It's 4:30pm and I'm walking into the bar. I fall into line, purchase a reasonably priced beer and take a seat next to Naomi, one of my housemates. One table has been pushed up to another to accommodate for the growing number of drinkers, and one and all are engrossed in various art based discourse. Someone's work is rubbish, a lecture was good, and so on.
" . . . nah, didn't see that, far too post-structuralist for me."
"Yeah, but that's incidental; the Nietzschean undertones concerning religion were far more significant."
"I quite liked the detritus nature denoting industrialisation which seemed to form a more liberal view of equality than he previously presented."
"It lacked creativity, though, when you take in to account the fact that . . . "
I sit there enjoying a strange mix of awe, interest, and boredom.
My phone buzzes, Lee has sent me a message. It is 7:30 and I'm back home. We are to go to the pub at nine p.m.. Each of us in a different house, we try to recruit a few other drinkers. I initially target my housemates. Naomi gives a guilty rejection, complete with apology; Anna is on her way to bed; but Paul musters up some enthusiasm. Additionally, I send a message to Beth and wait anxiously for a reply.
Once upon a time I was inundated with messages from Beth, I was woken up with "Good Morning!" and I was left with "Goodnight xx" and a steady flow would continue in between. It was nice. Meant I could get much done for all the replying, but it was still nice. Then one day her prayers were answered and a boyfriend was sitting under the Christmas tree. Now Beth only says "Hi!" when she's alone, which is rare, and she is missed.
Still no reply from Beth. It's been ten minutes - an unthinkably long time in this modern age. Paul and I go to meet Lee at the end of the road and we see that he has also failed to convince anyone to join us.
"Hey, man," says Paul, wrapping his scarf around his neck.
"Alright, guys," replies Lee. We go to the pub. I tell Lee that I asked Beth to come for a drink, but she hadn't replied. The same thing had happened to him. We come to an interesting conclusion that we all hope is not true. It plays out as follows.
With three beers sitting comfortably in front of us I ask Lee why none of his housemates came out.
"Well, John was sitting in front of the TV and couldn't be bothered to move. I think Sarah is coming over later to see him," Sarah is John's girlfriend, "and Lee (that's right, another Lee) was in his room with Jackie, so I didn't bother them."
"I think I feel a theory coming on," chips in Paul. Lee and I look round at him with expectation. He continues, "it's almost as if everyone who has secured a partner no longer feels the need to socialise any more, they're quite happy to stay in with them instead. Like the only reason to go to the pub is to put themselves in the public domain, wait until they are chosen and job done - no more pub required."
The response is stunted. This isn't a particularly attractive idea. But, dammit, it just makes too much sense!
"Yeah, but what about Anna and Naomi? They're boyfriends aren't with them," says Lee.
"Yeah, but they're out there somewhere, allowing them to rest at ease, with no pressure to go out. It's like they're not alone even when there's no one around, because someone's got them on their mind." Paul pauses. "There's obviously exceptions, but as a general rule..."
"John and Sarah come out every so often," I counter.
"But they go home by midnight," Paul effectively argues. This is true.
"I'd like to think that if we had girlfriends then we'd still go out!" says Lee positively.
"Yeah" Paul and I respond in unison.
"But we don't need to worry about that," says I, "...never gonna happen."
We all laugh but die a little inside.
This pub is not very nice. It's the McDonalds of pubs; standardised throughout the country, an efficient machine allowing customers to pay next to nothing if they're willing to settle for low quality food and drink and no character. But it looks like it works, for here we are sipping cheap watered down beer, and Lee is contemplating a burger which contains a highly suspicious amount of beef. We walked past two quite nice looking pubs to get here, and I don't know what's going on.
Various small groups of similarly aged people are floating around, their painted on smiles exposing their shiny white teeth. Lee and Paul are quoting various TV programmes and I zone out for a second and notice a small group of girls a couple of tables down. They have three jugs of florescent toxic juice occupying most of the table. The girl with the glasses happens to glance in my direction granting me a huge smile. Sounds good but she was already smiling, it wasn't a smile intended for me.
"...Stop getting Bond wrong!" The guys are still quoting the TV, Alan Partridge by the sounds of it. This carries on for a while, various themes and subjects are discussed, with most points made taking the form of another quote. Although, the quoter rarely actually explains where the quote is from; it should be common knowledge.
The giggling girls rise to their feet around the 10:30 mark and walk past us towards the door.
"Hey, you guys should come to our party tonight!" says blonde-haired girl.
"Yeah! We're going to a party!" glasses girl joins in, "it's our party but we're not there yet!" They erupt into an ecstatic roar of laughter, and we exchange dubious glances. Lee speaks first, although their attention is not easy to maintain.
"Ah, I'm probably going to just go home after this. Got uni tomorrow and all that."
It's a pathetic response. He knows it, I know it, they know it. But I'm pretty happy with it. Getting invited to a party by three attractive girls may seem like a good thing, but. . . Wait a minute, what am I saying?
Well, they've gone. Nothing to do about it now. Just another regret to catalogue under M: Missed Opportunities. It's getting busy in there.
"Y'know," Paul begins, "I feel we have some kind of obligation to seize those kind of opportunities." The same thoughts had been going though all our minds. Lee and I give a murmur of agreement. Here we are in the pub searching for life and when it presents itself, as blatantly as it just did, we scarper away like scared hamsters.
"Yeah, I don't actually have uni tomorrow." says Lee, rolling his eyes in disappointment.
"But I'm pretty happy we're not going," continues Paul, "would have been a bit intense." Another murmur of agreement.
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