See

We’ll pick up tomorrow – tomorrow being Monday (hopefully).

I’ve had a couple of weeks of no rules. Just “let’s not drink” – on weekdays. Besides practically forcing myself to drink alone at weekends, it has worked. (I’m drunk now by the way – it’s Thursday).

The post about Jewel was me back on the booze. It was present – at the time. This is present, now (… on the booze).

I met my uncle he’s reformed or recovering or whatever it is. I think of him now. I purposely met him in a coffee shop. I’m generally not drinking mid week and it’s working well. He brought up the subject. Part of the conversation was that he’d felt himself ‘a drinker’ part of it was how creative stuff comes from drinking.

I can’t deny either. Except to say I’m a creative type. Very. I’ve done good on my nights off lately – creatively.

I’ve done fuck all here (drinkonce….com …) since quitting quitting (it was all of eleven days completely off the booze – which included a night of being drunk!) but I read over it now and it reads good. Fucking good for the most part.

I have many more drunken stories and I’d like to get to them. I’d like to get to them sober. This could be a testament to that or it could be a bunch of decent stories told well. (The fact that they’re told sober is the only testament, but let it stand!)

For the moment I’m like this. Kind of drunk. Just now. I don’t mind just now. In fact I like it. But, fuck, I actually dig being sober for the majority of my time a lot more. For the moment at least (and I say that, in the moment… drunk!… but…).

We’ll see.

I would like to see…

Only yesterday

I wake up and flounder about in bed with my girlfriend for a bit – she actually gets a little horny in spite of everything for a moment, but that’s beside the point. That is definitely beside the point.

What’s Wrong With Jewel, is the point.
And ‘What’s Wrong With Me’, is sidestepped as I step out of bed and grab a bottle of beer – the first of the bottles that has been sitting on the bedside locker for six hours. And I sip and contemplate, and smoke, out the window.
Hands is down there. Not too long before he asks me to go talk to Jewel. I know I love her, but I know what happened.
She claims she doesn’t know what happened.
I slug on a beer.
How come, I reckon, to myself, how come I can drink like fuck and not cause a frickin’ scene? I think it’s because I’m an alcoholic. I love the drug, not the buzz. I like to drink and Jewel likes to buzz. Trouble for her is, is that, she drinks for the buzz (I drink for the drink) and thus, the drink encompasses the buzz, and she becomes drunker than her buzz will allow. I don’t actually like being drunk, so I recede with it. She takes the buzz and holds on to it. She refuses sleep for it. And sooner, but usually later – thirty hours on, she’s drunker than her ‘buzz’ will allow. But in her buzz, with her… buzz, she will try to defy that. But use it. And defiance is her name.

And defiance is the name in the face of even people who just want to be pleasantly drunk… people I’ve invited her out to meet… pleasant, mellow people who don’t need this screaming banshee, defiant in the face of all logic and sensibility in her face, in our face, in the face of the staff.

And how aware am I of my ‘drinking problem’? I’ve got to have a beer in my hand as I get out of bed.
But how unaware is Jewel? Completely and totally, she’s got no recollection, and I know at the time she had no control. No awareness. None.

It’s an issue, since, even I could drink as heavy as her but hold it together. Heavier in fact. And the rest were drunk too. But when she let off screaming at staff and telling the rest of us it wasn’t our business or whatever it was – and glasses smashing on to the floor and refusing bed and frowning on those that needed it; even though it was a small gathering the night before; you’ve got to worry.

I sort of worry more for me. In a way, I worry more for me.
At least she can face a demon or two – her own demons.

I’ve got to face a substance. It’s something I love dearly, like a friend.
It’s something that has trouble associated with it, but has only been kind to me (other than my wallet), but ultimately will cast me beyond help and love…

we’ll see.

Lyres.

Lyres was (and still is) a mecca for the freaks and outsiders. Not just the punks, rockers and goths, but trannies, genuine outcasts and actual freaks of society have chosen it as a ’safe’ haven.
It was a place where The Girl with the Deformed Face could feel just as comfortable as The Cool Dancing Girl with the Flowery Docs.

It was where a ‘being’ called Z ruled the downstairs, never sitting, but was always stood tall and proud in trenchcoat and black contacts, his peroxide mane fixed and streaming over his otherwise shaven head.
Beyond where, outside, the most respect he could command would be a gob of spit on his back, here, one was honoured if he nodded in your direction.

