All pints are at an end and we decide to go home. The never ending, slightly ironic (but with serious undertones) conversation about us three chaps being involuntarily committed to a life of solitude and emptiness continues, tongues firmly in cheek. We round a corner and who should we see, thats right, blond girl, glasses girl, and the other one! But they are not alone. They are in mid-party splendour, in the front garden of a house, smoking with various other party goers.
And whats more, they remember us! It's only been half an hour but their alcohol intake combined with our apathetic natures can't have made it easy for us to have left any kind of lasting impression. Well, apparently it did! We are being given a second chance! Going quietly into the night is an option that is slowly being clawed away from us. Damn you, Powers That Be!
"Hey! So you decided to come after all?!" It's blondey, right on cue. We slow down a bit.
"Well, we actually live down here, so . . . " laughs Lee. He's got a point.
"You have to come in for a drink, a least one," she decides, "otherwise you're not allowed past."
Ever the ones to follow instruction, we agree and go through the front door. It's a pretty healthy party. The music is of optimum volume and quality, paper cups are scattered everywhere (always a good sign) and theres loads of people. I'm leading our small group though the masses with no apparent idea where I'm going or what I'm hoping to achieve. My eyes are wide and alert as I search for some kind of clue to tell me what I should do.
We find ourselves in the kitchen, drinkless, amongst a good ten people we don't know. The girls from the pub hadn't followed us in, they are still puffing away outside. No one makes an effort to talk to us and we make no effort to talk to them. Everyone's in such heated conversation that I expect our our recent appearance has gone unnoticed. Do these people all know each other already? Or have they met tonight? They're getting on like childhood friends. Every time someone new comes into the kitchen he or she is adopted by the many and brought into the core of the conversation. I spot a book hanging out the pocket of a pair of jeans and wonder if it's some kind of rule book explaining how to interact with other humans at parties. Everyone here seems well read on the matter.
Then everyone leaves the kitchen, leaving the three of us. We start to laugh.
"This always happens!" exclaims Lee, "are we supposed to follow? Or what."
"Dunno, man, I think they all know each other, probably gone off to play Twister or some shit," Paul says.
"Well, maybe we can find something to drink," I say with some desperation. I head over to the fridge and open it. The little light flicks on revealing. . . ahh, you can always count on students. . . dirty cheap vodka! Paper cups at the ready I pour three vodkas and top them up with some nearby lemonade. Not one of us feels a twinge of guilt during this act of mindless theft, and the drink provides some much needed support.
"So, what are you up to this weekend?" says Lee to both of us.
"No plans," I reply. Paul shrugs. "You?"
"Nothing planned," says Lee, "could go out on Saturday?"
"Yeah, be a shame to end the weekly tradition." We do seem to end up in the same club every Saturday night, just us three.
"Maybe we can get a few more people to come," I say.
"Yeah, right!"
The party has come back into the kitchen. The chatting and laughing continues for another twenty minutes or so, until I find myself without a drink, opposite the fridge which now has a lone girl standing next to it. She's standing with a plastic cup staring slightly vacantly into thin air. I should say 'hi' to this girl, I think. That's quite a normal thing to do; we are at a party, after all.
I go over and open the fridge door. But, what do I say? As I unscrew the vodka I contemplate various questions or introductions - ask her why she's alone? Offer her some vodka? Each idea goes though a mental process lasting split seconds during which my brain examines it and provides quality control, omitting all items that could be considered provocative, offensive, arrogant etc.; removing all risk and leaving everything neutral. As a result, I come out with the blandest thing anyone has ever said to anyone.
"Hi, there . . . so do you, like, live here?" I amaze myself with this profound question.
"Oh!" she replies, suddenly becoming animated, "no, I know Katy who is friends with Lisa, and Lisa's boyfriend lives here. But I think the party is for someone else who lives here, it's their birthday, apparently. But I haven't seen Katy in ages, we were trying to steal other peoples' drinks and then she kind of just went away with some guys, I think there doing bongs in the other room or something."
I am in shock. This is going brilliantly! Such a committed response to the blandest question in the word. She loves me! I am on fire!
"Ah, right," I respond with infinitely less enthusiasm than intended. I am desperately searching for something else to say, anything, dammit, even the weather, come on, man. The girl looks me in the eye and executes a half smile. "I'm gonna go get another drink," she says. She stares at the floor as she walks away, through the corridor and out of site.
The inevitable sigh ensues, coupled with a strange sense of self-satisfaction. Hey, that went pretty well.
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.
Outside, the vultures still don't approach me waving a flyer. Why not? I go to clubs, I have plenty of (the state's) money (at times), and I'm your typical, fun-loving student. It must be the impression I give off, I decide. It doesn't say "give me a flyer and I'll see you at the bar." It says, "You take one step closer and I'll bite your head off!" I turn around and catch my reflection in a window. Haha! Yeah.
Oh yeah? Well, I'll tell you what, if I want a flyer I'll bloody get one. I'm gonna march right up to Dwayne or whatever his name is with his out-of-bed hair and and self-styled t-shirt and demand a flyer or else! Ah, fuck that. I don't want one, I don't want to go to the club, I just want to go into this art gallery and see my friend.
Most people have to work to earn money. Be it retail (where I reside), builder, teacher or thief. It all takes effort. But not everyone, it seems, oh no. Not one, not two, but FOUR of my friends (almost everyone I know) get to sit behind a desk in an art gallery clicking some device every time someone comes through the door. This allows them to get on with other things; uni work, if needed; reading, if your that way inclined; social networking, honing your digital personality. I go though the entrance and Lee glances up from a book, clicking his clicker right on cue.
"Alright, Lee," says I.
"Alright, Lee," says Lee, we're both called Lee. "What are you up to?"
"Just been to the library, but the book I wanted isn't there," I avoid mentioning the paranoid tendencies occurring earlier in the park for various reasons - there seems to be no solution, I am forever doomed to relate that part of the park with Chloe, thus making the conversation pointless - but apart from that, bringing up the Chloe topic only seems to make the Chloe ordeal more real, solidifying the fact that it actually happened. If I don't talk about it maybe I can convince myself it never did, can't do that if I've talked to others about it - what if they bring it up? Nope, don't subscribe to this 'get it off your chest' bullshit, store it away in a corner of your head and worry about the inevitable tumour when it happens and not before.
"Do you need it for your work?" Lee continues, referring to the book.
"Dunno," I shrug, "probably, but maybe not. Not completely sure whether I need that book at all; my essay is slowly becoming less and less focused, any other book would probably be just as beneficial. I've started to question the very validity of the essay, and in doing so question my role and purpose on this course, and as a student. . . "
"Sounds like an existentialist crisis," says Lee with a grin. Everything's an existential crisis according to Lee. It means nothing to me. "Probably go for a pint after uni if your interested," he says. "I finish work at four so . . . ."
I give an approving nod and go for a quick lap around the art gallery. Soaking up some culture, as it were. Art is in the eye of the beholder, I think to myself with a reassuring nod, which means no one is ever wrong and price tags don't mean shit. It's the user-friendly explanation.
Hmm, a pint tonight, that sounds alright. I'm looking at some blood on the wall. Art blood. I head back over to Lee.
"What are you doing tonight then?" I ask.
"Dunno," he replies, "probably do the pint in the bar and then head home, eat, and eh... well, could go for another drink later?"
"Yeah, sure," I nod. Lee nods. I nod again. "See you later."
I leave the gallery and take a moment to decide what to do now. I have four hours or so until I meet Lee and potentially a few other people. I go home.
Nothing exiting happens during these four hours, apart from various acts designed to sustain ones existence; eat, drink, watch Countdown.
