"Whatcha makin’, hot stuff?" I was at the kitchen island mixing an experimental drink; I felt the hand slip around my stomach and jumped slightly before I heard the coo in my ear. Dan never calls me "hot stuff," so I knew it wasn’t him. But whose hand was suddenly tweaking my right nipple?

"Chipper! You dog!" I gave a slight shiver and felt a certain stirring.

"Seriously, tiger," Chipper whispered. "Can I try it?"

"My nipple or my drink?" I inquired in a lewd tone. Chipper made a growling noise and started to work on a hickey on my neck. I shook him off, finished making the cocktail and handed it to him. Wasting no time, he took a sizeable gulp.

"Yikes!" he said. "That’s strong! Strong but good! What’s it called?"

"Loooo-cyyyyy?!" was my response.

"The Ethel?"

"Good guess, but no. Not ‘The Ethel.’ Close, though."

"Certainly not ‘The Fred.’ Not even you would name a drink ‘The Fred.’"

"Indeed not," I sniffed. "Not ‘The Fred.’"

"The Ricky?"

"Right!" I cried. "You win the prize," at which point I whirled around and grabbed his nuts. Of course that was precisely the moment for Dan to make his pointless entrance.

"I’m not jealous. You can have him," he said to Chipper as he continued past the kitchen and into the living room. There is little more deflating than having one’s husband offer you to the nearest mouth.

Chipper and I moved away from each other quickly; our illicit fondling had been killed before it got interesting.

"Yes," I said. "It’s a Gin Rickey. What do you think?"

"It’s fabulous!" Chipper enthused. "What’s in it?"

"Gin and lime juice and seltzer and that’s all, except for the ice."

"Wait a minute," Chipper said. "I thought that was a Collins."

"Good catch, shortstop!" I said. "A Rickey is a Collins without sugar and with lime juice instead of lemon. But like a Collins, a Rickey can be made with...."

"... various kinds of liquors." Dan was finishing my sentence for me. "Rum, bourbon, even Scotch."

"Very good," I said with a certain edge to my voice. "Would you like me to throw one in your face?"

"No, thank you, darling dearest," Dan coolly replied. "Just make me a standard Gin Rickey, and don’t be stingy with the gin." The nerve of some people!

Straight gin has such a degenerate reputation that to drink it without mixing in some other ingredient is to invite either derision or an intervention. I have no idea why. Straight up, on the rocks, or neat, asking for nothing but gin simply isn’t done in public, and pouring a glass at home makes many people so self-conscious that they begin to think they can actually feel the cirrhosis nodules beginning to grow in their livers. Drinking straight gin is the kind of thing folks do with the blinds drawn.

This is sad and quite needless. Juniper-flavored alcohol has a long, formerly proud history as a tonic. Monks made it, for God’s sake – literally. People in the Dark Ages made that drab era a little lighter with it; they drank it as a way of warding off the Plague. Of course it didn’t really work to that end, but gin did make one’s buboes seem a great deal less repulsive for the brief period between their onset and the drinker’s unpleasant and smelly demise. Buboes are best experienced through a gin haze – on that I think we can all agree.

The 17th century, when gin was flavored with turpentine, will not be elaborated upon here except to note that the phase didn’t last long.

Juniper berries returned as the primary flavoring soon thereafter, though today’s premium brands often feature such an array of secondary essences that the roster resembles the ingredients in high-end organic shampoo. Beefeater gin, for example, features not only juniper but also eight other botanicals: the seeds and root of angelica, licorice, almonds, oranges, lemon peel and everybody’s favorite, orris root.

What the hell is orris root? Orris happens to be one of the "notes" in Yves Saint Laurent’s perfume Opium. It’s flowery, and heavily so when sniffed on its own. And apparently witches use it to pry into other people’s subconscious. (Note to readers: If someone you know – say, your mother – wears Opium, be very wary of having even the slightest contact with her, or else your wonderfully filthy fantasy life will be an open book.)

Which brings us to the subject of this column: Pink Gin. Tailor made for lesbian and gay drinkers, Pink Gin is even closer to straight gin than a martini is. Even the driest martinis have something in them besides the main ingredient. Pink Gin, on the other hand, contains nothing but straight gin that is faintly colored by the addition of Angostura bitters.

What’s in Angostura bitters? According to Rachel Maddow, who knows everything worth knowing, the recipe is such a secret that only five people on the planet know it. All the rest of us know is that it’s a tincture of herbs and spices that originated in Venezuela in the 19th century. One of the great Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar’s doctors cooked it up; he may have based his highly guarded recipe on the local Amerindians’ folk medicine. It does not – repeat, not – contain angostura bark, which is poisonous.

Angostura bitters have a very complex taste, one that’s difficult to describe beyond "herbal and spicy." Easier to describe is the feeling one gets while drinking a Pink Gin – delightful! The botanicals of the gin are well complemented by the bitters. But don’t overdo it. The following recipe creates exactly the right proportion of gin to bitters. And the color is lovely.