What better combination is there than young love and booze?

It is all too often that a big night on the turps leads to the first sparks of a relationship.

True, said relationship quite often doesn’t last much longer than a single night. But, once in a while love blooms. In these situations, booze can often throw a challenge the way of the innocent couple...

Several years ago a friend of mine out on the piss met a girl, and things seemed to be going alright. For the sake of the story, let’s call the couple Jason and Kylie. Anyway, after a couple of weeks, Jason and Kylie are going pretty well and they are set to head out with a few mates, mostly being the other blokes that Jason lives with. It wasn’t a date so much as a big night on the piss to which Kylie had been invited, seeming, as she did, to be a top chick.The night took off, as nights like this do, pretty well. Before long the group has swelled as old friends arrive and new friends are made. A string of pubs are visited and the booze flows freely. Singing and dancing, laughing and joking, beers, shots and smokes combine to provide a very solid foundation for another belter of a night.

As the night wears merrily along the crowd begins to thin out somewhat. Most of Kylie’s friends have left and a significant number of Jason’s are in the process of doing the same. Now, this isn’t too much of a problem really. While Kylie and Jason are only in the beginning stages of the relationship, and initially there was no intention of Kylie staying the night, it’s not so much of a problem, just that Jason has, for some reason, gotten himself pissed enough to forget that he was out with his mates and new girlfriend, and taken himself off home. This isn’t a unique event, as Jason’s mates all attest. “He does it all the time, bloody wanker.” “Nah, you’re right Kyles come back to the flat if ya want.” “Crash on the couch you’ll be fine” By this stage, Kylie is well pissed and the thought of splitting a cab the fairly short distance to Jason’s place is much more appealing than the solo journey across town to hers.

So, the logistics sorted and a few more totally unnecessary drinks put away, the group head home. Upon arrival, it is discovered that indeed Jason is sound asleep on his bed. All Kylie’s best efforts to rouse him fail and so she decamps to the couch with a doona and pillow. Then things start to go bad.

The night of sleep that immediately follows a big night is quite a strange one in terms of timing. If you are lucky enough to fall asleep directly, you’ll wake up what seems like 3 seconds later and have to face the day. If, however, you desperately want to fall asleep or pass out before you throw up, the 3 hours from 3 a.m. until dawn can take a week. Soon, this is the situation that Kylie is confronted with. It’s been long enough since the last drink that all euphoria of drinking has departed, replaced by an impending feeling of doom. If she shuts her eyes, the room spins at an alarming pace. If she opens them, it gets quicker. The couch is slightly too short to sleep stretched out and the cushions keep sliding off while she tries to lie down. Soon, the horror dawns. Kylie is going to spew, and spew hard. Not wanting to provide the ammunition for ridicule in the morning at the hands of her new beau’s flatmates, she is not keen on unleashing hell in the flat’s bathroom, so she quietly trips over everything on her way to the front door and decides she’ll find a quiet lamppost a couple of doors down and do the deed there.

Still hammered drunk, and wearing naught but a t-shirt and panties, she finds a quiet pole in the pre-dawn light and unleashes hell. Triumph turns to horror as it keeps coming and coming and soon Kylie is a blubbering mess, weakened from the violence of her recent purging, clothing covered and hair matted with spew, tears streaming down her cheeks. She has reached the point where it is no longer practical or possible to remain clean and eventually she slumps back into a clear bit of gutter.

Now panic sets in as Kylie realises that she can’t remember where the house is. Looking around with mounting dread nothing is familiar. What was the house number? Which way did I come from? WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO? Head spinning and emotions unleashed, the poor girl, a picture of tragedy, does the only thing she can think of, knocks on a door….at five in the morning.

In a hurricane of emotion, nausea and drunkenness this is the precise point at which Kylie’s recollection for the night ceases. At about 8 a.m. the next morning she wakes up on an incredibly comfortable couch, wrapped in a beautiful thick doona with an empty glass of water on the coffee table and a bucket next to the couch with a good amount of spew in it.

Kylie never saw the good Samaritans who rescued her. Unable to face the horror, she left before she met them. However in a cruel twist of fate, she walked out of what must have been Ned Flander’s house, only to see Jason’s place diagonally across the road.

The relationship didn’t last too much longer, Kylie and Jason parted ways amicably some weeks later. To this day I’m not sure if it was a lack of compatibility with Jason, or just the horror of the thought of bumping into her saviours living across the road.

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