With soaking wet hair, twisted straps on my dungarees, and smeared mascara, I head to my morning class. Clutching a fountain pen, and any traces of dignity that I did not lose over the last 12 hours or so, I realise that I am still drunk.
This may not be an unfamiliar image to you: head down and strides long as you try to convince passers-by that your eyeballs are not still slowly crying vodka.
Sadly it is not unfamiliar to me, either.
However, though evidently I drink in excess, it is infrequent that alcohol causes me to do abnormal things. That is, abnormal on the drunk spectrum, where stealing a stranger’s bucket hat, or closing a DJ’s laptop count as ordinary.
But sometimes alcohol likes to surprise you. To pat you on the back and remind you that yes, you really are psychotic. And that’s why I stop, as I’m walking in the street. Because as I pass the Rad Cam and check my Facebook notifications I see a comment in a group, a group consisting
of the nine guys and three other girls I live with.
2.30am. “What is this buzzing and knocking, anyone know?” A comment below: “Bex”. Various other housemates profess the fear of murder — pillage — as the Bexistentialist slammed her hand down on all the rooms’ buzzers before flying through the house, visiting each of the other rooms, knocking and flinging open each door without entering. My stomach sinks. Is this true? So many questions flood my mind, framed by one singular statement: I am a twat.
Later, with chocolate in my hair, my Sorry-For-Being-A-Twat-Cornflake-Cakes are baked. I post in the group that they should help themselves. But with desperate action, comes fear. Nine guys. Nine boxing/ footballing/DJing/sarcasm-slinging men. And I’ve baked cakes. After waking them up in the middle of the night. Have I ever been more stupid?
Later, as I brainstorm ideas for my column, one of the nine appears in my doorway. A ninth who usurps both my resting bitch face, and sarcasm. I remember him in his boxers, in the early hours, with one eye open, grunting about what the fuck was going on.
But now he’s in my doorway. “Those cakes were fantastic. Thank you very much”. On ‘much’ he has already gone slightly pink in the face? Did I imagine it? Is this but a dream? Sincerity. In a house where talk of wanking, pooing and fucking never leaves the air… Sincerity.
Never drinking again? Maybe I should drink more.
