I suspect it'll surprise no one to learn that this incident happened when I was a student. My first year as a student, no less. Those early (un)innocent days when the prospect of sexual adventure was high on everyone's priority list. The University had closed for the Christmas break and mid December, and we all ventured home for Christmas, but had made arrangements to gather back together for a New Year's Eve party. This was the first year of the rest of our lives (God help me, someone actually used that phrase. I'm not a violent person, but I nearly punched him), and it only felt right that our newly forged friendship group should see it in together.
All of which is making it sound rather more magnanimous and laudable than it actually was. Essentially someone wanted to host a massive house party, and everybody saw it was an opportunity to get gloriously hammered, in either interpretation of the word.
I'll save lingering on the planning and deployment of the event, as, entertaining and hugely anecdote worthy though this was, it's not especially sexy. Unless you find the idea of highlighted binders and spreadsheets erotic, in which case I'm jealous of how easily pleased you must be.
In short, the party was to be hosted by the friend with the largest student accommodation - Sarah. Her housemates weren't returning until further into the New Year, so we'd have the whole house to make use of without issue - along with more than enough time to clean up any evidence that shenanigans took place.
The invite list was excessive. Rather than stick to just those within our (already sizeable to the point of unwieldy) friendship group, invites were extended to anyone sharing a class, friends of friends and, apparently, anyone 'nice' that anyone had encountered over Christmas.
But it was for NYE. Fuck it. If you can't be excessive to celebrate an entirely arbitrary date, when can you be?
The day itself arrived and I settled on my plan of attack. Chiefly to get comfortably drunk early and then have plenty of time to hone in on who I needed to position myself beside for a New year's kiss. I knew already there were several strong options, and I was more than prepared to elbow friends out of the way to make sure I was on hand. To help, I'd chosen the most dangerous of my HIAATAMT dresses. (Which, for the uninitiated is a 'Hi, I'm Alice And These Are My Tits' dress - I.e. One that features sufficiently ample cleavage to ensure many minutes of precisely zero eye contact).
What I'd failed to account for was that, being such an organised group of people, we'd got everything in place by early afternoon. Which meant me had little else to do with the day but begin pre-drinking. At around 2pm.
Frankly how any of us even made it to the New year was a miracle.
The party itself was, entirely unsurprisingly given the number of people invited, massively over-subscribed. At one point best estimate was that we'd somehow squeezed 70-or-so people into the distinctly-medium-sized student house. Every room was crammed full with party goers having little option to be pressed up against each other. While this approach isn't without its charms, it's not exactly the NYE shindig many were hoping for, and long before the bells rang in a significant number decide to seek revelry elsewhere - including many supposed core members of our own group. Leaving instead a ragtag mix of individuals only a small handful of which I actually knew. But they were dedicated and, unlike some friends, actually *wanted* to be there, so as far as I was concerned they were wonderful and welcomed folk.
Midnight came and went. I kissed several people, but I was at peak drunkeness at that point of the evening, so I can't be entirely sure who. Soon after I was downing pints of water and took a tactical nap in order so as not to entirely bow out of the evening when, in many regards, it was really only just getting started.