The summer that I was eight y/o was, paradoxically, the first summer I remember being significantly bored from time to time. I'm calling it paradoxical, because it was the first summer I was on swim team, and the second summer I played soccer. I was responsible for getting myself to and from practice and home meets/games, too, which meant riding my bike 10 minutes each way to the pool and 20 minutes each way to soccer. I had a list of chores at home too - I think that was the first summer I graduated to mowing the lawn. I was a pretty busy kid.

But I was bored, nonetheless. Maybe being busy caused the free time to seem emptier? Don't know...

At any rate: Being impulsive, being independent, being somewhat rebellious, being fun-loving, being bored, and being a boy - all of the above meant that I got into several minor spots of trouble that summer. Most if not all were kid-mischief, like TP'ing someone's yard at 3:00 a.m. But among those was something I'm not especially proud of: getting drunk for the first time.

As usual, a friend was involved. This time, it was Jeff. We lived a few streets apart, we had been in the same 3rd-grade class together, and were both soccer players. A natural friendship, you might say. We had already been partners in several of those minor spots of trouble that summer, along with various other neighborhood kids.

That "gang" was one of my boyhood cultural institutions. In later years, we called ourselves the "Midnight Gang". (The term "gang" was considerably more innocent then than it is now.) That summer of my 8th year, we were just a proto-gang in training. Besides, most of us had to be home long before midnight. Naturally, we all tried to sneak out in the middle of the night, like 1:30 a.m., and many times succeeded - staying out till 4:00 or so, taking advantage of that prime time for stylish troublemaking. But not at midnight. At midnight we were all in bed, faking sleep till the house got quiet. Midnight was one of the few nighttime hours we were not out and busy. We should've called ourselves the "Not at Midnight Gang." But it didn't have that je ne sais quoi... Eh? ¨Comprende?

Well, anyway, back to eight years old and our proto-gang:

We'd all talked about drinking, and talked about how to arrange it - cooking up schemes to get beer, for example, by sneaking it out of someone's parents' refrigerator. We never did it. For one thing, we weren't serious about it - big talk was one thing, but doing it was a step we weren't sure we were ready to take. And of course, there was the minor matter of getting caught - either after the fact, when the missing beer was detected (bad), or red-handed, in the act of taking the beer (worse). Some of us - me and a couple of others - had actually tasted beer. My mom let me have a sip of hers when I wanted; her belief was that I'd lose interest if she did, and she was right. We privileged ones admitted among ourselves that beer wasn't very good, although we didn't care to lose face by admitting that to the whole gang.

So drinking was all talk and no action. But I had that wild streak running strong through me. And one night, fate and curiosity and friendship all conspired to make it happen.

The particular evening we got drunk, Jeff and I had spent the whole day together. This was a Saturday. Saturday was soccer-match day, and we'd started the day off by playing matches on adjoining fields (Jeff was on the other U-10 team). After the games (his team lost, mine won), we went back to his house on our bikes. This wasn't planned, really - we just happened to hook up after the game, and one of us said "Hey, you wanna ____?" and the other said "Sure." After I called my mom to tell her what was up, we played outside till lunchtime - board games, backyard catch, all that good stuff, under the bright sun. Summer mornings in the South were glorious. The burning heat wasn't yet smothering the landscape, and you could run and jump without landing in a puddle of your own sweat.

Jeff's mom made us lunch. His mom was a nice lady. Nice, and incredibly cheap. She made one can of chicken noodle soup for six of us - me, Jeff, and four of Jeff's five brothers and sisters. Lunch was a bowl of water with a little chicken flavor and a couple of noodles thrown in. (I completely understand and appreciate now, years later, why she had to be cheap - six young kids at home! And Jeff's dad was an ironworker. Their family wasn't exactly in the luxury tax bracket.)

After lunch, we couldn't decide what to do for a while. It was a typical hot Southern summer afternoon, the blast-furnace stoked and running by now, and we felt lazy. We eventually decided to go fishing. Jeff's mom said okay, on the condition we take two of his younger brothers with us. That turned out to be a problem, though - the river was too far to walk, and the little ones were six and five years old - too young to ride that far on their bikes. Jeff ended up making some kind of deal to take them another day. We got a couple of rods and a couple of buckets for the worms and fish, and pedaled off.

