original here. dated 2011-10-27
[A/N: First cross-post so you know what to expect in the upcoming week(s). Anything after the tilde is pretty much lifted straight off my livejournal so… be kind?]
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My first sip of alcohol was champagne. My father had some kind of celebratory social event–he wasn’t the one being celebrated, but he, and thus I, was invited. The sun was bright and our clothing pretty but impractical–I was uncomfortably warm.
A toast! To the initiates or cadets or graduates, I don’t remember. I remember the amusing artwork on a neighboring building–stick people trying to climb into windows. I remember the white plastic fold out chairs with blue balloons tied at the end of each row.
The champagne was served in those cheap, wannabe glasses that aren’t made out of glass at all. I took a sip and immediately regretted it. The alcohol seared my young tongue and the carbonation fizzed unpleasantly in my nose. I gave my not-glass glass to my father. He had already finished his.
My second taste of alcohol was, in contrast, at night. My older sister, of a legal age to drink, had begun an exploratory campaign to find what she liked. Multiple tiny colored bottles appeared in the refrigerator. They disappeared soon enough.
One night, almost alone in the apartment, I had been preparing to sleep. My younger sister entered our dark shared room, her silhouette revealing little else but her height which I envied. Try this, you’ll probably like it, she said. In her hands was a tiny porcelain mug, the kind for children with cartoon characters painted on it.
How do you know that? I asked. It was hard lemonade–I do have a soft spot for lemonade. Okay, I said, only a little. She transferred that cool tiny mug into my own hands, and I took a sip. I know what real lemonade should taste like and that just accentuated the alcohol. She may have finished the mug or poured it down the drain, but not long after she returned and we said good night.
My third experience of alcohol was not actually as a drink. At a family reunion–the large kind where you don’t really know that many people and it take a while to figure out how exactly people are related–my sisters and closer cousins sat in the shade of a short tree. Too numerous to fit around our allocated table, some of us sat on the grass or along a brick ledge.
My older cousin, who I would say to almost be a brother to me if I had any experience with male siblings, or perhaps my first crush if you believe in Freud’s Oedipal complex, sat beside me. A few inches apart, close enough for familiarity and far enough not to add to the summer heat or jostle our elbows. I looked over at his white disposable cup, curiously, for his movements were not as smooth as usual.
A mischievous and secretive grin, he tilted the cup in my direction. Dark red wine and floating pink blocks of watermelon. He held it out to me and I took the smallest cube, cool in my mouth. That alone was worth a smile. I placed it under my tongue, away from my taste buds, and couldn’t tell him that I didn’t really like it.
JackSGreyson Says 