Everyone Has a First Time

As the title says, everyone has a first time and I am curious about yours.

Not when you lost your virginity. Frankly first time sex stories are usually fairly dull, and useful only to be told in person while under the influence of alcohol. Even the more interesting ones are never that special.

No, my curiousity today extends to alcohol. Recently I have caught myself drinking more than I usually do, and this is not a good thing. I am not drinking enough to get drunk, which takes rather a lot, but I am starting to drink more often on my own when I get stressed or depressed. This got me thinking about the first time I got drunk, and by extension got me wanting to know everyone else's first time.

I am a nosy old git sometimes.

But I will be fair. If I expect you to tell me about yours then I will tell you about mine.

Mine started when I woke up in a nice, clean hospital bed on a Tuesday afternoon, with a saline drip in my arm. No trace of a hangover, or anything else. In fact really the only problem seemed to be that my clothes were missing and I was in a hospital gown. Slowly as I lay there bits of the story came back to me, others I managed to piece together later.

I was fourteen, had just sailed with sixty other people on a three-masted ship with no engine to Denmark and back over the last nine days, and we had hit port a day early. Apart from nearly colliding with an oil tanker, and a mild storm, the trip had been quiet and uneventful. It had been a pleasant voyage, and the captain suggested that we should all attend a bar he knew of in order to celebrate a safe return. This seemed an excellent idea to me at the time, as I thought it would help me accept that the girl I had been sharing a bunk with (no full pentrative sex had occured, but just about everything else had) would be going back to her home town, a good six hundred miles from my own.

To the bar we went, with the last of our spending money. In my own case my left over money was in the region of sixty pounds. I discovered this was more than enough to allow me to get very, very drunk. According to other party-goers I managed to get through twenty to thirty double whiskeys, as well as spreading the joy around. After this I must have thought that it was a good idea to gather up my bunk buddy in my arms, and start back towards the ship, intending on a passionate and prolonged farewell.

This did not go entirely to plan. Somehow we did make it back to the docks, though how is still a mystery to me. I only know that we made it because a few of the more responsible drinkers apparently assigned themselves as our body guards, working on the sensible presumption that otherwise we could well turn up dead, or not turn up the next day. I selected a pier, and began to tug the object of my affections towards the end of it where our ship awaited in the shadowy, unlit darkness.

I then, according to witnesses, vanished with a splash.

Into the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland.

In Midwinter.

I woke up in the hospital the next morning.

Reason I am talking about this is that is pretty much how I feel right now. I just found out, after weeks of waiting, that not only did I not get the job, but that a decision I took today has placed me in direct opposition to my manager, and everyone else in my office, at work. It is a similar sort of feeling to that moment which flashes back to me now and then, stepping forwards onto what should have been solid ground, feeling uncertain but relieved at the potential of safety, then suddenly nothing there except freezing water.