Nervez meanz booze
Cor, the shame still burns about this one, a good five years on.

I was due to meet with a girlfriend’s best friend for the first time. She’d come in especially from t’other side of the Pennines: they were old university friends and didn’t see each other as often as they’d have liked. So it was kinda flattering to be asked along, to meet the friend and thus further worm my way into my girlfriend’s life.

I was a bit nervous, to be honest. New people who you have to make a good impression on means a high-pressure situation. I thought about not going, but that would’ve been damned rude. A friend who worked behind a bar gave me some advice. He said I should have a couple of drinks before meeting them: not enough to make me stinko, but enough to take the awkwardness away.

So after work I popped along to the pub where he worked for a couple of whiskies. He’s a nice chap and we had a nice chat and before you know it, it’s three hours later and time to meet the ladyfriend and her lady-friend. But in that time, I’ve had more than a couple of drinks and, frankly, lost that undervalued ability to remain perpendicular to the floor. I was a bit hazy.

I don’t remember much of the meeting, but I do remember thinking ‘I’m coming across as a right arse’ and getting increasingly disheartened by my inability to make a good impression. That just made me sulky: I didn’t even consider the possibility that it was due to me being boorish and pished. So the drinks continued to flow, as they do when you have an obligation and you don’t want to be there, until I was rat-arsed.

And then I was woken by a landlord of a pub.

From what my girlfriend told me, what happened was I became an ever-increasing arsehole, getting more and more drunk, and then I went to the gents. And that was the last they saw of me for a good half hour. Until 20 mins after closing time when they had to ask the landlord to go in and check on me: he was wary and assumed I was up to something nefarious in there. But no: he found me standing in a cubicle, stone-cold asleep, head propped against the wall. I can’t remember if my cock was out. I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t have been, but you never know for sure do you?

I returned to my seat to find the pub empty save for an unhappy girlfriend and her friend, who then asked me the killer: “Are you an alcoholic?” That’s an impossible question to answer because if you say ‘no’ it just sounds like denial. But I’m not. And neither, Mr Landlord sir, do I do drugs in your toilets.

I didn’t make the best impression. They left me to go and get a burger and stumble home.

Stayed with that girl for another few months, though. Don’t know how I managed that.
(Land of Green Ginger It's dreamy weather, Mon 28 Mar 2011, 10:17, Reply)