It was not a good day for fishing. The sun was wrong, and glared off the river into our eyes; the river was wrong, too, for some reason I can't recall - muddy from a storm, or something. No luck after an hour or so; not even a nibble. We went poking down along the riverbank, looking for interesting flotsam, but all we saw was a wino sleeping in the bushes.

Southern boys develop the habit, early on, of checking the western sky on hot summer afternoons. The typical deep-South summer rainfall pattern was predictable, and violent. Around mid-afternoon the thunderheads began building up to the west, and you knew you were going to get hit with a brief but intense rainshower. It happened maybe one day out of every two or three. This happened to be one of those days. The western third of the sky, which began the afternoon as a hazy washed-out blue, soon contained some fat, lumpy mashed-potato cumulus clouds. Within the hour, those fat clouds had multiplied, grown thicker, and - most telling - gotten dramatically taller, with the tops showing that unmistakable anvil-shape that signaled an approaching downpour.

Jeff saw them first, and pointed. Already the thunderheads were going from white to purple. We headed back to our bikes, ditched on their sides on the grassy bank as usual. We secured the poles and stuff, got on, and headed up the bank toward the street, standing on the pedals to gain power and speed. The breeze picked up as we pedaled, bringing the unforgettable smell of distant-but-coming cold rain on hot dust and concrete, and thunder grumbled. It was about 20 minutes to Jeff's house. We got there with around three minutes to spare. We left our bikes in the driveway, ran inside, and the heavens opened up, and lightning, thunder, wind, water, and chaos spent their fury against a helpless earth. Violence speaks in a Southern accent, you know, and the people are capable of mirroring their weather.

The rain was over soon. The sun and heat returned, now steamier than ever. We stayed inside. I'm not sure what we did the rest of the afternoon - it was something routine, like watching TV, I think. Staying inside wasn't for the purpose of keeping us cooler. Jeff's house wasn't air-conditioned. Nor was mine, and nor were any of my friends' houses. AC wasn't a working-class home phenomenon, then.

At some point, we formulated a sleepover plan. We agreed sleeping over at my house was preferable - Jeff's house was noisier (six kids), and his mom had already put up with us all day and he didn't want to get on her nerves. But the best reason: my mom was having a party at our house, and so we would basically be unsupervised for the whole night. My mom had a drinking problem, as I've mentioned, and always got blitzed at these things. The usual plan for party nights was staying over at my grandparents' house, my brothers and me. I loved my grandparents, but sometimes you wanted to do something else on a Saturday evening. Our plan was okay with Jeff's mom, and I didn't worry about asking mine in advance; she never said No to sleepovers.

Around suppertime, we rode over to my house. My mom had bought a bunch of "dime burgers" for dinner, as I knew she would; they were standard for party nights. "Dime burgers" came from the Krystal fast-food restaurant chain - a Southern institution. They were square, about 3-4 inches per side, and contained mustard, ketchup, fried onions, a pickle, and a square beef patty. The beef was the thinnest piece of meat I've ever seen. They were called "dime burgers" because at one time they cost a dime each, although by my era they were a quarter. But the local joke was that they were called "dime burgers" because that's how thick the meat was. (Krystal still sells those things; so do other chains in the US, like White Castle in the Midwest.)

Jeff and I scarfed down a bunch of those burgers - it usually took at least two, usually three, to satisfy me at age eight (as a teenager it was triple that number). After dinner, my mom took my younger brothers over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the evening. Jeff and I watched TV for a little while, until my mom came home and ran us out so she could straighten up for the party. Outside we went, making the circuit, looking for friends. Ricky's house - nobody home. Mike's house - a birthday party for his little sister; no crashers allowed. Bill's house - he was grounded. (Bill was always grounded.) Other kids were unavailable for other reasons. We gave up for the time being.

I had a small collection of Matchbox cars up in my room. At age eight, and close to nine, we were a little old for playing with Matchbox cars. But we were bored. We ended up taking the cars out onto the elementary-school property directly behind my house, and running them through the dirt. They were already battered and rusty (I wasn't real careful about keeping them out of the weather.) Playing with those cars was surprisingly fun and satisfying, that evening. I remember thinking that you can't ever be too old for playing with cars.