It was where any manner of guy or girl could be like any manner of girl or guy – all made up to various extents of androgyny, masculinity, femininity, other, all in between and besides.

I wore make-up. I wasn’t a goth. I wasn’t a rocker. But I liked The Cure and I liked Metallica. And I would bound, mid conversation, from the beer garden upon hearing the bongo intro to Been Caught Stealing twelve inch by Jane’s Addiction. I would freak.

I would thump all over the dance floor – all limbs flying, far and wide. I’d twirl and leap on the beat. I’d throw the left leg and right arm out and if you were in my way, sorry man, but you should fuckin’ know better – that was my signature tune.

‘dolph’s was Tommy the Cat, and he’d do much the same but more subtle, more suave, even if it came on early from the jukebox when the dancefloor was clear.

Sí would snake sexy and seductively, sleeves held over her palms, to Lovecats. She’d share knwoing glances with me from the corners of her lovecat eyes.
The two of us fucked with Misirlou like a pair of shithot tango dancers.

Lyres was the place dreams were made, made true and broken. It was freakish like a nightmare and blissful as the end of the rainbow.
They used to sell t-shirts; “I lost my virginity at Lyres.“

I’d get too drunk. I’d sit alone in the beer garden and stare. I’d just stare and ignore anyone who said anything to me. Because I was torn up inside and misunderstood and fucked up – even more than these people. More than the freaks. More than the goths. I’d never fit in. Alien.
Then I’d hear those bongos and race off. I’d return four minutes later, gasping for breath and guzzling on water, smiling all over the place and sit and light a cigarette.
And I’d stare out at the freaks and the punks and the goths and the rockers and at my friends and thank fuck for Lyres.

(Two bottles of beer later, and the guy who’d been taking out his ‘rage’ as a ‘rat in a cage’ on the dancefloor, is now Jim Morrison, swaggering across the ‘floor to L.A. Woman blasting out cool as fuck over the heads. He’d morph into Satan himself as the Stones’ Sympathy… faded in.)

Chug.

We used to play that drinking game to get a bit on our way before a night in Lyres. The ‘name game’. We all knew the double-S’s to send it back. It would go “Susan Sarandon” “Sly Stallone” “Sharon Stone” and on until “Sssss….” and chants of chug! chug! chug! But of course, it was harder to concentrate on a famous name while glugging on alcohol. So “Sssss…” drink, air, drink “Sssss….” pause to eye the ceiling and walls as though a famous name might be scrawled there somewhere, drink, air, pause to eye top-left corner of the room, “Sam Boyd!”
“Who the fuck is Sam Boyd?” Jewel might shriek. I’d retort I hoped someone else knew – seemed like a famous name to me. Chug! chug! chug!
“Sherlock Fucking Holmes”
“Holmes is fictional” KJames could declare.
“He’s still fucking famous” I’d hiss back through red-wine stained teeth. “….ah! Fuck ya. Sly Stone bitches!”
Ha! A double S we hadn’t yet thought of.
“He’s been said!” Dea or Jeebs would attest.
“‘Sylvester Stallone’ and ‘Sharon Stone’ have been said,” Sí would gently offer “Sly Stone is someone else”.
“Don’t call me Whitey…!” ‘dolph would croon in.
“That’s Fishbone or someone” – from Tborg.
“It’s Jane’s Addiciton and Ice-T” – KJames, in his encyclopaedic knowledge, would chime.
“Anyway! It’s a cover. It’s originally Sly and the Family fucking Stone… Sly Fucking Stone!” I’d insist, already having had far too much of this game and the alcohol, but sipping in between goes and even now even still glugging away without prompt.

Belly full of red wine and on the chug-chug-chug train to town. Chug-chug-chug in the stuffy carriage. Slosh-slosh in the belly. Chug-chug-chug, and under three stops down the line I battle my way against the nausea and against my own wayard feet traversing the chug-chug movement of the floor, to the door.

I press the button when the train stops.

The doors open.
I happily drink lungfuls of air, constantly telling myself I’ll be alright. I’ll make it.

The doors close. I gulp and sit back against the partition, arse firmly planted on the floor.

The doors open.
The driver is standiing there demanding to know why the doors were opened. I tell him I just needed some air.
“Don’t you get sick on my train” he demands.
I vow a sacred promise to him and myself.
I will not get sick on this train.

