My daughter’s four blunt words reframed a drunken night at a party 30 years ago

October 21, 2026 — 6:00pm

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When my eldest daughter was a teenager and started going to parties, I began to worry about her getting wasted and being vulnerable. She wouldn’t be so stupid, she told me in the confident way of a teenager. It might not be up to her, I said. Then, as I shared with her a story from my teenage life, she helped me realise something that I’d hidden from myself all these years.

My story went back to a night when I was 15 and went to a party with a girlfriend. Everyone else was a year or two older and from a different school – so I wanted to be liked by them. I had drunk too much and kissed a boy who was similarly drunk, before we both threw up.

But what I couldn’t remember was how later that night I had ended up with a different boy in the alley behind the house where the party was. We hadn’t been talking. We’d never met before. Decades later, I still wonder, how did he get me away from the party? Was he watching me and spotted an opportunity? Did he suggest some fresh air?

And then there was a doorway and a bit of concrete and him offering me two choices of what he was........

© Brisbane Times