We left the cars after a while and went exploring through the woods. The school owned alot of property back there - or so it seemed as a kid. In reality, I think it was about 4-5 house lots (i.e., 1 to 1.5 acres), max. The area in which we'd been playing was directly behind my house, where a strip of trees lined the edge of a makeshift sandlot baseball diamond. During elementary school, and for years after, we played "fantasy baseball" on that diamond ("fantasy", in the sense that you had to imagine where the bases and baselines were, and there were rarely nine players per team).

Now, we headed across the diamond to the far side and the ragged treeline. It was cooler in the woods, and the crickets and evening insects were tuning up. I can't remember what we did in there, but it was unmemorable. Turning rocks with sticks, perhaps. Utterly typical eight-y/o-boy interlude. And I'd pay dearly to go back to that unmemorable early evening, for just five minutes... and it aches a little, knowing I can't.

We went back to my house. The party was getting started, and all my mom's old drinking buddies were arriving in force. We kept out of the way. I grabbed my soccer ball, and we went back to Ricky's house. He was home this time. We played three-kid soccer in his yard, while all around and above us the great vast Southern evening drew down to purple twilight and the fireflies came out and the trees went to silhouettes and the night flooded in. When it got too dark to see the ball, we called it quits. Ricky had to go in - his Saturday nights always ended early, because Sunday morning was church, and God help his family if they should miss a day. (I hope Sunday in Southern Baptist Heaven is more fun than Sunday on Southern Baptist earth...)

Jeff and I went back home. We could hear the party as we came down the block. I think it was hearing the party that gave me the idea - I might've thought of it earlier, but if so it had slipped my mind. I distinctly remember walking down the sidewalk with Jeff, hearing the party, and the thought striking me: "They're drinking their booze... why not us?" I immediately said to Jeff, "Hey... wanna get drunk?" He looked over at me. "Uh... I don't know.... how can we?" I said, "Easy - the booze is all in the kitchen. We can just grab a bottle and put it back when we're done. As long as nobody sees us, it's okay." Jeff was still looking at me, but now he was smiling. "Okay - let's do it." No hesitation. Jeff was always my kind of kid.

The party was in the living room, and spilled out the back door onto the patio. The kitchen was off to the side, with a separate outside door. It wasn't hard to get inside- the only potential glitch was getting caught inside the kitchen, but I could make that part quick. Two houses away, we cut around to the neighbors' back yard, and came up behind our garage. The kitchen door was open - just the squeaky screen door to worry about, but I'd had lots of practice defeating that particular alarm system. I told Jeff to wait in the garage while I got the stuff, and he did a quick fade into the open doorway while I slipped up to the edge of the screen door and peered inside.

My mom's parties were BYOB, so there was a multitude of liquor bottles sitting around, all over the kitchen. I hadn't planned this part. I knew I wanted to grab my mom's stuff, and not someone else's, but I hadn't thought about logistics. Fortunately, she had left her bottles inside her liquor cabinet. Unfortunately, the liquor cabinet was in the closet across the room. But if we wanted to do it, I'd have to take the chance. So I opened the door quietly, scurried across to the cabinet, grabbed the first two bottles on the left-hand side, stooped low so no one would see what was in my hands, and scurried back to the door and out. My skin was crawling the whole time. I was sure I would be accosted, forced to give up my treasure, and probably whacked if my mom found out. None of that happened.

I hustled into the garage and went all the way back in the corner, behind the busted patio furniture that formed a permanent part of garage decor. The streetlight across from our driveway cast just enough glow to see. Jeff whispered, "Didja get it?" I held up my bottles, one in each hand. He giggled. So did I. We were nervous by now. It was one thing to boast about getting drunk; it was different feeling the cool glass in my fists.

We both looked at the bottles. One held amber liquid, and the label read "Early Times". The other stuff was clear, and I couldn't make out the label. I said, "I just grabbed the first ones I saw... Let's try 'em both and see which we like better." Jeff: "Okay, sure." I screwed off the Early Times cap. The odor was familiar - my mom drank this stuff all the time. (To this day, I don't know what Early Times was/is - bourbon, maybe?) I said, "Wanna go first?" "No, you do it." I lifted the bottle to my lips, tilted it, which required both hands (the bottle was close to full) - and took a swig.

