to do? To prove my manhood I was going to have to do the most unmanly thing imaginable--drink Fresca! I had to let my whirpooling testosterone settle a bit before I could reply.

Now as a boy (literally, we're talking pre-pubescent) Fresca was occasionally around the house and I had me some. Never liked it. Maybe it was the whole anti-grapefruit thing, but whatever, I was totally ixnay on the Escafray. The last Fresca I ever drank is clear to me, and significantly it was when I was thirteen or fourteen. I was a golf caddie then. One day, I was caddying with a really cool, never-one-shy-to-express-his-displeasure-at-anything friend of mine. We were caddying for a very unhip guy and his three guests. It was tortuously hot that day. We had started on the back nine, so at the end of nine holes we were nowhere near the Halfway House, which sat beside the tenth tee. The Halfway House was an oasis. After nine holes, the golfers would go in and sit down and refresh themselves for ten minutes. We caddies would stand around a back window, and after the golfers had gotten their drinks and food, it was customary that the caddies would get a drink (if the golfer was really ace, you might get a hot dog or hamburger too). Now at thirteen or fourteen the prospect of a free liquid refreshment from a well-stocked snack bar was heaven. As you trudged up the long ninth hole you'd kind of lose concentration and track of where all the golf balls were flying because all you could think about was what you'd be drinking in a couple minutes. They had everything--all the soda pops you could want, root beer floats, Gatorade, juices, and that delectable combo, the Californian (half a cup of 7-Up mixed with half a cup of Welch's Grape Juice = Nirvana), which I believe I exclusively drank throughout the summers of 1982 and 1983. But on that hot, back-nine starting day, the unhip golfer decided not to trek us all over to the Halfway House. "I'll get everybody something inside," he said, not bothering to take orders, as he walked toward the clubhouse after the 18th hole (our ninth) and the rest of us made our parched way to the first hole (our tenth that day). Well, five minutes later the guy appeared on the first tee with six cans of Fresca, one for each of the golfers, and one for me and my friend. Thanks, guy. Believe me, the thirst multiplies geometrically when your heart's set on a Coke or Gatorade or Californian and life deals you a can of Fresca. Being a polite, thirsty kid with an at best inchoate sense of "what it means to be a man," I begrudgingly sipped the Fresca down. IT DID NOT REFRESH. Later, walking ahead of the golfers down the first fairway, my friend slowly emptied his can of Fresca onto the closely-mown grass and sneered, "I hate this shit." Nearly thirty-five years later, I have hardly given a thought to Fresca again.

"Buy me a can of Fresca, and I'll drink it down in less than ten swigs," I boldly declared to Female Co-Worker No. 1. "Any man who makes a habit of drinking Fresca isn't a real man, but neither is one who can't drink one can of the stuff when his manhood is questioned!" There.

Secretly I wondered/feared: Over the course of my life, as my expanding waist line proves, I have embraced many foods and drinks that as a kid I had despised (though mushrooms and olives are still right out), even to the point where I don't paranoidically and obsessively hunt out each piece of grapefruit in a fruit cup (I just surround it on the spoon with grapes, blueberries, and watermelon and inhale)--what if, what if I actually like Fresca when I so macho-ly gulp a can of it down? Would I ever be able to admit it? I slept poorly that night.

The next day at work, just two days ago, a can of Fresca (in some generic looking silverish can, not anything like the forbidding can I remember from my youth) sat for me in the employee refrigerator. Later in the day I was ready. "Call the media," I said to Female Co-Worker No. 1, "gather the crowd, fetch me the can." A group of Male Co-Workers looked on in obvious disgust but, being one of them, I also noticed a hint of envy in their demeanors: This guy is so tough he'll even drink a can of Fresca to show how tough he is. I popped the pop top and dove right in, swigging a massive gulp of the stuff. Women giggled; men held their breath. I swallowed and they all looked at me for my reaction. Keeping my best poker face, I saved all my opinions for my words: "Certainly not awful, but definitely not good."

It turned out to be the non-event of the month. I finished the can in about seven more swigs. "Kind of tastes like yellow chalk-flavored water," I concluded decisively about three-quarters of the way through the 12 ounces, "but not in a necessarily bad way. It's just kind of nothing. But no," I summed up after draining the last few drops, "I am most assuredly not refreshed. In a desperate situation I'd drink another one, but I'd never willingly order or buy another Fresca." Nothing but the truth, there. No macho BS. That can of Fresca really did nothing to/for me. Though I will admit, that last sentence is bona fide now, two days later, but immediately upon finishing the can I did harbor some deep, never-to-be-spoken doubts: I've just drunk a can of Fresca! The next time I handle a TV remote will my fingers, instead of instinctively punching 28, the channel number for ESPN round these parts, somehow unconsciously punch in XX or XY or YY, the whatever numbers, respectively, for HGTV, Lifetime, or, God forbid, the OWN network? Will I suddenly start to panic when I realize I don't have a tube of lip balm on my person? Will I make a midnight run to Giant Eagle for grapefruits and wine coolers? 

But no, nothing like any of that has happened. I feel as much of a man today as I did before all this Fresca fracas began. Though, and I truly believe it's just a sign of age (I did, after all, attend my 30th high school reunion last night), when I took off my shirt two nights ago, with those 12 ounces of Fresca still burbling their non-entity-ness through my innards, I swear I saw one tiny chest hair detach itself from my thatchy pecs and fall sadly to the ground. So there, Fresca, a new ad slogan is yours, gratis, for the experience: Fresca, It'll Take Hair Off Your Chest!