There are two types of house party: those that simply occur, and those that are talked about for years after. Memorable ones. Legendary ones. I like to think I've thrown two such parties.

The first was during sixth form when my parents went on holiday. I printed flyers and made CD mixes months in advance, all on the sly. Probably would have gotten away with it had the neighbours not grassed me up because their Alsatian didn't like the sausages that Dave kicked over the fence. It didn't help that someone spilled their Malibu and milk drink on the lounge carpet and I couldn't get the stench out. And Mike climbed out of the upstairs dormer window onto the roof to take a piss into the garden below, because a couple were shagging in the bathroom, and clearly walking downstairs was too inconvenient.

The second party, well, that was during my year out in industry from uni. Fifty, sixty people in total; maybe more due to the passers-by we invited in. It was a mixture of our student cohort at the engineering firm and neighbours, all squeezed into a small, rented, 3-bedroom, semi-detached, suburban house and garden. 

Neighbours in this case included some friends we'd made from the street round the corner. Like us, a house share: Ian and Tracy (a couple) and Simon and Kim (who weren't). We'd met them a few times since moving in. Just chilling on the sofa swapping stories over a few cans—that type of thing.

Kim was a shapely trainee nurse at the local hospital, and exhibited a bunch of features that made me look more than twice. Long dark brown hair that brushed her shoulders. A curvy behind that filled her jeans. In fact, curvy everywhere under the low-cut or tight fitting T-shirts she favoured.

She was gregarious and fun. Drove fast. Laughed at my crap jokes and had an impish grin when she teased me for being a geek. She also introduced me to the X-Files and Alanis Morissette.

I didn't notice at the time that she fancied me. I was a naïve twenty-year-old with no real experience of girls. And besides, she mentioned a few times being engaged to some bloke back in her hometown, so as far as I figured, was off-limits. Friendzone material.

Did I think of her? Yes. Did I imagine her naked? Yes. Did I do that after the second time we met, while masturbating in bed alone that night?

Fine. Okay. Yes.

But anyway, the party. It was a Friday night, the tail end of summer, early September, and there had been a dry spell. Kim showed up with the rest of her housemates and was rocking a particularly wide-necked, white T-shirt revealing plenty of creamy rack. I didn't realise she'd worn it because she wanted to snare me. See above.

The party was raucous and loud. It was the sort of event where nobody would believe the things that happened when they were regaled weeks, months, years later. Like when I wandered down the hall towards the lounge and was startled by someone hitting the floor of the alcove by the stairs with an almighty crunch. Turns out some silly bastard had found some string and, egged on by his mates, decided he could tie it to his ankle and use it to bungee off the landing over the banister. Except he’d cut too much and found the floor first. How he avoided ending up in A&E, I have no clue. Probably the vacuum cleaner broke his fall. It never did work properly after that night.

As I say, it was a crazy party. 

And I got drunk.

Very.

Very.

Very.

Drunk.

I'd warmed up with a couple of cans of cider. For context, three or four was about my limit back then (It's less now). I was nine-stone dripping wet, with next to no body fat, and I'd never had a drink in my life until uni when I began clubbing. Mainly because drinking seemed the only way to pluck up enough courage to hit the dance floor.

It was late when I sauntered into the back garden, illuminated only by the house lights blazing from where the music thumped. Ian, Tracy, Simon and Kim were there. It must have been shot o’clock because Ian had just opened a bottle of vodka and was pouring it into four outstretched tumblers without much regard for volume. Kim beckoned me over, grabbed a tumbler off the table with the leftover barbecue food on it, and held it out to me. No doubt mesmerised by her boobs, I took it and Ian poured.

Standing in a loose star formation, drinks in the middle, glasses touching, Ian declared, “Down the hatch! 3… 2… 1…” and we all chugged. The tumblers clinked together again and he sloshed further healthy slugs of alcohol into them.

With a collective, rising, “Wooaaarrrhhhh,” we lifted glasses. Chugged again. Swallowed.

It fucking burned, I remember that. Not whiskey heat. Sharper. Rougher. Like someone deep-throating me with a chainsaw. I screwed my eyes shut, winced and shook my head as if that would somehow dissipate the fire.

It didn't.

Back went the tumblers into the middle of our little circle.

Splash. Splash.

“Woooaarrhhhh.”

Gulp. 

Part of me knew this was stupid. But a greater part of me didn't want to wuss out in front of these newfound friends. And I definitely didn't want to be the token lightweight. I needed to impress Kim.

So I carried on.

After five shots in probably the same number of minutes, the bottle was drained and our group disbanded.

