You Never Forget Your First Time

I say this about once every few months, but I never want to drink alcohol again after the events of last Saturday. I went to the super fancy Victor Hotel's Mardi Gras party in the warehouse district, hopped over to my brother's kegger, and finished the night at a 5 a.m. bar. Not a good idea. I'm sure you're all wondering what disgraceful and humiliating things happened to me, but I'm keeping that to myself this time. Ugh.

Do you remember the first time you got really, really drunk? So drunk that you perhaps danced around like an idiot, got sick, said stupid stuff, participated in some random hijinks, etc.? I do.

I was 16 years old, on a cruise around the Baltic Sea with my immediate and extended family. We left from Stockholm, Sweden and journeyed to Finland, Estonia, and Russia before returning back to the Land 'O Swedes.

I was going to be a junior in high school, hadn't even taken driver's ed despite the fact that I was already 16, and never ever drank or did drugs. I was on the straight and narrow, my boyfriend being adamantly against all forms of smoking and drinking set me on the right path. To his credit, this is probably one of the best things he ever did for me. I was definitely an impressionable young lady who was pretty insecure and ready to fit in. He and I found other ways to entertain ourselves, such as going on picnics, seeing a lot of movies, dragging extension cables out to the back yard to watch TV on the trampoline, and hanging out in the hot tub. A lot.

So back to the cruise. I decided on this trip that "heck, I'm with my family, why not get a lil crazy?". Every night my 12 year old brother, myself, and 4 older cousins tore the Crows Nest dance club apart. It didn't matter if we lost yet another hour switching time zones (this literally killed us), we had to be up by 7 a.m. (went to bed at 5 or 6 a.m. every night), and tour all day. After the grandiose dinners, obligatory (non)alcoholic cocktails with the adults, we were usually free to cut loose around 11 p.m. when they retired to their respected quarters.

Despite the cruise taking place in Europe, the rules of the boat followed American law. Therefore, no underage drinking. Obviously we didn't let that stop us.

The last night aboard the Maasdam we went all out. My 24 year old cousin Keith bought a bottle of Bacardi Limon and liters of Coke every night from the ship's duty-free shop. We would congregate in Keith and Mike's room, blast house music from some crackly speakers, and start to party. It was here that I first tasted alcohol, besides the time I was 7 and accidentally drank the spiked punch at the neighborhood block party.

I instantly developed an intense love for all things Bacardi Limon. Truth be told, I didn't really know what tasted good together. Tequila and Sprite? Gin and Coke? I had no idea. I committed this drink recipe to memory, and requested it later during senior year Prom weekend at a varsity football player's lake house.

The Northern Lights made every night on the Baltic cruise seem like mid-day. We would gather on the top deck, the guy's ties whipping wildly in the wind, shirts half unbuttoned, us females clutching the hems of our dresses as we stared with glassy bloodshot drunken eyes at the brilliant orange and pink twinkling hues of the soft hazy lights.

That last night we met up with a bunch of young people we met on the beginning of the trip, for our usual night of drunken debauchery. But this was our last night. It had to be special.

This last night I went all out with drinking. We had gone to a Russian Opera at one of Saint Petersburg's finest palaces, ate caviar (that my brother promptly threw up), and went in the basement and saw were Rasputin was initially poisoned. I was still in my sparkly floor length opera dress, and ready for anything.

We made our way out to the outside pool on the upper deck. A thick net covered it as it was way beyond regular pool hours. With a quick nodding gesture, Keith indicated for the guys to yank it off. Someone set down the speakers, cranked the music, and I jumped in the pool in my fabulous dress among cannonballs and the sound of clinking glasses as we all downed our liquor.

Swimming while intoxicated isn't a good idea. In fact, it's an awful one. I remember laughing and treading water with my cousin Stef, clothes weighing me down like lead, every paddle feeling like I was getting more and more sleepy. But nothing compared to that feeling. Cruising on the Baltic beneath the Northern Lights, without a care in the world, with family, good tunes, and in my clothes nonetheless.

Before we knew it a night guard was shining his light onto the pool and frantically yelling into his Walkie for backup. In a flash we high tailed it lickity split, changed clothes, and regrouped in the Crow's Nest for more late night revelry.

My 12 year old brother rejoined the group followed by two girls who were his groupies. One of said girls was 16 and the magician's daughter. Yeah, that's right- at age 12 my brother was picking up 16 year olds. What a rockstar.

In the Crows Nest Lounge we stuffed entire 750 ml bottles of B.L. in our coat pockets, and sporadically took pulls out of the bottles as we danced. A man who was 27 at the time started talking to me (I was blackout drunk. And 16). And I lied to him and told him I was 18. I had no idea what I was doing or how to handle my booze. He asked me if I wanted to go to his room with him because he had to "get something". Literally at the time I naively thought he just wanted my company; that he really just had to get something. Didn't realize he probably would have attacked me.

My 19 year old cousin Stef saw me leaving with this man, grabbed my arm, told me I wasn't going anywhere, and went to town yelling at this guy. You should have seen the look on his face when she told him I was really 16.

