No secrets are being divulged when I report that Christopher Hitchens liked a drink every now and then. Preferably now. He wasn’t sloppy about it. In fact, he always seemed in perfect control. (I once saw him steer a beach bike through the streets of Key West without spilling his Scotch.) He just liked to keep the machine well-oiled so he could get on to more important things, like liberating oppressed peoples of the world, knocking out his 1,000 words a day, or starting fights with God, assuming there is one, which he didn’t. In some ways, his affection for drink brought us together, setting in motion my most vivid memories of him.

As the Iraq War kicked off in 2003, I was holed up in the Kuwait City Hilton—home to unembedded reporters looking to make their way in. While I’d only briefly met Hitchens once before, word had spread through mutual friends that my hotel room was the last cantina in town. Since the border being sealed meant the black market hooch supply had dried up, we smuggled our amber past customs officials in Listerine bottles. So when Hitchens showed up at my door early one morning kitted for battle with nothing more than his black leather jacket, blue jeans, and a half-smoked pack of Rothman’s (he refused to bring Kevlar, saying it made him feel  “like a counterfeit”), I offered him a welcome-to-the-war shot of “Listerine,” just to be hospitable.