I'm a girl. This journal is almost 10 years old, when I started it, I called it Almost 21. Before that, I had a journal called Soap on a domain that no longer exists. Some things have changed since then, some things haven't. I always wanted to be a writer. I live out that dream here.
Lately, I have gotten into the habbit of drinking water before I go to bed after a night of drinking. It has been the failproof way for me to avoid a hangover the next morning. The idea, which is apparently common knowledge (had I known sooner I would have saved myself lots of painful mornings) was first introduced to me by Boy (who never has hangovers) a year or so ago. To me, it sounded like an old husbands tale so I never bothered to act on it (more than often I was too drunk to remember) until just recently. I was marveled. It works wonders. Even vodka shots can be hangover free (and this is a very very good thing, something I thought would never be possible).
What was supposed to be a "girls night out" turned into girls and boyfriends night out, which was fine with me because I never understood the concept of girls night out (where clubbing is concerned) anyway. Apparently the idea is to go out and have fun without interfering boys, a time out thing- but I don't consider my boy interfering, and I don't need time out from him. I see him pretty much all day everyday, and still feel that I don't see him enough.
I love going out with him - I have a lot more fun and if I am without him I find that I spend most of the time missing him. And like sleazy random boys don't interfere when you are out with a bunch of girlfriends (but this is probably the underlying idea of the whole thing).
Anyway.
The plan was to meet at Therese's at 8, have a few drinks and wait for Boy (who wouldn't be able to come in until 11), then meet up with a couple of my other friends in the city, who were home for the holidays. I was excited about the night for two reasons:
1. I have not been clubbing in a very, very long time.
2. I was taking my sister along. She turned 18 last September, and I had yet to go out with her.
It had just started to rain at 9, when we locked the door behind us and ran to the cab which had been waiting out front for at least five minutes. I gave the driver (a jolly Samoan) Therese's address, and we spent the ten minutes in the cab panicing and wondering whether he was going to take us into the bush and kill us (as you do when you catch a cab and don't know where you are going).
Fortunately, 15 minutes later had us standing in front of a wooden white gate (Therese's), trying to figure out how to open it (put your hand through the hole and unlock it).
The house (I had never been there before) was great. Polished wooden floors and a pantry which used to be a fireplace (I thought this was very cool). Therese whipped up some chocolate icing and fed us Norwegian chococalte cake with German wine, and cheese and crackers. A couple of hours later, a photo sharing session revealed that one of Therese's flatmates was, in fact, the "hot guy" that my sister had been checking out in her psychology class for the entire semester. This remained a cause for excitement during the most part of the night.
Boy's anticipated arrival time came and and went, and fifteen minutes after I called him up to find that he was knocking on the door of the wrong house ("You said 37, not 47!" - I was pretty sure I had said 47.) When he did eventually arrive, in jeans and a t-shirt ("You said wear a shirt - I call everything a shirt!") it was evident that we would only be getting into (crusty) places with no dresscode.
A detoured decent-shirt-finding adventure at my house was in vain, and unecessary as it turned out that Pru's (one of the girls we were meeting) friends' were also in inappropriate attire so we would end up in crusty clubs anyway.
As it turned out, we only ended up going to one crusty club. Pleasantly drunk, we consumed numerous vodka lemon and limes, while the friends we had just met up with sat there looking bored(and as a result, boring us). I was feeling seasick on my stool, and my sister was making a glass tower when it was decided that we should migrate. The club we were migrating to was, apparently, really cheesy and had sexpads in the bathrooms. Therese refused to go, and invited us instead to drink licorice shots back at her flat.
Finding this idea quite appealing, Boy, my sister and myself decided that we would much rather go back to Therese's. The rest, meanwhile, were keen to check out cheesy club, so we went our seperate ways.
Licorice shots turned out to be some crazy candy-pepper flavoured black vodka, which tasted vaguely like licorice and had the ability to fuck up your head immediatly after one shot. Boy watched us, amused, as we screwed up our faces and drank the shots from plastic beer-barrel shotglasses (after his first shot he quickly declared that he was driving and was to have no more) and bit into our BK double beef and bacon cheeseburgers to make the aftertaste go away (the combination of licorice and burgers was not as bad as one would have expected).
4am found my sister sleeping on a mattress in the empty room (which she had helped herself too), Boy wrapped in a blanket dozing off on the couch, and me wishing for my bed so we decided it was time to go home.
Apart from the small embarassing incident with my sisters card getting blocked (she had given me the incorrect pin at Burger King. The Frenchman behind us accused us of stealing the card), it was an enjoyable night.
So, we didn't really go clubbing but I didn't care - I hadn't wanted to in the first place.
I am past the clubbing stage of my life. The whole clubbing package: getting dressed up, waiting in queues, the paying of covercharges, the walking from one club to another - it makes me tired to even think about it. This is what we did every weekend during second year.
Back in the day when I was unhappy and reckless and drunk and didn't care about having a hangover the next day. Coming home at 7am or not at all (sleeping in random peoples warehouses), scraping through my papers with C passes and getting with random boys.
And then I met Boy.
And suddenly I was happier and didn't need to drink, which didn't lead me to the silly things that come with drinking - like the desire to go clubbing (which I do think is quite silly now - you can never talk to anyone because the music is too loud, and drinks are expensive. I still love dancing though, but there is never enough space on those undersized crowded dancefloors). And when we did go clubbing, I didn't want to drink because I wanted to enjoy my time with Boy.
For the same reason, I began to hate even the thought of hangovers (they would waste an entire day, while before there was nothing worth doing during that day anyway, now there was precious Boy time that I was wasting).
I could (and still can) do absolutely nothing, and be content and satisfied if Boy was with me.
People will accuse me of being boring when I turn down their invitations to go clubbing. I'm not. It's just not something I enjoy anymore.
(I would much rather spend that time and money having drinks at a bar with my friends, or going to a house party.)