Don't remember much else other than one of the random guys we met on the trip getting naked and jumping into my bed wearing nothing but a red bow tie. Next thing I know I'm laying on the floor of our cabin's bathroom (SUPER TINY, don't recommend ever doing this) throwing up into the toilet. Oh yeah, apparently I forgot to flush, and we had to be packed and ready to disembark the ship by 7:30 a.m. the next morning. By the time I was done puking and falling into bed it was 6:15 a.m. and I had a major case of the spins.

The curtains were drawn. It was as dark as a cave in my room. My brother, my cousin Stef (who saved me from certain predatory doom) and I shared a room. Our clothes blanketed every surface. Jewelry and hair products were flung all over the floor. My tower of CDs strewn carelessly on the end table.

Then someone started pounding on our door. Hard. My eyes flung open in disbelief, looked at the clock. 7:45 a.m. My vision blurred, my head throbbed, I was still drunk as a skunk. I rolled over, pushed Stef a tad too aggressively; groaned. She got up and opened the door to my mother's horrified and absolutely furious face.

My mom never, ever raises her voice and never, ever yells. In fact, I think at this point I'd heard her scream at me and my brother two times in my entire life. Both times I was so scared that I started sobbing, even when I was a teenager. This time marked the third and last time I ever heard my mom yell. She took one look at how destroyed we were, how we hadn't packed our bags, and were late and screamed that we better be ready in 10 minutes or there would be hell to pay. Meet her and the rest of the group in the breakfast area and leave our packed bags outside our doors for pickup. Except all I really heard was "breakfast, I will kill you, door, now."

Stef then chastised me for my throw up incident. I guess she went to use the bathroom after me and ended up throwing up just because she saw the present I left in the toilet and it in turn made her instantly get sick.

We threw everything we owned into each other's bags and dragged ourselves to breakfast. I remember staring at the menu as all of the words ran together and dripped off the plastic page. I ordered some omelets, bacon, and toast combo but they ended up forgetting my toast. The three of us were so strung out, and the lack of my promised toast made Stef freak out. As the waiter came back she looked at this poor guy with fire in her eyes and screamed:

"WHERE IS HER FREAKING TOAST?!?! THIS DAMN BREAKFAST COMES. WITH. TOAST!!!!!" She was practically breathing fire. People stopped chewing; stared. The scared man brought me my food. I wolfed my toast down and was ready for a nap.

8:30 a.m.

I was informed by the adults that we were involuntarily signed up for a walking tour of Stockholm, Sweden. As in, all day long. As in, with my first hangover of my life. I was in absolute hell.

First stop was Swedish Parliament. This is where things got sticky. We went into a series of rooms that were completely pitch black with no windows. There were random clear glass display cases located throughout that housed royal thrones, crown jewels, scepters, and other princely items. This setup did not bode well for the hungover 16 year old who was still pretty drunk. The one who didn't understand how to deal with these newfound feelings of awfulness.

As I desperately tried to navigate through these clear hazards in the dark, it happened. I walked right smack into a glass display case, and instantly passed out (as in asleep), standing up, with my face smashed into the Plexiglas. I may or may not have been snoring.

I imagine people stared, speculated, whispered. I bet my entire family was mortified. My dad came and grabbed me by the scruff of my teenage neck and literally peeled me off of the glass, incredulous. His eyes narrowed at me suspiciously; he asked me if I felt ok. I just stared and perhaps nodded. My cousins and brother were speechless and just couldn't stop laughing.

The day got worse as it went on. By 4 p.m. I was reaching critical meltdown status. I was running on empty, running the risk of collapsing in the streets. We ate a late lunch at a fabulous cafe, where I picked at my food in a daze. Outside in the bleakness rain started to gently fall, only to crescendo into an outright downpour the minute we left the restaurant.

The adults opted for a 30 minute walk back to our hotel. A THIRTY MINUTE WALK. Hungover. With 1.5 hours of sleep. In the pouring rain. I was almost in tears, but wait! A beacon of hope. My aunt and uncle said they were going to take a taxi with my mom. This meant there was one more coveted spot in the cab. One spot left for three hungover kids to fight over.

Suddenly, we all became enemies. As the adults worked on hailing a cab and dividing out their remaining Kronas, us teenagers glared at each other menacingly, almost feral-like. At this point we were past anything of a chivalric nature, or of rational human thought. This was a fight to the death.

We didn't want the adults to know our extreme plight, so we coolly eyed one another until the cab pulled up. All three of us (Stef, my brother, and I) made a break for it. Stef being the oldest put her arm out as if she was a linebacker and shoved my brother and I out of the way. Before I could process what happened, I looked up to see the cab door slam shut and drive away, Stef waving at me with a huge smug smile on her face from the backseat window. This moment ingrained itself in my psyche as one of the most deflating moments of utter defeat and sheer rage that I've ever felt. I was beyond furious. My brother and I trudged back in the rain.

I arrived back at the hotel in the junior suite that Stef and I shared. She was cuddled up on her side of the bed, having already been asleep for 35 minutes or so. Before jumping into bed and passing out, I made sure to jump on her and scream in her ears to wake her up. You know, make her suffer a little bit.

Nothing is quite like your first time. I know I'll never forget it. I should have learned my lesson that first time around: I am never drinking again. Or until this weekend at least.