So! Anyway! I'm just going to pretend like it isn't totally weird to abandon a blog for three and a half years and then post again like nothing's come between. I have, after all, still got a fair few words inside me.
I just got back from a three-month stint backpacking around my own country, during which I spent about a fortnight hanging around and (to no avail) trying to get a seasonal hospo job in our most notorious - no, that's not right - infamous is more like it - party town. We're a small country; it was pretty tame. But at eighteen, fresh out of a highschool experience spent following all the rules and watching the in-crowd from afar, it was like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Or: Alice approaching the rabbit hole with eager caution, intrigued by its mysterious depths, only to find the edges a little less stable than expected.
Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up a bit. I spent my first week there doing pretty wholesome touristy stuff: went hiking, did the gondolas, ate some nice food, took a metric fuckton of photos. I spent the evenings sending in resumes and reading and listening to podcasts, and turned in at the respectable grandma hour of about 10. This was all probably influenced by the hostel in which I was staying. It was very tidy and respectable, the sort of place you'd book for a school trip or your parents, and about ten minutes' walk from the centre of town ("town"). Everyone there was very busy keeping to themselves, which is pleasant at first but begins to get boring after a while. It took me a while to figure out that I had other options, and plenty of them, and at the end of the first week I packed up my stuff and moved to another hostel, this one considerably cheaper, less respectable, right on the main street and situated directly over a bar. I'd run out of budget tourist activities, I was young and restless in a town full of complete strangers, and I had nothing to do but wait for an interview. You can probably tell where this is going.
Before I'd left home, my mother had given me a very gentle lecture about the kinds of things to expect and avoid in this party town, should I end up spending any time there or even possibly staying. In metaphorical summary: Alice, I trust you to keep yourself safe, but just be aware of various subterranean passages and don't think yourself above their allure. With this in mind I went down to the bar, my first night at the new hostel, intending to have one drink - one! - and no more. I promptly made three new friends, accompanied them to several other bars, and stayed out till nearly three in the morning. I could manage myself, I argued internally over my second beer. I know the rabbit hole's there; I'm perfectly safe at the edges; as long as I keep my wits about me I'll be fine. And I was! That first night was probably the best I've had so far in my extremely limited alcoholic experience. The second was where the trouble happened, the trouble I started out trying to write solely about and have ended up wasting three paragraphs trying to contextualise.
I made even more friends the morning after, while making breakfast at 11 after having stumbled up to my dorm and slept soundly for about eight hours, and was persuaded to join them in their plans for that night: a free pub crawl, pizza at the starting line and shots at each door, c'mon, it'll be great. Why not? I thought. Young, dumb and full of horrible buzzing energy, a stranger in a strange land; I'd been a nice proper young lady all week. I wanted to let the devil out, just a little. I wanted to see what it was like, being the other kind of tourist, only if for a night. Or two.
Oh, I'm tangling myself up and retelling a story I already know and getting away from what should be the thesis statement here: I got drunk, as a result of the aforementioned pub crawl, and a boy kissed me and I sort of kissed him back and I can't tell whether or not I liked it and to be quite frank I'm terrified at the possibility I did like it. The whole thing was really not fair on several levels. I'd had five drinks and four shots, the most alcohol I've ever consumed without passing out on my friend's couch in the process, and I can't think of an excuse for why I didn't think him buying me a drink was intended in that way, and I've - never - made out with anyone and it's not fair, it was disgusting and unexpected and seriously sketch considering how much drinking was involved but god fucking damn if my nasty lizard hindbrain wasn't into it for some reason. Even though I didn't want it, even though the whole thing was circumstantially weird at best and downright dubcon at worst, it was like being on fire. I want to try it again. Just... not with a boy.
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