The doors close.
Chug-chug-chug. And I think about my promise. Chug-chug-chug. And the carriage stuffs up again. Chug-chug-chug. And I think about my promise. Chug-and think about vomit. Chug-and-slosh-and throat constricting. Chug-chug-chug.
The train, barely perceptibly, begins to slow – an indication we’re coming to the next stop.
I raise myself and shuffle on my haunches to the door.
The train slows more and the nausea rises as the train slows more as the nausea rises and the train comes to a stop as the force of it is on the brink of overwhelming.

The doors open.
Ruby red liquid gushes from my throat with a trajectory of a good couple of feet. A trajectory which passengers on the platform narrowly, but skillfully avoid with excellent reaction time. A few utter a variety of concurrent tones of disgust.

I disembark and Sí accompanies me. I sit, with full intention of making it to town on the next train (which I do, and to Lyres too) I just need a few minutes in case I’m going to blow again.

We sit on the bench together as I breathe the night air deep and full, cool and refreshing, and we watch the doors close, and the train pull away.

Chug-chug-chug.

Younger People Don’t Get Hangovers

Just turning seventeen, I met my mother and her friends in The Suisse.

Mum didn’t live with us so she was far more lenient regarding r-rated videos when we were children or drink as teenagers. She was also experiencing a revitalisation, hanging and living with people ten years her junior.

They were hosting a party in the house, but first it was line-dancing down The Suisse.
As she and the ladies hitched thumbs in their belt loops, her male buddies revelled in the idea of getting me drunk.
They insisted I keep my hands out of my pockets for the rounds, the unsaid condition being I had to match them, drink for drink.

Mum came over for a moment to check this lot weren’t plying me with drink were they? “Ah, he’s alright, will ya leave him be!” and she sidled off back to the country beats.
It wasn’t long before my eyes peered out from behind my hot, constantly grinning face at a bunch of idiotic, equally grinning, equally drunk faces as my own.

I held my own and kept from staggering each time I carefully left the bar stool for the toilet. “Yeah, fine”, I answered Big Jon in there, “just fine”.

We stepped out and the air hit. It usually does, and with that breath of air comes the heady feeling. The level of drunkenness becomes conscious. I got a bit excited by it. Fairly full on, but still capable, I was still sound on my feet.
The smell of bread hit me too. Fucking bread, I wondered. I was told that that would be the guinness. It was the first night I’d drunk more than a single pint. Must have had six with the boys. The yeast in the guinness is what that smell was.
Haven’t really had it since.

The wildness of the party was in opposite proportion to the size of the house. It was a small enough house.
The party was pretty wild.
Barbeque chicken out the back didn’t last long and what was left was used in a game. The idea was to fuck a leg or breast in through the upstairs toilet window and hopefully land it on whoever was on the seat.
The curry didn’t last long either. Before even a few people were served a portion a joint had been flicked and stubbed out in it.

Mum’s housemate’s sister showed up. I’d met Deborah before. Reckoned she was fairly attractive. A year older than me. And she was probably out of my league. The rest didn’t think so, including her sister, maybe even she didn’t reckon so, but I was already beyond it by the time she got there.
On the bacardi, she was fairly far gone within an hour herself, and the two of us, having begun sat against the kitchen wall, ended sliding down, side by side, only our heads perpendicular to the floor, mumbling together, cooing almost about nothing anyone knew could make any sense. Mmmusic and fffuckin’ yeah y’know?

As Deborah disappeared off to bed I was roused a little – enough to stand and wearily tread over the threshold to the back. There were faces swimming and swaying dramatically before me. There was the barbeque and chicken bits laying about every place; sauce soaked flesh hanging from the bone coated with particles off of the pebble dash back wall.
Half bottles and half cans and half glasses of beer strewn about everywhere. And I didn’t feel so good.
Damro, my mother’s unsuited partner at the time, noted my greening visage immediately.
He escorted my stumble up the back garden path, down to an unfinished wall. I bent over to sway unevenly over the open brick. He patted my back. And rubbed and patted and soothed. And in this soothing voice he spoke of imagine chips and burgers and lashings of Indian curry and sardines and that did it.
I heaved chicken bits and coleslaw in vomit sauce into the brick. It splattered noisily into the conrete hole as my ass let out a loud bastard of a fart. Damro cackled gleefully. “That’s it man, let it all out!”

