Virginia Slims

I read and loved Dennis Lehane's The Given Day (I can't find a link to the paperback, but I got it a Costco.) I recommend it to you all. The book is about a Boston cop that is forced to go undercover to monitor subversives while finding himself drawn to the power of his own Boston police union. I loved this passage which we all might recognize in some way, but it made me think of Ash in particular:

Mondays and Wednesdays brought another meeting of the Roxbury Letts followed by a boozy gathering at the Sowbelly Saloon. He spent his nights with them and his mornings with a curl-up-and-cry-for-your-momma hangover, nothing about the Letts being frivolous, including their drinking. Bunch of Sergeis and Borises and Josefs, with the occasional Peter or Pytor thrown in, the Letts raged through the night with vodka and slogans and wooden buckets of warm beer. Slamming the steins on scarred tables and quoting Marx, quoting Engels, quoting Lenin and Emma Goldman and screeching about the rights of the working man, all he while treating the barmaid like shit.

Read it.