It tasted terrible. I turned my head and spit out the whole mouthful on the concrete floor, and went "Yuck!" Jeff sad, "Wow, what did it taste like?" I said, "Like hog piss." (You have to imagine that with a Southern accent: "Liiike hawg pee-isss.") "You try it," I said, holding out the bottle. "Fuck you," Jeff said, grinning. Jeff was always my kind of kid.

With Early Times a failure, I was a little discouraged about this adventure. I figured all booze probably tasted about the same. Was there any point in trying the clear stuff? I said as much to Jeff. He replied, "Aww, let's try it anyway - ya never know." I handed over the bottle, saying "Okay, your turn to go first this time." He unscrewed the cap, dropped it somewhere on the floor (which later turned out to be our biggest mistake), tilted the bottle up as I had done, and took a swig. I waited for him to spit it out, or grimace, or act disgusted - but he didn't. He took the bottle away from his lips, and just sat there, looking at me, neither spitting nor swallowing, his cheeks slightly puffed out in the dim blue streetlight.

I said, "What's it like?" He looked at me a second more, then I saw his throat move as he swallowed. "Umm... it don't have much taste. It's like water with some Listerine in it."

I said, "Water? Let me see." He held out the bottle. I took it, smelled it. Not much odor. I held it up in the faint light and tried to read the label, but it was barely visible. I said, "Well... maybe my mom keeps water in here." Jeff said, "I don't think it's booze. I know there's clear booze, but shouldn't it taste like something?" I was about to say something in reply - and then Jeff put his hand on his stomach, and said "Ohhhhh..." I said, "What? What happened?" He said, still holding his stomach, "Man! It feels like my stomach's on fire!"

I said, "It has to be booze, then. Water ain't gonna do that to you." Jeff was grinning. "It's kinda nice... You try it, Danny. See if it does it to you." I was willing. I lifted the bottle, took a swig. Jeff was right - not much taste. I swallowed, and waited. And within a few seconds, sure enough, a warm coal in my stomach grew red hot, then orange, then white. I looked over at Jeff. He was staring intently at my face. I said, "Yeah, it got me, too. It's booze, all right. It tastes a little like Listerine, but it's better than that other kind." He said, "Let me try it again." I handed over the bottle. He tilted it up, and this time I watched his throat swallow twice. He made a face.

I said, "Hey, don't drink it all! My mom'll beat the crap out of me if she sees it gone." He said, "Aw, shuddup... Here, your turn." I wasn't going to let him drink me under the table - even if we were sitting on a concrete floor. So I took the same two-swallow gulp myself. It burned alot more this time, and I felt it going down as well as in my stomach.

Around that point, my memory gets a little hazy and unclear. As I recall, we passed the bottle back and forth a few more times. We didn't actually drink much longer - I'd guess the total time we spent drinking the stuff was 5-6 minutes, no more. But we were drinking it straight - in gulps, no less. And we had no tolerance for alcohol. We were, after all, eight years old. The net result was that we got as drunk as I can remember ever getting. That may be memory playing tricks. I had nothing to compare it to at the time, so it's hard to judge. But I know we drank enough to get seriously tipsy.

I felt good at first - real good. I remember that warm, all-over glow. Very soon, things started seeming incredibly funny. Jeff had the same symptoms - we fell into helpless giggle-fits over the least little things. I have no idea what was so funny now, but at the time, it was better than a Jerry Lewis movie. And the wobbliness and loss of balance was kind of amusing. We fell over repeatedly, even though we were just sitting cross-legged on the floor, and not even trying to stand up.

Unfortunately, the good feeling didn't last. I have no memory of any transition period. It seems like one minute I was giggling hysterically with Jeff, and the next minute I was leaning over one of the busted patio tables, puking my guts out. I do remember that, and it was not fun. Alot of the booze came back up, which probably spared me from feeling it worse, and maybe even saved me from alcohol poisoning - I have no idea what a 65-pound kid can tolerate, but I doubt there's a big margin.

Jeff was puking right alongside me, literally - both of us on our knees, hanging on to the same table edge. The garage was spinning around my head lazily, like a child's toy gyroscope running down, about to fall over on its side. We puked until there was no more to puke, and then had some dry heaves for good measure.

