My First Inebriation

The year was 1995. I was in 7th grade, and my days usually consisted of waking up at 6 am to catch beavis and butthead (im pretty sure the only episode at that point was frog baseball, which MTV played every single morning.), listening to a nirvana or green day tape on what some of you may remember, the archaic "Walk-Man" on the bus ride to school, followed by video games at whoever's house had a combination of new games and the best snacks.

I don't remember how I met Steve K. He was kind of a delinquent; not in the getting arrested way but more of the being late for class, getting detition kind of way, which was new to a straight shooter like myself. He ended up being a pretty good dude, and he made his way into my circle of friends pretty quick. Also, he was the only person I ever knew to own a Sega Saturn, which was pretty cool.

Steve talked about getting drunk and stoned a lot, but most 13 year olds tend to embellish a little, especially about something as cool as that. Regardless, I had never done either but thought about it a lot. We had even come up with code words so we could talk about it around the parents and on the phone. Alcohol was baseball cards, and weed was cologne. Finally 5 months into the school year, Steve was relatively certain he could get some baseball cards. I was not sure how he could get it but I didn't care. My parents were always cool with letting me stay out or go places, shit they even let me go to a green day concert in philly on a weeknight that same year. Staying over his house would be no problem. I remember his parents going to sleep pretty early and we made our way from his bedroom to his basement. His dad had a fridge in the basement, we cracked it open and found a 6 pack of some black and tan cans (not sure which brand; until i broke edge at age 22 i always assumed black and tan was a brand), and some plastic jug of vodka.

We cracked open the black and tans and started playing video games. Im pretty sure we played a ton of area 51 (he had the guns for it which was cool), and listened to a ton of 311. Once we made our way through a couple of cans, we went for the vodka. After giving it a whiff i asked "How do you drink this?"
"I think you're supposed to mix it with something. There's vodka in long island ice tea I think"
"Lets get some iced tea"

We went to the kitchen and got a couple of glasses and filled them up to the top with vodka. He pulled out a giant tub of lipton iced tea powder mix. We mixed it into the vodka thinking we had just stumbled upon the recipe for a long island iced tea. Holy shit, i will never forget that first sip. It was like out of a tv show, when a character hears something shocking while taking a sip and proceeds to spray it all over the place. I did the very same. Steve was not amused, and he called me a pussy and started downing his with less of a problem. It took about what seemed to be 1000 little baby sips, but i started getting it down. That taste is burned into my memory, it was so bad. Alot of the tea powder didnt even mix in, it just stayed in clumps on the side of the glass. Back downstairs to play more video games, we went from buzzed from the beer to barney gumble status in under half an hour. Steve finished his glass, i maybe got through half.

We chilled, watched tv, and just talked for a while. I remember Steve complaining about his parents making him play soccer and how much he hated it. He came up with a plan to get out of it: to keep kicking this solid support beam in his basement until he broke his foot. I shit you not, this maniac was just kicing this beam about 4 times and just fell to the ground. I'm pretty positive i was laughing really hard the whole time. Definitely not close to broken, but i helped him get back to the couch. Thats when it hit both of us: throwing up. I went first and it burned like no puking had before, very Not Cool. Steve limped and crawled his way up the stairs and proceeded to do the same. I waited for him for about 5 minutes and then stopped caring, I was now freaking out that somehow when i went home in the morning my parents would know. I searched an upstairs bathroom for some toothpaste and came upon some of that red stuff that tasted pretty good. Without a toothbrush i just ended up squirting about half the tube into my mouth, pushing it around with my tongue, and swallowing most of it. Oh shit, time to puke again. How Steve's parents never woke up i'll have no idea.

It took about 15 minutes but i made my way downstairs again, and assumed steve was down in the basement. I went down there, didn't see him, but just passed out on the couch. Steve's parents woke me up around 7 A.M and told me I had better go home. Steve had passed out in the bathroom, ON THE TOILET elvis style. The horrible "long island iced tea", the puking, the toothpaste, the embarrasment of being caught, and the hangover and walk home in the snow had accumulated into being the worst day ever. And that is probably why i never drank again until i was 22 years old.

Steve and I stayed friends for a couple of more years. He became more of a bad ass and found some scumbag friends, and I had basically stayed the same. By 10th grade I think he had either gone to vo-tech or another school, i forget, but we lost touch. My senior year of high school my friends and I would usually hang out in the parking lot after school, hackey sacking (no we're not gay or hippies, it really was just a place to bullshit without going home, i swear we're not gay) and talking shit. One day i see steve come up in the parking lot. We say hi, and i was hoping to catch up. He asks me "is this car yours?" pointing to a car still in the lot. I tell him no, and he then proceeds to break into it and steal change. I never saw him again.