I suppose the beauty of University is that you can be a mess and it somehow is accepted, it's really ok. It's ok to stumble home on a regular basis, 3am, 4am, maybe 5am, sometimes there was no point in even sleeping. Hair in a mess, mascara down my face, at one time mud up my back from where i'd climbed onto a window ledge and fell off. All these became regular stains that frequented my clothes, mud, snakebite, mascara, Carlsberg. In this instance before i knew it i'd slipped backwards straight onto the ground off the ledge. I was too far gone anyway by this point to feel my head smack the ground, i was left lying with my legs in the air, hands covered in mud. Such events were deemed hilarious, even up to the point where a boy of whom i lived with made up a funny rendition of my 'epic fall' backwards off the side of our building. Staying in halls made this frequent drunken haze that we all lived in a good place, stumbling out of bed in the morning in a bunny costume to compare the events from the night before, well that was almost common place. I remember that morning well...i felt ill, really ill this time. I'd woken up with my bedroom light left on (a good way to tell how far you've gone... if the light's still on and you're fully clothed, well then i guess you can assume you were well and truly too far gone to unzip, unbutton and brush your teeth). That particular morning even my feet were numb, i did the usual, got in the showever hoping the hot water would bring me back to life. In fact i think it's fair to say most of us spent the first year drunk. Afternoon naps i soon learnt were the only way of getting through the day. What a horrible feeling it is waking up, peeling your face off the pillow, dry mouthed and wondering where the hell your god damn handbag is. As a result of all this developing a form of drunken OCD was easy. Before i can pass out now i check, double check i have my keys, passport, purse, then like clockwork i'll wake up again at 6am to check again. All of this gets tiring.
But we all carried on, a bottle of wine before we went out, several snakebites, a few chips and a burger afterwards to soak up the alcohol was standard practice. Oh but then there was the infamous 'taxi night', the definitive Uni drunken story.....everyone has one.
It was the night before i turned Nineteen, a good enough reason to celebrate because at midnight i'd be officially Nineteen and probably still lacking self control where alcohol was concerned. So out we all went. I had some kind of balloon tied to the straps of my dress, later that night it would somehow end up drifting half way across the dancefloor. The balloon was as high as a kite, so was i. So yet again it was snakebite time, one, two, three, four more...in the end i'd lose count anyway and i knew it. Everything else is now hazy in my mind. I never really remember the middle bits of most nights, it's getting out and getting home that counts. The inbetween bits well who remembers those anyway? It's all just useless drunken chat, making best friends who you won't acknowledge soon enough, stealing a few fags, falling over and telling people your drunken life plan. So we danced and kept the drinks coming, soon enough i was incapable of speech. I realised this when an equally drunken guy slipped with his pint and the whole lot went up the front of my denim dress. I remember it being cold, it must of been a fresh pint. What a shame for him i thought as i stood there looking like i'd wet myself. So there i stood, soaking wet with this Carlsberg or whatever seeping through the dress onto my bare skin, luckily or not i couldn't say i word. I just found myself just standing there speechless. At the right moment i was retrieved by a good friend, 'do you want to go home?' no response, 'really..' she continued 'i think we should get home', so off i staggered, probably whilst doing my drunken walk. I'm often informed it's a sort of hunched over affair whilst walking on tiptoes trying to keep some sort of balance. We did the usual, hit the burger van, 'eat a few chips, come on eat something' so i did, but if you overstep the mark the danger is that the chips will mix with the alcoholic content of your stomach, waves of sick come and my god they really did. So we scrambled into a taxi, oh that poor unsuspecting taxi driver. A boy who lived in the same halls as us thought he'd save a bit of money and got in with us. Off we set to get back to our beds to compare stories the next day. But it wasn't that simple, the waves of sick kept coming and coming. I put my head up against the taxi window hoping that maybe if i tried to sit still the nausea would go away, but still my head was spinning, this was it, there was nothing i could do.
As the taxi stopped at the traffic lights i saw they were on red. Since we were at a stand still as the bright red lights blurred and merged into one another i just about managed to mumble in a drunken slur 'quick, please, somebody open the window, open the door, JUST GET ME OUT'. By this point the man driving the taxi seemed a little bit more irate, i remember him asking 'is she going to be sick?' Of course i'm going to be sick i thought, you're swirving around bends and breaking at red lights whilst i'm being flipped around in your taxi like a drunken ragdoll. Just in time my friend got me out of his view, it was too late. In seconds the floor of the taxi was covered in a grim sea of swarming sick that soon circled around our ankles and it was all my fault, and that poor boy that wanted a cheap lift home, well he didn't know what an earth he'd let himself in for. My two innocent partners in crime couldn't hide what had just happened, i was slumped over in a heap on the seat. By this point all i could hear was the angry shouting of the now livid taxi driver. He pulled into Asda carpark demanding the £50 fine for soiling his taxi, my friend quickly bundled me out and silently pulled me to the side...'shhh we're going to run'. After chucking him 70 pence in loose change, in our five inch heels we scrambled through the carpark and dived into surrounding hedges. We fell, ripping our tights in the process, shoes went missing and handbags i'm sure went flying. Unknown to me the boy that just wanted a cheap ride home had the same idea. So there we were at god knows what time in the morning standing barefoot in a load of mud and rubbish waiting to make our safe escape. It felt like five minutes, it was probably hours. When the coast was clear we ran back to halls, it must of been a good hour as before i could barely walk. We arrived back at halls like scoundrels of the night, but at least we were in one piece, grazed knees aside and fifty pounds saved. I don't know if i tripped, if i slipped, or if my body just needed to give way but i fell backwards landing straight in the communal bin. So there i was, a mess surrounded in mess. The next morning the cleaner found me half undressed in a duvet covered in budwiser cans and pizza packaging. 'What a mess' she wearily proclaimed, 'what a bloody mess'.
I still often think that karma will catch up with me, i'll really need a taxi and there won't be one, that maybe i'll lose fifty pounds as a punishment. Maybe that taxi driver learnt that picking up three drunken students is just a plain bad idea. I still say to myself 'what a mess' or maybe it's just all part of being a student. Who knows? but this story goes to prove binge drinking almost never ends well, that is until the next time.
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