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.