Tasting alcohol for the very first time, I was about 16 years old. My mom was gone to bingo and my dad was having a beer, watching TV, when he asked if I wanted a beer. My virgin taste buds weren't ready for the explosion of bitterness that bombarded them.
I emptied the beer down the bathroom drain trying not to disappoint my dad and trying to still uphold my youthful masculinity.
In overcoming the taste challenge, I quickly developed a desire for alcohol.
The age to legally consume alcohol in my province is 19. I was drinking for a few years prior to the nineteenth birthday as most young people do. But at 19, I could legally buy my own booze. I could legally get into the clubs. No more faking, no more sneaking. On January 27, 1992, I was now legit.
As with most, the coming of age requires a party. My eventful day fell on a Monday. Monday is not normally a busy night for the clubs, but this Monday was different. One club in town was selling draught beer for 25 cents a piece. A perfect price for a young university student on a tight budget looking to celebrate his adulthood.
My friends promised to get me smashed. We started with a couple of rounds of shooters at the university bar, which I happily pounded back, without any regard to pace, taste, or price. Not wanting to pay a cover charge for my winter jacket, I had run to the bar from my dorm room, which was only a few hundred yards away.
While at the university pub, the bartender told us about the beer special at the other club. All seven of us, piled into a cab and continued our adventure to the more lively, cheap watering hole on this cold, January Monday.
I was already drunk when I left the first bar. My friends promised to keep me going and told me that everything was on them. Not having any money, I just went along for the ride.
It sounded like a good idea at the time. Famous last words.
The pitchers of draught were flying around the table like flies to a dead carcass on a warm July afternoon. I don't know how much I drank. After the first round of pitchers, the night blurred together.
I remember a few friends telling me they were leaving. They tied a helium filled balloon filled to my baseball cap so my chaperone could see me across the crowded bar.
In my drunken state, a few minutes after they left, I decided it was time to go home. The laughs were over, the boys were gone, the beer had stopped flowing. I stumbled outside to catch a cab. I didn't have any money. With no credit cards, no debit card, no cash and no buddies to help me out, I made the drunken decision to walk back to the dorm room about 5 kilometres away.
Did I mention it was a cold January night?
I was wearing an Esprit De Corps T-shirt.
I took off running for the first hundred yards, until my breath couldn't keep with to my awkward feet. It was 1 am in the morning and I had another choice to make: Walk the normal roads or cut across fields and backyards, trying to go in a straight line back to the dormitory.
The drunken decision again failed me. I remember walking up to a fence with barbed wire at the top. Clearly, they didn't want people on the other side. But I didn't want to turn back. I wasn't even 100% sure where I was. I chose to climb the fence. Once at the top, I negotiated the barbed wire so as not to rip a pound of flesh from my breast.
I lost my balance, and flew to the other side. Not sure if I passed out, blacked out, or knocked unconscious. But the next thing I remember is waking up on my back in a snowbank wondering where the hell I was. Quickly gathering my stupid thoughts, I jumped up and started running through the enclosed fence to the other side, Luckily the other side had an opening that I was able to squeeze through.
I was cold. I am not sure how much time had passed. Trying to stay warm, I pulled my arms inside my T-shirt and I tried to run through unknown territory, looking for a familiar sign of my university campus.
I started to cry. It was a drunken cry, coupled with a taste of frostbite. I wanted to lay down and rest. But something told me to keep going. Even though I was outside of my good senses, somehow I knew that stopping would be the end of my life. I cried to God. I cried because I was imagining my parents despair when they found out their stupid, drunken kid was found dead in a snowbank. I could feel their pain and I started talking out loud. I asked God to get me back home safely. I thought about knocking on one of the dark houses, surely angrily awaking its inhabitants. But I was brought up to not bother people. I didn't want to wake anyone up.
So I continued my trek, all the while talking to God, getting colder, more numb and feeling extremely dumb until I saw through the trees of someone's backyard the brick entrance to what looked like the university.
I fell down, got back up and started running toward the gate. I had arrived. I had regained my bearings and a few metres and I was back in the comfort of warmth.
The last thing I remember that night was arriving at the dormitory front door and opening the doors. I was home.
The next morning, with all this still a blur between the headaches and the sore back, a guy who lived in our dorm, was laughing at me. He told me me what happened after I got back to the dorm.
I wandered into the common TV room. I untied the helium balloon from my hat and it floated to the ceiling. I jumped on a sofa to grab it. Without any balance or sense of strength, I fell off the sofa while angrily grabbing for the balloon. In my haste, I squeezed too tight and busted it just like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. Pissed off, I went off to bed.
The warmth of the dorm must have recirculated the alcohol into my bloodstream. I remember very clearly most of the events of the walk home, but nothing upon my return to safety.
I could've easily died that night, my nineteenth birthday. I think about that night often. Yet this is the first time I have openly shared this experience.
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