Just like Napoleon, Waterloo was my undoing...
I'm going to tell you about the very first time I ever got drunk.

Not tipsy, down the park with a couple of mates and some cans or vodka or something, but drunk/hammered/sozzled/wasted/pissed/wankered/blasted/ruined/arseholed/shitfaced/slaughtered: the real deal.

This moment also coincided quite neatly with my first ever experience of nightclubs.

Being as I had never a) drunk anything in absolutely vast quantities or b) sneaked into a club (I was a shy teenager - quite a far cry to where I find myself now...) I took with me my ertswhile companion Ginge, who was at that time (and still is, to this day) my very best friend, but much more importantly to the tale had become quite accomplished at both a) and b).

And so I found myself, via a number of bars and pubs that we'd somehow convinced with our unbroken voices that we were over 18, in that wonderful emporium then known as Zeus, in Cardiff (its since changed name a bewildering number of times. However it has always remained shit, no matter whats written above the doors).

And what night was it this night, you ask...?

Why, it was SEVENTIES night, of course!

And which 70's band is guaranteed to be overplayed at such joyful events?

Why, that would be ABBA, of course!

Remember how this was the very first time I'd ever gotten wankered, in my whole entire life?

Remember how you felt, the very first time you got slaughtered? After you've finished drinking and laughing, round about the time its all over and you think you've perhaps been a little foolish?

Stumbling out of a taxi, falling through the front door of my parents house, collapsing on my bed. I feel dizzy. No - I feel sick. No - I feel absolutely fucking awful. The world is spinning. Literally - I'm lying in bed and I feel as if everything is moving around me. Its horrible. I'm shivering even though I'm not cold. I'm sweating even though I'm not hot. Being as this was years before the smoking ban I stink of smoke and sweat and spilled beer and cheap alcopops.

I am become death, to steal a well known phrase.

And all this time, as I lie there teetering on the brink of unconsciousness pleading with my equilibrium to reassert itself and my bile to sink back down, and wondering how and why the hell I'd wound up like this, what do I have stuck in my head, on endless rotation to match what my eyes were seeing the world appear to do...?

"Waterloo - I was defeated at Waterloo".

Over, and over, and over again.

To this day, endless drunken nights and much worse (and many years) later, I cannot hear that chorus without feeling just a little bit sick.
(Stuffed Chimp, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 3:51, 2 replies)

How could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose!
Waterloo, I was defeated you won the war
Waterloo, promise to love you forever more
Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 5:55, closed)

You became Death, the destroyer of worlds?
That's actually a pretty apt quote- my first hangover felt like the radience of a thousand suns bursting just behind my forehead.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 10:56, closed)