Before the First Drink

Before the First Drink is a serialized literary novel set in Liverpool at the turn of the 1970s, where rock music, youth, and restraint exist in uneasy balance.

The story follows Claire, a disciplined rock band frontman and amateur boxer, and John, a quiet teenage guitarist with a background in mathematics. As the band moves through small-town venues, late nights, and creative friction, an unspoken intimacy begins to surface-hesitant, bodily, and shaped by control rather than excess.

This is not a story of spectacle or rebellion, but of containment and its slow collapse: masculinity under pressure, the fear of addiction, and the fragile moment before desire names itself.

Unfolding episode by episode, Before the First Drink attends closely to physical detail, historical atmosphere, and emotional undercurrents. It is a story about music as labor, restraint as survival, and the quiet threshold where youth, intimacy, and risk begin to blur.