I straightened up, wiped my gob and finally, cleansing clear air swept into my lungs. That felt better. After a back slap or two and an “Alright now? Feel better?” “Yeah…”, Damro took me by the shoulder and I strolled a lot straighter but timidly enough back to the house and in to bed alone.

Mum checked on me. I’d be fine. And I’d be fine tomorrow; younger people don’t get hangovers I claimed.
Next morning, I passed by her, pale as death into the bathroom to douse my head in cold water. She called after that she didn’t think younger people got hangovers. I told her to shut up and get me some headache pills.

She hasn’t let me live it down since.

Swill.

First time I went into town at night, me and Snitz went to The Swill.

Swill was the most recent underage hangout. Back then it was difficult enough to get a pint at sixteen, but the odd bar would chance serving youngsters for a while before getting caught, or more likely, they were planning on not renewing their license so it didn’t matter a fuck for the month or two they’d remain open.

The Swill was such a bar. Whispers spread around about some place. I only got to go the once.

This time it was me and my buddy heading out to town for drinks – no older cousin or friend’s brother ‘chaperone’.
The Swill was a small enough, run down enough square room, upstairs on the corner of a building overlooking the street from small windows both sides. The walls were painted dark yellow as well as nicotine stained. The bar was dirty and old, but the room seemed to take on a hue of delightful peach to me as I ordered, from the exquisite bartop, two of the cheapest – bottles of san miguel. Never have seen them in this country before or since.

But what really shook me about the place was the girls. Girls I’d been to school with until age twelve, girls I knew from the school down the road. Girls I’d see out and about during the week or hanging out in the evening and weekends. Girls. Girls? Girls no longer! These were women creatures all around us.
Women, sipping alcoholic beverages with style, class and sass – like they’d been frequenting trendy cocktail bars for years.
Women with made up faces; huge sparkling eyes, brilliant strings of pearls shining the from the dark ruby drapes of parted lips, then pouting out to grace a cheek in a flirtatious playful formality I’d only before witnessed on television.
Figure-hugging dresses and skirt/top combos cut low to show off something I’d never imagined were beyond these women… eh, girls’ clothing until then.

A beer dangling in one hand, the other snaking around an old classmate, eyes peering into batting lids, this was a level of sophistication never dreamed of.

Of course, we were playing ‘grown-ups’, but it was new, it was exhilarating it was an eye-opener to say the least; and it was fun. The best.

I got tipsy but not drunk.
Snitz led me a new way to the last bus, through a dark arch/alleyway.
A bum lay seeking slumber under cardboard covers. His cup lay by his head to catch coin while he slept, his bottle, no doubt tucked safely by his chest.

Bunk.

I was barely accostumed to alcohol consumption the first time I got drunk alone.

I pulled a sickie from school – convincing my old man I was ill.
It wasn’t a premeditated move.
I knew I’d be lazing about, doing whatever, tipping ash from camel lights into the metal coca-cola tube which acted as an ashtray, but as soon as he left the house I realised I’d be raiding the drinks cabinet.

Friends would make ‘dollies’ back then – dolly mixtures – a bottle of whatever could be ’safely’ siphoned from the parents’ stash, and they’d combine a drop of this and a dribble of that into a heady rocket fuel to share out and about of a Summer’s day, on a bus to town or in a teenage disco queue. Notoriously difficult to drink – even for adults well used to sipping spirits, they also make for dangerous drinking, for anyone.
With much the same fashion I’d hunch down reverently to the cabinet door, soundlessly ease it open, noting the exact positions of the bottles as I’d move them into a replica of their arrangement on the floor.

Gin was somehow the worst and best. It was my first taste. Perfume was all I could think. It was the fullest bottle. It was at the back. And I figured Dad didn’t much touch it, so that begged a number of mouthfuls. I controlled the gag reflex well.
Then vodka. I knew how to drink vodka. The trick was to swallow, relax, and not breathe through the nose for a good minute after having swallowed.
Brandy was hot. Searing even, down the oesophagus and into my belly. It was tasty – full of body and a smooth, slow motion punch to the nose.
I was already getting there. One more hit of gin, half of vodka, and I replaced the bottles.

