True Stories

Drink & Drugs Ruined My Chances

Boys, booze and drugs. Three of my favourite pastimes, especially when mixed together.

I've managed to put a lot of practice in over the years, and by now have grasped quite a bit more than just the rudiments of romantic interaction when moderately intoxicated. The road to enlightenment was a rocky one, however. Below is a summary of the most important lessons:

Lesson One: beware the Incremental Fun Model.

The Incremental Fun Model, hatched in teenhood, worked thus: if getting drunk was fun, and so was snogging boys, then snogging boys whilst drunk was fun squared. Adding other pharmaceuticals should yield an outcome of fun cubed.

Attaining fun cubed proved to be less than straightforward, however. It was Saturday night and my best friend and I were heading for a dingy goth-hole to meet some boys. Following the advice of the singer from Pop Will Eat Itself, we drank half a bottle of Benilyn and a litre of White Lightning each en route. By the time we made it through the door, we could barely remember our own names, let alone those on our fake IDs.

This was in the good old days before house music fever, and no-one in the club seemed to mind the spectacle of two teens crawling to and from the bar – apart from our dates, whose names we couldn't remember either. We returned home empty handed; not that we even noticed.

Lesson Two: the drugs work, but sometimes not the way they're meant to.

I met a guy at university who had cute nostrils, a dry sense of humour, and could smoke me under the table. Over the months, we became one of those annoying platonic couples, although I secretly fancied the arse off him. When he told me one day that he had finished with his girlfriend from home, I was ecstatic.

We were inseparable by now, joined in a dizzy haze of mutual admiration and shyness induced by the dreadful spliffs we smoked together. One Saturday evening we had already worked our way through some rather fierce skunk and debated dropping acid before settling on an excursion to the pub with his housemates.

As we left, he seemed to want to say something, so we hung back. My head was lighter than usual, and as we walked he told me about a friend of his who seemed to recommend that we go out with each other. He wondered what I thought… Unfortunately, I was goose-stepping down the road, bellowing "the road is L-O-O-O- N-G, with many a winding path, that leads to WHOOOOOO, who knows WHERE, who knows WHE-E-E-E-E-R-E..." and would shortly declare that:
(1) the pub was not a pub, but actually a Spanish galleon,
(2) everyone was talking in Swedish,
(3) my beau-to-by-now-never-be had spiked my pint with acid.

I was peeled off the pavement about an hour later, and, unable to speak for the rest of the evening, I sat rocking in the corner, eyeing him suspiciously. His affection cooled, inexplicably, soon after.

Lesson Three: never forget the plan.

Such experiences encouraged me to plan more carefully; for instance, if there was a higher than normal possibility of blowing it with your first choice, then bring along a spare.

But even when your first choice is willing, there is still room for error. I recently attended a fancy dress party with the gent of my dreams. Thanks to years of practice, my operation was by now pretty smooth.

Softening up my quarry with tequila and fart gags, I mentally ran through my checklist. Do you have the boy? Check. Is he laughing at your jokes? Check. Is his hand on your knee? Check. Are you sitting in a secluded area? Check. I went for the kill, only to withdraw in shock. Fucking hell. I had just got off with his best mate.

Which brings us to: