Fakey Mc O’Fakepatrick’s ‘Irish’ ‘Pub’

Or, Ways To Hide Your Teetotaling From Prying Eyes: A public service announcement for the knocked up who are not yet “out.”

1) In group situations, try not to order within earshot of your party. If a waiter comes around, say you don’t know what you want yet, then say you have to go to the ladies’ room, and stop by the bar to order your not-drink.

2) Work with your spouse or drinking partner: You both order the same drink (margaritas, wine, what have you), and sit next to or across from each other so you can set the drinks down side-by-side. You occasionally raise your glass to your lips, but don’t drink; meanwhile, drinking partner picks up the glasses in alternation — yours, then his — so that the levels in each go down fairly consistently. NOTE: This will absolutely require you to be the one driving home.

3) Ordered discreetly, a virgin drink — whether Mary, Pina, Marg, Daiquiri or Mimosa — will always be assumed to be the leaded version; no need to wise your companions up.

4) A club soda with lime is an excellent substitute for a real cocktail; however, you have to have it in the same size and shape of glassware that other carbonated cocktails are served in, and you should say it’s a vodka tonic, not a gin and tonic — people can smell gin, or its absence, lots easier than vodka. Note: Cranberry juice and soda also works as a Cape Codder substitute; glassware rule applies.

5) Fake beers work wonders, but you have to have the bartender pour your O’Doul’s into a glass, preferably under the bar or with his/her back turned, and you don’t want that to show up on the group tab, so you have to go to the bar yourself.

6) If you’re at a private residence, you can rinse out a brown or green beer bottle, fill it with ice-cold water, and carry it around like it’s the real thing. Just make sure no one sees you do the old switcheroo, obvs.

7) And finally, pulling this off is 90% attitude — don’t hesitate to accept a drink (you don’t have to drink it!), don’t try saying you’re sick, or on antibiots (those are red flags these days, if your friends are used to seeing you drink with them), don’t worry that the occasional actual sip you have to take in full view of your companions will make you have a flipper baby (one public sip can go a looong way toward derailing any amateur sleuth types).

If you’re successful, it’s hilarious when you finally reveal your Big Seekrit — I hid my pregnancy-related non-drinking through five loooong months of work events, in-law homestays, farewell cocktail parties, three-day booze-riddled house parties, and Sundays at the cantina, and when Mr. Gleemonex and I came out with it at last, the amazement from all and sundry was almost worth the work it took to cloak-and-dagger that shit in the first place.