That was the abrupt end to our drinking party, of course. I have some vague memories of Jeff and I staggering into the house, past the living room (if any partygoers noticed us, they didn't give any sign that I recall), and up the stairs to my bedroom, hauling ourselves up by the handrail when we stumbled. No getting undressed, certainly no teeth-brushing or anything like that. I had bunk beds at that stage in my life, and friends sleeping over usually got the top bunk while I slept in the bottom. But climbing was out of the question for Jeff. We both collapsed on my bed. I remember it was a few minutes before I could get to sleep, because the damn room kept rotating, even with my eyes closed.

The next morning, I woke up, pretty early. I felt like the proverbial thing the cat dragged in. I can't remember all the symptoms, but it was in general your standard major hangover, as I recall. I was still semi-nauseated. To add to my lousy feelings, I was disgusted to find that at some point I had pissed in my pants. (That was the next-to-last time in my life I did that - it happened once more at summer camp the following summer.)

I wobbled slowly down to the bathroom, needing to shower, hoping like hell my mom wouldn't wake up (she didn't.) I still had to piss, so I wobbled over to the toilet; but I'd awakened with a morning erection and it was impossible. I gave up on that, wobbled over to the shower, got in with my clothes still on, and turned the water on full-blast. I stripped, got rinsed off, turned the water off and got out, leaving my clothes in the tub. I couldn't find my towel, so I just wobbled back down the hall and collapsed on my bed next to Jeff (who hadn't stirred), naked and soaking wet.

I fell asleep for a few minutes, but woke up cold and shivering. Apparently the water and getting clean helped, or maybe the short nap, or maybe just the passage of time; but I felt a little less inhuman this time. My mind drifted to the previous night's events. I remembered getting the booze, the drinking, the puking... and then I sat upright, almost banging my head on the top bunk overhead: "Oh shit! We left the bottles out there! And all that puke! She'll kill us!!"

I got up as fast as my condition would allow, grabbed some shorts (no underwear) and put them on, then staggered downstairs and into the kitchen. It looked like a wreck, as it generally did after a party. I barely noticed. I got to the door, which was still wide open. (I miss the days when you could do that - fall asleep with the door open, and be reasonably sure your TV and money would still be there in the morning...) The sunlight was blinding and felt awful on my head and shoulders.

When I walked in the open garage door, the smell hit me right away. I gagged and felt my stomach come close to revolting again. I knew I couldn't retrieve the booze or do anything else while the mess was in there. So I got the garden hose, turned it on, dragged it into the garage, held my nose, and went back to where we'd had our fun. It was bad. I'll spare you the description. (Just remember those dime burgers...) I couldn't handle the sight, even holding my nose. I gagged again, and then... I'll spare you the description. Afterwards I drank and drank from the spurting garden hose, and that helped alot.

I realized I still had to pee. I was about to go outside behind the garage, but then I had a thought - or an impulse. I straddled the remains, pulled out my weenie and pissed all over the mess we'd made. A very symbolic gesture, though I didn't think of it that way at the time.

I hosed the whole garage down thoroughly (with the garden hose, not my weenie). I thought a washed-down garage would be easier to explain than one little wet corner. After putting the hose away, I went back to retrieve the bottles. The Early Times was in the corner with the cap nearby - no problem. The clear stuff was there, too. I picked it up and read the label, which was easy to see in daylight. Now, this may sound funny... but I can't remember what that label said. Don't know the brand - don't even know if it was gin or vodka. (It wasn't rum or tequila - when I tasted those flavors some years later, I knew I'd never tasted them before.)

Big problem with the clear stuff - the bottle was there, but the cap had disappeared. I looked underneath stuff, but bending down made my head hurt. I checked to see if I'd washed the cap out into the grass when I'd hosed the garage - no dice. I finally realized I'd just have to put the bottle back without a cap, and hope the blame wouldn't fall on me. So I took the two bottles back in the house, ran a little water into them to discount the drop in volume, stuck them back in the liquor cabinet behind some others, and crossed my fingers.