I lay on the bed and smoked while my head and face throbbed warmly as though laid out in the sun. I blinked slowly and happily. Like a well fed puppy. The music was alright, the room was alright, the taste in my mouth and nose was just fine and the smoke, wafting gently, freely, sitting mid my bedroom air, tasted the best ever.
Out of curiosity I wanted to jerk off while shitfaced as I was. I chose the bath and ran steaming water through the nozzle and on me.
I was too drunk, ended up slumped, stuck in the bath, face muscles fallen as much as my limp prick.
Unhitching, picking, pulling myself eventually out from the tub, I dried myself down, put just my trousers on and wearily staggered back to the bedroom. I crept under the covers from the foot of the bed and stretched out under them, submerged from the waste up by a suffocating, sleep inducing duvet.

I was roused by a male voice. It demanded to know what I was doing. I lifted the muffling cover and let in the light, there was the blurred image of my father in a suit – he’d come back on lunch to check if I was alright. I squinted. “Yeah, alright”. But he thought I was sick, and what was I doing, messing like that? What was I playing at? I was asleep of course – that much, at least, was fairly fucking obvious I thought. Why would he deny it? I was groggy, not sick, but of course, I said I was still feeling sick. I continued to peer through bleary eyelids, furrowing brows incredulously at him – not quite awake enough and the kind of still drunk enough, to frown at the insolence of this man, coming back here to disrupt my buzz.
He left without another word. Front door slam.

I viewed the scene, the coke tube almost full of butts, the fag box and lighter side by side on the floor by the bed, blue air, the alcoholic breath on me. My own fuzzy bed-head.
I shrugged, lit a cigarette.

It was never spoken of.

Pók’s

Snitz invited me down to his cousin’s in the midlands. Dank, grey town. Youths. Smoking cigarettes in the video shop. Lenient pubs. Hash.
Pók had hash. I smoked a bit but, as usual, it had no effect. Pók had cans too. We drank cans. Pók liked fairly hardcore metal – death, thrash and the like. I liked one of the bands’ ‘Maggots’ for novelty value and as we sat in his darkened room at the far end of the bungalow Pók kindly recorded it and Suicidal Tendencies’ Art of Rebellion on a cassette for me.

Then we went to the pub.

I’d been in two pubs with friends before. I’d had a sketchy, selfconscious pint or two too. I’d never tried to be served alcohol anywhere before.

Bellmines’ doorman at the gig upstairs greeted us in irony “I suppose you’re eighteen lads”. Never felt so cool than passing him smiling a wry “heh, yeah…” back.
Pók was on the cider. So were we. We’d each have a pint of cider. Three pints of bulmers.
Snitz went up. Three pints of bulmers.
I went up, heart pounding, beaming a little overenthusistically. Three pints of bulmers.
Another feat of initiation, and a tip to go with it, a middle aged drinker at the bar rearranged my awkward three-pint-pick-up into the two-base-shamrock it needed to be for safe transportation.

This time, drinking my second proud round, Snitz turned green and headed for the toilet. I felt alright. I was nicely drunk, had soaked up the atmosphere just right. Felt good; head swimming alright, possibly more than ever yet, but oddly at ease in my surrounding and at ease with the level of drunkenness.
Nevertheless I followed Snitz after a couple of minutes. He’d locked a stall, in there, fingering his tonsils. I shrugged, and supposed a duty to also relieve myself of the curried chips we’d had. I wretched and a little came up. That was about all I’d be able to do. I shrugged again, and supposed myself to be feeling ‘better’. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be alright in a sec” was the response from behind the cubicle door.
He emerged after a minute as Pók and I drained our glasses. Pók wisely called it a night and we began the first of my many, many rambles home from the pub.

Along the road, cars whizzing by with trailing lights, faster than I normally notice; avoiding eye-contact with certain passers by, stopping while Pók greeted others, swaying a greeting expression at them myself. One foot after the other passing under a railway bridge and on into the night where eventually, one or other of those feet will many times reach a front door and a key will be fumbled for and jostled into a lock and on to lay on a bed in a room which spins in the darkness.
This night it span in slow comforting revolutions, lulling me into deep delightful drunken sleep.

Gert.

It was a while before I drank again.
Snitz was a buddy at school.
As we were getting familiar he mentioned how he liked getting drunk. He asked us and Rork said he did. So I said I did. And Snitz said we should get drunk some time. A few weeks later we did.

The usual at the time was get some older guy go down the shop and grab three cans each for us. While I should have got cider I figured beer was cool and went for bud. Three bud. Gert.

