I’m not sure there is an “at best” corridor creeping situation but I would imagine it usually involves a debauchery-filled weekend away in the country – something you can say a naïve “Oh, what fun!” to, but never actually have to get logistically involved with. I do know that at worst, it’s on your family holiday and you’ve got the tenuous (and slightly sinister) family friend ‘accidently’ coming into your room and climbing into bed with you.
In the university context, however, corridor creeping takes on a slightly new meaning: as exhaustion takes over after a fun night out, despite having made it all the way to your own college, you still HAVE to stay over at [Person’s] because there is absolutely no chance you can make the extra hundred metres to your own bed.
Payback is quick for your lazy attitude though, because you inevitably find yourself creeping home at some god-awful hour in the morning when you’ve come to your senses and realised ‘Oh. Dear. God.’
Relieved of the horrendous and lengthy walk of shame that the out-of-college foray throws at you, in-college antics mean that at least you can pretend you’re visiting the vending machine/leaving the library…
What’s so unfair is that because you’re in the same college as [Person], it’s a bit of struggle to maintain the aloof and stand-offish (yet alluring) act you’d been working on earlier in the evening…
An attempt at a Cinderalla-esque departure from Bridge is shortly followed by “Uh, share a taxi then?”
(Which he then has to pay for because you can’t find your brain, let alone your purse.)
This tends to lead into that suitably awkward point-of-no-return at the Porters’ Lodge where someone mentions that they’ve got [an obscure possession that only an Oxford student would ever own] in their room, and the next thing you know is you’re staggering up five flights of stairs because:
“Oh my god, you do?! I’ve always wanted one!”
(For future reference, to any of you who find yourself in a similar situation I would suggest skipping this awkward viewing and buy whatever it is that you so enthusiastically claim to have always wanted.)
Now that you’ve got yourself into such a compromising position (five flights of stairs up and a hundred metres away from your own bed… not the other kind of compromising position) the ol’ brain starts ticking again and has decided that this wasn’t such a good idea after all and you really need to GET OUT NOW.
Fleeting-beauty-act here we go again. Isn’t there something so mysterious about grabbing your stuff and mumbling something along the lines of: “I’ve just, um, remembered something I have to, um, do (that isn’t you), um, so I’ll, uh, see you around?”
(Yes, you will see him around. In college. Everyday. Everywhere.)
But before the saga’s over, you’re half-way down the stairs and, “Shiiiiit.”
You left your phone behind. Back we go again, except… was his room 316 or 317?
(It definitely wasn’t 316 – apparently I was turning into the sinister family friend and creeping in on unsuspecting randomers now).
Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses and just leave the phone behind, but if you could remember the last coherent message you sent being “I’m leaving da cloooob with him ;). whoop whoop!” you’d also be pretty hell-bent on its retrieval.
I am pretty certain he thinks I left my phone behind on purpose…
Maybe my nympho subconscious did, I’m not sure. All I do know is that with all my backing and forthing that evening, I had effectively climbed almost eight flights of stairs… I needed – no, I deserved – a sleepover.
