Finding the Olympic spirit on a rainy night in Paris from The Monkey-Gland Man | Mark Kiszla

PARIS — “A Monkey Gland? You would like to order a Monkey Gland?” asked the young French bartender, arching an eyebrow as he made certain my order was understood correctly.

“That’s not an everyday request.”

The sky wept for Paris, which awakened Friday to rain and bad news on the doorstep of the Olympics. The Summer Games began with arsonist attacks on the national train system, interrupting travel of more than a half million travelers and putting France on high alert for the possibility of more trouble ahead.

But the show must go on, right? So the Opening Ceremony did on a damp and gloomy July evening, as we all took a shot of courage and hoped for sunnier days ahead.

And where was I? Raising a toast to world peace, or at least a peaceful two weeks for the Games in France, in Harry’s New York Bar, which opened its doors five years before the last Paris Olympics, held in 1924.

This internationally famous watering hole in the shadow of the city’s grand opera house has served libations for over a century to everyone from Knute Rockne to Humphrey Bogart and Daft Punk. As legend goes, the Bloody Mary and French 75 were invented here.

But I was on a quest for a lesser-known Harry’s original cocktail:

The Monkey Gland.

“My name is Louis, like the king of France,” said Louis Proust, reaching under the bar for a bottle of gin, orange juice, grenadine and absinthe, the ingredients of a time-honored recipe born way back in the Roaring Twenties. “It’s my pleasure to make you a perfect Monkey Gland. But I must tell you: It’s a cocktail that is a little bit weird for me.”

Weird. Indeed. To put it mildly.

Please, let me explain.

Man’s quest for performance enhancement is as old as the Olympic motto of Citius, Altius, Fortius. The Monkey Gland on Harry’s drink menu is a sincere and wonderfully perverse salute to those ideals.

One hundred years ago, a surgeon named Serge Voronoff was renowned in Paris for a cutting-edge procedure dedicated to the pursuit of eternal youth.

“The surgery,” Proust explained, “required a great sacrifice from the monkey …”

Voronoff convinced patients that if he transplanted tissue from a chimpanzee’s testicles into the human scrotum the benefits would include better memory, eyesight and sex drive.

Because suckers are born every minute, the good doc got famous as The Monkey Gland Man and grew wealthier as news of his surgery went viral, from Europe all the way to Hollywood. A song written by Irving Berlin for the Marx Brothers movie “The Coconuts” featured the line: “If you’re too old for dancing, get yourself a Monkey Gland.”

So I felt obligated to order one.

As you might’ve already suspected, after hundreds of surgeries, it was determined the procedure was worthless.

The Monkey Gland, however, endures as a great cocktail. I sipped on one, then ordered a second round, while munching the best hot dog to be found in Paris.

I was happy to be out of the rain, watching the Opening Ceremony while bellied up to the glowing antique wood of a bar established in 1919.

The parade of nations was a flotilla of boats on the Seine, and I grinned as NBA graybeard LeBron James and tennis sensation Coco Gauff carried the flag for Team USA.

Although the walls of Harry’s are plastered with pennants of great U.S. universities, from Notre Dame to the Air Force Academy, there’s not a single television in the joint.

A tiny cell phone propped against a pillar, however, managed to capture the grandeur of the event. I might have even gotten a little misty-eyed when staffers proudly sang along with Axelle Saint-Cirel as she gave a stirring rendition of the French national anthem. Heartfelt love of home and country is so universal it never requires Google translate.

If the only thing that can make an over-the-top, $10 billion expenditure on the Olympics seem priceless is the ability to cause complete strangers to feel like brothers and sisters in a Paris watering hole, then I must concede this Opening Ceremony was a Grade-A success.

"How do you like your drink?" asked Proust. “The Monkey Gland, it is good for you?”

To be honest, it made me feel like a new man, with the crazy belief that sports can make the world a better place.

Or maybe that was just the gin talking.

But this is my truth: Although I might be a dude too old to dance, I felt the Olympic spirit in a gin joint on a rainy night in Paris. And it moved me.