For avoidance of doubt, 150ml of pure, neat, 37.5% ABV vodka doesn't act instantly. I functioned. At least, I probably did. Maybe stumbled a bit back towards the house.

I remember Kim catching up with me and grabbing my wrist. Slipping her hand in mine. I think I held a conversation. She laughed anyway and I don't know to this day if it was what I said or couldn't say that she found funny.

Soon enough though, the word “bed” filtered through the alcoholic fluzz (new word: I'm taking it) and that sounded like a good idea. So I let her lead me inside, through the living room, dodging loud conversations, threading past people dotted up the stairs, onto the landing where someone I didn't know was still trying to undo the string from the banister.

She asked which was my room. I pointed. Two people were making out on my bed. He had one hand up her top, the other between her legs, and she was moaning. They snapped attention our way when we barged in. I think I apologised, which was ludicrous given it was my room, but they disentangled and hotfooted it to the next room instead.

Kim shut the door and the high frequencies left with it, just the steady thump of the music filtering up through the floor. Or it could have been my heart. Because she stepped in and kissed me.

There'd been kisses in my recent past and they'd all been lovely and toe-tangling and… nice. This was different. Brutally raw. It wasn't the experimental, tentative kiss of someone finding their way round someone new's mouth. It was a fucking full-on jugular-pulsing, Tarantino IMAX kiss. Frenetic, energetic, heart hammeretic. She knew what she was doing, and I was happy to try and respond.

When it ended, I think I stepped back and gawped. She peeled her T-shirt off, unbuttoned her jeans, wriggled free, and shoved me backwards onto the bed. I continued to gawp as she crawled on, slinking up my body and pausing to unsnap my jeans and yank them open.

Somehow between us we managed to squirm my jeans and undies far enough down my legs, and she kissed from there up to awaken my cock with its vodka-infused veins.

Back then I wasn't circumcised, so she'd have jacked and nuzzled and kissed to try and free the head from its unusually tight sheath. The throbbing pain was probably the only thing that kept me from passing out, and the fear of being crap in bed on my maiden voyage meant staying hard was difficult. Okay, the alcohol probably didn't help. But miraculously, after a short while, my foreskin loosened and cock firmed to the point she must have been happy enough to rise, shuffle up, pull her panties aside and offer me to her slit.

Protection didn't even enter the equation. I gripped her hips and sunk in, sighing as her already slick walls clutched at me. Our hips connected, and I can still hear her throaty moan to this day.

I slid my hands up to support her tits, scooped them out of her bra and squeezed as she rocked her hips. We bucked together and she began bouncing gently and rolling her hips.

Honestly, things were mostly becoming a blur at this point. The vodka was in charge, and I was merely a passenger, running off instinct and guesswork. I'm not even sure I was fully hard throughout, but if I was a bit useless, she graciously didn't let on. Kim continued to moan and encourage me to fuck her as I pinched her nipples.

She clapped her palms to my chest and ground in my lap, sighing and groaning as the party continued downstairs. Someone may have opened the door, seen us and closed it again, because the music level rose then faded again, but it could have been my senses shutting down one by one. My cognition was fucked and I shudder to think how many brain cells I killed that night.

My sole focus was finishing before I lost consciousness. Everything was swirling. The room, her hips, her breathy voice urging me on. I vaguely remember tenting my knees and her flopping forward, hair dusting my neck and making me shiver as her moans got louder and she bucked back against my thighs. But that's about the extent of the memory.

Her ragged breathing, hot in my ear, etched itself in my alcohol-soaked brain and the rising orgasm peaked, spilled and I clutched her bum, holding on tight as I lost control. The release—and relief—of making it over the finish line coursed through me as I pulsed inside her and groaned repeatedly until the waves diminished and my hands slid free of her body to whump against the bedsheets.

I've no idea if she came. I really hope so, but I suspect not. Maybe her change of angle and grinding was to try and stimulate her clit, to push herself to completion where my paltry efforts couldn't reach. All I could do was lie there, burning up and panting as she kissed my cheek and reversed, cum dripping from her pussy onto my thigh. I thanked her. I think. She whispered thanks too.

The universe slowed. The room span like I was trapped in an amusement park ride I couldn't escape from. As she stood, rearranged her bra and tugged her knickers back in place to capture the remainder of my spunk, her voice was echoey. “Are you okay?”

My cheeks watered. My smile faded. “I don't know. I don't feel so good,” was all I managed to get out before I rolled to the edge of the bed and threw up over the carpet.

Smooth. Reeeal smooth. The best way to thank a girl for taking your virginity is by luzzing up in front of her semi-naked form, moments after the conclusion.