Gert was the forested walking ground nearby I was to drink in countless nights hence (and smoke cannibis for the first time too). It was green and good. Tree branches cascaded over the dipped paths and the small arched wooden bridges over streams to the duck-filled pond. A statue of Mary stood in still silent sanctuary in a small grotto by the larger bridge over the slight rocky fall from higher pond to larger stream at the base of the grounds. It was secluded, away from prying adult eyes, so not only ideal in that respect but scenic too.
Can number one. It tastes alright, like. Beer is an acquired taste. But it felt like initiation so it tasted like initiation so it tasted good.
Can number two. Three slugs in and the fuzz is descending. Slower this time. Slow but noticeable. And familiar. I know what’s going to happen. I quaff all the quicker for it.
Can number three. It’s on by now. I’m drunk, but unlike last time, it’s muffled. It’s softer, like a pillow on my face. Hot and dim, dimming. Snitz is witty I am trying to concentrate and keep the spinning away and doing okay at that as I drink down in large, inexperienced mouthfulls.
Half way through can three and my head is spinny. Spinning in a spin which the arms of trees facilitate by twirling and twisting around the sky and around my mind and the ground is a ship bobbing over an ocean which turns and churns which is my stomach and my face empties of everything which falls away to join the writhing oceanic contents of the stomach.
It all sloshes about down there one last time before surging forth and I bend. Snitz rubs my back as I hurl the chunks, eyes bulging and watering. I’ll never be well again, never be done puking. Ever. And I’ll probably never drink… another wretch, another load of vomit… never drink again.

The next time it was three cans of cider. Before long I’d worked up to four cans of cider. That was the staple for a while until I’d started visiting pubs, where it was far more appropriate to drink lager. I worked my way up to five cans of dutch beer within a year on these Gert expiditions, each night, leaning against the handle of the living room door, nodding “‘night Dad… yeah, it was cool, just hung around… y’know… g’night”.

Virgin.

My very first taste of alcohol was on the floor of the sitting room. I can’t remember what age I was, but my grandmother was still alive. She slipped me the can of guinness from her chair with a sly grin and a wink, and I handed it back with a coy smirk. I despised the taste but was thrilled at having had drunk.

And so it went.

Age fourteen, H-Bo’s parents were away for the evening. Free house. Teenagers. Sobs had a bottle of vodka. It got passed around. I slugged and slugged by the neck until she grabbed the bottle from my clamped lips, spilling a good couple of shots over my face. Shrugging it off, I headed back into the kitchen.
About four minutes later, it hit. One second normal, the next the haze. The swirl. The whirl of it. The fuzz of it. My head in it. Swimming in it. The buzz of it.
Fuck, was I excited. I had figured intoxication crept on slow like a darkening room at dusk, but this flew through the kitchen air, into my ear and right into my skull without warning. It was more like a room suddenly illuminated with a thousand watt bulb than twilight descending.
Was this really it? Yes, this was drunkenness. And, oh how wonderful. I hadn’t felt like this for at least five years. I was a child again. Innocent and wide-eyed, excited, thrilled and full of the gobble-gobble-blabber-de-guck wavy wavy kitchen flying lovely lights “hallo mister I am drunk” haha a child again weeee…. weeee… zum zum zoom!
I flopped on to the sofa and wonkily surveyed my blurry surroundings. It was underwater. The streaked lights pulsated slightly along to the dampened music in the water in my ears, that 40% liquid running through my veins into my head and all around, but the words were crystal. The Bealtes and the Stones.

How does it feel, Mr. Rolling Stone? To be drunk and rolling, rolling home… home…
Home!
I peered up into Stan’s big mother fucker of a face. He probably didn’t ask me how it felt but I told him anyway that I was drunk and it was fucking great-crazy-fucking mad! That I was ever-so-drunk-never so DRUNK! but fuck, man, I had to get home to my father. I had to sober up.
Movies and tv had taught me just the thing. “Slap me Stan! Slap me in the face!” WHAM! “Again, man, again!” WHAM! – Harder that time.
Now, into the kitchen and black coffee to burn the  tongue out of my mouth.
And another cup.

I got back alright – the first of many a teenage night, leaning through the crack of the sitting room door, telling my father I was tired and going straight up to bed. Bleary eyed and red faced, alcohol just beginning to waft through the air.

If he knew, he never did let on – any of those times.

I lay on my bed and sighed deep and happy. Closed my eyes. And probably slept like a baby in nurturing motherly arms.

And so it was. I’d got drunk at last. It had felt good.
Good enough to do it again.