The Nightclub Issue

I feel I have blogged excessively over the past month despite in September thinking I had given up, but this issue persists too much not to write about. I briefly talked about hating nightclubs in Sydney where people go out with the sole intention of groping backpackers, but at least that was a cultural experience. At university, I still hate nightclubs. If they were all unexpectedly shut down tomorrow, I'd be wandering amidst all the protest riots saying "Oh well, never mind, why don't we just go to a nice pub?"

It's currently twenty past five in the morning and I had the lovely experience of fleeing the university nightclub at half one, by myself, in order to escape from Gropey 'Would you like to come back to my room' McInappropriatetouching. I was under the impression that I was generally feeling all right until I got to my room and cried out all the vodka. The thing is, it wasn't actually Gropey himself who upset me, it was the fact that I feel like I'm in the 0.5% of people who would not like to go back to his room because I don't actually know him. That's the problem with nightclubs, you don't actually know anyone except for the people you arrive with, because (mostly) everyone looks and dances exactly the same. Which is not to say that I never enjoy myself; if I'm with nice people and there's no expectation of groping and it's one of the rare occasions when I actually like the song then I have a good time. Except I had a better time last week, when I was in a slightly quieter bar and one of my friends suggested that we left at eleven, bought ice-cream, and sat in the corridor in our pyjamas watching Pulp Fiction.

Really, nightclubs combine a selection of the things that I hate: annoying, repetitive music which seems to be from an album called 'Songs to play in nightclubs about being in a nightclub,' people who make me feel like a Jane Austen character for thinking that emotional intimacy should, in an ideal world, come before physical intimacy, and pretending that I can dance.

I am, reassuringly, absolutely fine because just before escaping the nightclub I managed to find Catie and screamed in her ear (not because I'm rude, but because that's the only way to communicate) that I was leaving and the reason why, so no-one thinks I am a) passed out in a corner somewhere, or b) With Gropey McInappropriateTouching.

One day, hopefully, I will be thirty and nobody will ever expect me to go clubbing. That applies to both nightclubs and clubbing seals. Which is also bad.

Typical Quiet Night

Two friends of mine (both girls) just came into my room in their underwear, completely drunk, stole both my winter and my summer dressing gowns and put on my lipstick, and ran upstairs to go and watch porn in the public computer room.

I, of course, chased after them in my pyjamas with a giant red lipstick print one of them had left on my cheek, apologising to the students in the computer room who were actually trying to do work.

Sometimes university is mental.

Universations

I have had a lot of bizarre conversations recently; far too many to write down on a long word document for Zanny to turn into a book. (Just an example of the sort of thing which might happen.)

Just now, I had a conversation which flowed perfectly from horrific sexually transmitted disease urban myths to James Joyce. Immature to pretentious in about ten seconds, which, thinking about it, is what every conversation throughout sixth form was like as well.

Earlier today, in my seminar, we learnt about Iambic Tetrameter, which is when there are four beats in a line of poetry. I was wondering why it was called 'tetrameter' and not 'quatrameter' and then had an epiphany, which I shared with the girl next to me and we sat there with our minds blown for the next several minutes. Tetris is called tetris because there are four blocks which make up each of the shapes that fall down. It is possible that no-one reading this blog finds that quite as exciting as I do, but never mind.

On Friday, a peculiar third year boy approached me in a club/bar-type place and then, without really any build-up other than a brief discussion about how bad the music was (they were playing Love Shack), invited me on what might have been a date to the library. It pretty much went like this:

"This is purely hypothetical, but I hang out in the library a lot, so if you ever come to the library, maybe we could get coffee." Then he went away and unsubtly spoke to his friend about me, complete with mouthed words and enthusiastic pointing.

I was left both confused and marginally depressed. Confused because it was a hypothetical date to an absolutely enormous library at some point in the future. That could not be vaguer unless I was asked out on a metaphysical date to the universe at an unfixed point in the space-time continuum (which, by the way, would be awesome.) I was also marginally depressed because I love coffee and I'm quite fond of libraries, but the guy in question did not know that, so I get the impression that he says that to all the girls. I think I may have been targeted because I was exactly the same height as him.

In other news, my conservative, incredibly religious, homophobic cousin has recently announced his engagement to a woman from his conservative, incredibly religious, homophobic church and they're going to have conservative, incredibly religious, homophobic babies. That's the depressing future of my surname, which originally belonged to Polish Jews and is now going to belong to the Church of Scotland.

That's all folks. Tonight I am going to a 'pub quiz' with a due sense of dread because apparently here 'pub quiz' involves clothes-swapping and blowing up condoms.

The Cure For Illness

I have freshers' flu. I kind of assumed that because freshers was the week before last I had miraculously escaped, but no such luck.

Aside from one seminar, I spent all of today drinking an endless cycle of tea, coffee and hot chocolate and attempting to read 'Oedipus the King' but having to have an hour-long nap every other page. Obviously I should have had an early night, but I couldn't sleep so I ended up walking to the other side of campus in my pyjamas with some drunk people, one of whom was just wearing knickers and a top. I feel like perhaps the fresh air did me good.

University is good so far.