I was proper ill. The rest of the night was a complete write-off and I only recall snatches of it. The coldness of the bathroom lino on my knees compared to the fire in my throat as I hurled into the toilet bowl. The freezing tiles on my back as I sat there between bouts of retching in just my boxer shorts, cradling my legs while she stroked the hair from my damp temples or used a cool flannel on my face. The occasional person stepped past me to use the loo, and I'd sort of roll out of the way onto the carpet just outside the tiny bathroom, then sit back up afterwards and continue feeling sorry for my self-inflicted stupidity.

Kim and I probably talked, but I don't recall a word either of us said. I was probably there for an hour until the nausea subsided, but it could have been less. Or more. Time was irrelevant. She took care of me. Must have been the nurse in her.

The next thing I remember is groggily waking on the bed, the sun warming my back. Kim was gone. The sick plastered to the divan and carpet was also gone.

I was parched and chugged the pint glass of water she'd thoughtfully left on the bedside table. It wasn't enough.

Still in just my underwear, I tiptoed over passed-out bodies on my way to stumble into the kitchen, necked another pint of water and opened the overhead cupboard to find some jokers had removed every single label from every single food can, leaving a sea of identical silver cylinders.

Bastards.

We played dinner roulette for fucking months after that. Became quite good at identifying the can's contents by just shaking it. Life skillz.

Everyone eventually went home and we set about tidying the place so we would still have some semblance of deposit left when our tenancy ended. It was a fucking bomb site and took most of the day, tunes on, bin bag in one hand, wet cloth in the other.

I was a nervous wreck throughout, worrying if I'd blown any chance I had with Kim. Didn't have the balls—perhaps mental capacity—to face her Saturday, so I sheepishly walked round on Sunday to apologise. Thankfully, whatever I did, however bad my performance had been that first night, I must have done something right, because she laughed and said she was glad I survived.

She invited me in. We sat next to one another in her lounge watching the pilot X-File episode, which she assured me I'd love. She was right. Her hand snuck across the sofa cushion and found mine, so we linked fingers. Ended up in bed, and I made up for my disastrous first time by worshipping her wet pussy with my tongue, lips and fingers. It was the day of worship after all, and she definitely came that time. More than once. The fingernail marks on the back of my skull took a while to fade, and my love of cunnilingus was born.

From then on, we didn't date. We just fucked. Maybe it was denial, fear of commitment or her engagement ring that held us back. She'd return home every few weekends to her fiancé, and when she came back, we'd find excuses to hook up and she'd lament how she wasn't sure if she was in love with him any more. I'd listen, then we'd disappear upstairs to her single bed and make Ian, Tracy and Simon wish they'd chosen a different housemate. She wasn’t quiet when she climaxed, and I became addicted to the sounds of her falling apart as we explored, sucked and fucked the seasons away.

Even when I went back to uni, we wrote steamy letters to one another. This was pre-Internet after all. On spare weekends she would sometimes drive up and we'd spend the entire time in bed, only surfacing for food. She was an exceptional cocksucker, always using eye contact and flicking coy grins up at me between licks and sucks, teasing me to hardness until I couldn't take any more, grabbed her hips, pounded her into the bed and came deep inside her. We were fucking insatiable.

Throughout it all, she initiated and I was happy to follow her lead. My theory was probably that she had the experience and I was playing catch-up. If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have played it differently. Been a little more dominant or proactive. Tried more than plain sex, pussy licking and cock sucking. Pushed a few boundaries.

Not that there was anything wrong with those acts, but upon reflection I can see the kinkier side of her was trying to be sated when I occasionally pulled her hair or spanked her, and I simply didn’t deliver on the level she needed for fear of putting her off. Maybe that's why we drifted apart. Maybe that's why she dumped her fiancé and married someone else. Moved up north. She lives less than an hour's drive from me now. I have her as a friend on social media and haven't messaged.

Ach, it's all in the past, and dwelling on what could have been isn't healthy. Somehow I made it through a very bumpy sexual initiation, and have Kim to thank for not making me feel bad about underperforming. She helped shape who I am, and I'm supremely grateful for the way she managed my ineptitude and taught me to embrace sex. To try and laugh at the mistakes and roll with it. In anyone else's hands, that first experience could have scarred me for life, but she somehow found it in her heart to guide me and love me for the idiot I was, even though I wasn't ultimately the one who knew how to fulfil her needs.

I moved on. Married. Travelled. Had a kid, blah blah. But one thing remains as a holdover from that wild first night at the last epic party I threw. The mere smell of neat vodka turns my stomach, and I haven't touched a drop since.