The Indian Summer was in full swing when Freddy arrived in Oxford. Delighted, he put his trendy Oakley sunglasses on and strolled, with beaming Mum and Dad, to the check-in desk.
“Hello, welcome to Oxford!” says the smiley faced girl, sitting behind a tressle table with a garland of Hawaiian flowers round her neck, “what’s your name?”
He gives his name with a slight sense of embarassment and she ticks him off on a long list, cluttered with double-barrels and exotic sounding Chinese names. Freddy gulps – am I going to fit in at Oxford? Everyone else looks so confident, I must be the only person feeling nervous about this nerd circus.
That evening – after sitting through a series of laborious talks from the JCR committee and the Dean, who advised them all against holding “meetings of more than two” in their rooms – he is shepherded by overkeen 2nd years towards a club-night at Camera. Freddy’s experience with nightclubs is limited to a confusing experience in Southampton on his 18th birthday, and he’s nervous about heading into the throng of sweaty, circling undergraduates.
After three jagerbombs and a Vodka/Reb Bull he found on a table, Freddy finds himself being sick into the Camera toilets, next to the rows of blazered Etonians snorting lines of coke and generally enjoying themselves enormously.
“Look boys!” the shaggy haired Gengis Khan of his modish horde declares, “that spotty fresher’s chundering in the bog!” And, as Freddy hears their bilious laughter, he desires only to sink into the whirling vortex containing other men’s piss and his own blown chunks…
When he wakes up the next morning – alone, and in a bed suitable only for a particularly small dog – he doesn’t remember much of the night before. He’s naked, except for a pink garland draped around his neck, and his door is wide open.
Unsteadily, he gets up, and finds himself standing, cock first, in front of the bay windows that overlook Front Quad. The eyes of 100 freshers, enjoying croissants and orange juice in the morning sun, turn, in unison, to the sight of Freddy standing nude in his room.
“Oh dear,” Freddy thought, as he drew his curtains. “Seems like I’ve cocked up.”
