I was never George Best

It would be writerly hyperbole, novel-like messing with the truth to say that I ever had a drinking problem like say, George Best or one of those fellas. No one was ever suggesting I get a liver transplant and I couldn't even drink before 4pm. But I did use drink to feel, not to feel and crucially to have sex. 

The thing was, I brought the whole thing on myself. I thought that the idea of being a drunk, or at the very least of being a bit of a pisshead, sounded vaguely romantic. Combined with the fact that I had been anxious for as long as I could recall, like clinically and weirdly anxious with stomach pains and mysterious headaches, the release of drink was very appealing to me. When I acquired my first boyfriend, a sweetheart called Pseudonym, who I won't go into details about here because he was nice, I used booze as a way of giving me courage to kiss, touch and to be kissed and touched. My first hand job- an innocent affair really, looking back- was done in a haze of those Vodka mix things you could buy in corner shops for a quid each. Drink gave me an air of cool, both in terms of my deposition and in terms of my self image. 

The first time that I got drunk, like scarily hammered, was not long before you and I started drinking together. I liked it. I had mixed half an inch of everything in someones parents drinks cabinet and downed it. Twice. I woke up the next day with a headache and an immense sense of pride that I wasn't dead. So that first night that you offered me a glass of red wine, I wasn't out of my depth although I was not yet legally allowed to drink. The very fact that you offered it to me tells me three things looking back; firstly that you were too nervous to fuck me without being borderline insensible, secondly that you were trying to kid yourself that I wasn't in fact a child and thirdly, that you were hoping that it would disinhibit me. Three glasses later I couldn't have even said "disinhibit", so tangled half in and half out of my jeans on your living room floor, it worked. 

It was the first time that I almost passed out on someones floor from drink, but it wasn't to be the last. In fact, ten years later that's how my marriage started. 

As it happens, we didn't have sex that night, I think because you freaked out. There was a drunk school girl on your floor that you didn't know very well and to fuck her would make you a criminal and an adulterer and it was all too much for a Thursday night. We had a bit of a snog and you sent me home before your wife got back. I went to bed before anyone could smell the drink on me.