After that, I felt drained and still queasy, so I lay down on the living room couch and fell asleep again. I was awakened about a half-hour later by the phone. It was Jeff's mom. She wanted him home by 11 o'clock. It was already 10 o'clock. I went back upstairs and gently shook him awake. He looked as bad as I'd felt earlier. He almost couldn't stand up by himself. I helped him down to the bathroom. I was worried he'd pissed in his pants too, but he hadn't. I got him in front of the toilet, and then literally held him up while he tried to get his shorts and underwear pulled down. He couldn't manage it, so I got him to lean against the wall, palms out, while I pulled down his shorts and underwear. After all that, it turned out he couldn't pee, for the same reason I couldn't. Jeff had a big penis for an eight y/o boy, erect or otherwise. It was bigger the next time I saw it in that condition, at 11 y/o. He was a cute boy, too. But I digress...

Poor Jeff wasn't even talking - just grunts and moans. I knew how he felt. I told him, "Get in the shower, Jeff; you'll feel better." I kicked my soggy clothes to the back, helped him to strip, and helped him in. He still couldn't stand, so I got him to sit in the tub and he rinsed off with a cup under the tub faucet. As I hoped, the water revived him somewhat. I found him a towel and he wobbled back to the room - under his own power, which was encouraging. I felt bad for him. I kept telling him that it would get better after a half- hour or so. He just nodded.

Back in my room, we were faced with another conundrum: The Case of the Missing Duffel Bag. Jeff had brought his PJs and toothbrush and clean clothes in an army-surplus canvas duffel bag, which was nowhere to be found in my room, although we both were fairly sure he's put it in there the evening before. We looked all over; but our economy-sized hangovers, along with the usual chaos you'd find in any eight-year-old boy's bedroom, meant that we were doomed to fail before we started. Picture it: Two little boys, one naked and dripping wet and the other wearing just cutoff Levis, both holding their heads and moaning, making halfhearted efforts to look under the bed, inside the closet... no luck. (Eventually, that afternoon, I found Jeff's bag in the bathroom. It had been there the whole time, but we'd been too zonked to notice.)

After a few blurry rounds, we gave up and started looking through my clothes to find him something to wear. I was smaller than Jeff, so even that was a problem. This was the era when the fashion for everyone, including boys, was small, short, and tight. He ended up wearing one of my tank tops, my stretchy Little League baseball pants, and a pair of my worn-out briefs.

I left Jeff putting his (my) clothes on - very slowly - and went down to make us breakfast. I made grits and cheese, which was about as complex a cooking task as I could handle at the time. Jeff came down about the time I finished cooking, and we ate sitting in the living room. I recall that it tasted kind of sour; I wasn't nauseated any longer, but I wasn't sure about Jeff, and I was hoping he wouldn't barf. After the food, though, we both felt better, especially Jeff. We sat in the living room and tried to watch TV, but it gave us both a headache. I have a memory that we watched Scooby Doo cartoons, but maybe I'm confused - I think Scooby was on Saturday, and this was Sunday morning... Anyway, we turned off the TV and just rested, not talking much. After a while, the phone rang again; this time I didn't answer, figuring it was Jeff's mom again, asking why the hell he wasn't home yet (I was right, as Jeff found out when he got home). We knew it was time, so he got on his bike and slowly rode off down the street.

I still didn't feel great, but I knew I'd feel worse if my mom got up and saw the mess. Even though it was, of course, nothing I'd caused, I knew I'd get to hear the yelling. So I got busy with some cleaning. A little later, my grandparents brought my brothers home, and not long after that my mom got up, and it was just another Sunday; except my head still hurt...

A few footnotes:
• The open bottle of gin/vodka wasn't ever mentioned, or even noticed as far as I know - most likely she thought one of her guests was responsible, I suppose. But the missing bottle cap was almost my undoing, months later. My mom found it somewhere in the garage and confronted me with it, wanting to know if I knew anything about it. I played dumb. She got mad anyway. That was all pretty normal.
• You'd think, after that, that Jeff and I would know better than to ever get drunk again. Wrong. About nine months later, the following spring, we did it again. It was back in the woods, and it was beer, and we didn't get nearly as drunk - no puking that time. But clearly, we were slow learners - or rebellious kids - or both.

I think it goes without saying that I don't see anything wrong with boys having sex, if that's what they both want and it's safe. I think getting drunk at eight y/o is considerably dumber and less-justified. It was rebellious, and I think kids' rebelliousness is ultimately a healthy trait, in moderation. I like boys with spunk. But boy-sex is alot more wholesome than boy-booze (or boy-drugs). "If you're going to suck, don't suck on a liquor bottle" - that's my motto.