I’m 16 and here are my first opinions on The Drink.

I don’t condone excessive or underage drinking. This is not, though, either of those.

It’s as the title says. Prior to this, my only experience with alcohol was a cough syrup which made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, given to me at the grand old age of nine, that turned out to be 15% alcohol by volume, and got my grandmother a good talking-to from my parents. I certainly wasn’t as unhappy as them when I found out, though.

I was recently at an eighteenth birthday party, which went exactly as an eighteenth birthday party is expected to go. The parents of the eighteen-year-old are quite the party types anyways, so they went all out with the drink selection. So naturally, the guests followed suit. I’m not of an endeavouring enough nature to actually march over to the drinks table and pour one out for myself, swilling that shit around like a character from the Godfather, so I bummed it off those who were. Even though it’s mostly because I was too chicken to do that shit, it was in part because of the nature of the attendees: every parent knew each other. And every parent knew each other’s children. The prevailing opinion of most parents attending of myself is that I’m something of a goody two-shoes; the one who always cleans up after parties and wouldn’t dream of staying up late (this is not what I’m assuming of myself though, it’s what my mum says; but it still seems conceited for me to say it). I don’t mind the reputation at all, and I’d rather like to keep it. The same, though, can’t be said about the ones I bummed a drink off of (also sixteen), even before they were getting pissed up in front of everyone’s parents.

My opinions were:

Tequila and coke: 2/10. Wtf is this? Even if it can be said of all alcohol by the newly minted drinker that it tastes like hand sanitiser, I don’t believe that it should be the only taste you can feel in your mouth… My mouth felt so horrible and fuzzy after that. It does not go down nice at all; it goes down exactly as nice as, well, hand sanitiser on your hands when eating with them. It’s kind of harsh and scratchy, if that makes sense at all. I’d been to another party where the only liquor available was the brand of tequila with the cute little hat on top, and someone got so drunk off that shit he vomited twice in succession and blacked out so hard he wouldn’t even wake up after hitting his head on a car dashboard about ten times (he wasn’t driving, mind). Now I’m wondering how the hell he did it… One of the many reasons that I don’t want to be a social drinker in the future, but that’s by the by.

Unknown Cognac and coke – 9/10. This was nice. Deep down, in my heart of hearts, my adolescent brain honestly doesn’t don’t feel any more grown up or cooler for trying alcohol (if anything I feel like a right dope) but I can confidently say that this tastes really really good. I don’t remember any specific flavours, but I do recollect a rounded taste, you know?
Tequila is sharp and jagged, but this shit is butter smooth. It’s the sensation of werthers originals, without the saccharine. It warmed my insides; the old novels now make perfect sense when they claim to drink to ‘keep the cold out’. It goes down very, very nicely, and doesn’t leave a horrid aftertaste in the least. If someone caught that on my breath, I’d be quite glad it wasn’t tequila.

Coors Light – 1/10. It’s flavoured water. It’s the faintest idea of beer; the kidz bop version of beer. I thought some dunce had poured water in it, but it was just the fact of the matter that it was coors light. I don’t really have much else to say about it. But I do know no one drinks coors to get drunk. And I think I can infer that no one drinks it because they enjoy the taste. With the the understanding that that’s the purpose of coors light, I think it does stellar at its job.

Guiness – 7/10. It kind of tastes of coffee. It’s pretty nice, honestly. It’s a right sight better than coors for sure. But I reckon I would enjoy it a bit more if I didn’t have a dudebro type (sixteen!) telling me that ‘it’s the liquor of the gods brev’ every 5 seconds. That’s a problem unique to my situation, though. And also, I would think that there are a lot of better alcoholic drinks out there to proclaim as the ‘liquor of the gods’. In my green-horned opinion, Cognac. But he certainly seemed to believe it, because he had about seven of them, and got carried to the car on his dad’s back.

Reading this back, I’m worried I sound like a right judgemental dickhead. I would like to establish that I don’t mean any of this particularly seriously, least of all to cause offence. I’m really quite sorry if I do.