A guys’ night out from a girl’s perspective

Why do they never have their own cigarettes?


You’re having a few casual beers with your flat mates on a Friday night when Tom suggests going out. The boys all down their drinks in celebration and you head to your room to change and put on a bit more makeup. You check you have keys, phone, money and ID and go fetch the gals from their rooms, but the bitches have snaked you and gone to sleep.

But fuck it, you are the party queen. You will not be deterred, the night must go on whether you are a lone ranger in a group full of guys, so you go.

This is a typical guys’ night out, as experienced by a girl.

Predrinks

You already can’t keep up. Although it’s not with the drinks. You can’t keep up with the number of girls’ names being thrown about. Sarah, Katy, Rachel, Tanya, Bella, Grace – the list goes one. Predrinks for guys is more about discussing girls than it is about getting to the premium level of intoxication.

You couldn’t be more out of place in the discussion of who looks banging at the moment, who hooked up with who recently, who’s hooking up with who tonight. You’re forced to sit there in an unequiovcal state of discomfort, and sink into your seat sipping on your beer. You try to save your grace by butting in every so often to ask when the taxis are coming.

Getting in the drinks

Finally, you’ve arrived. The boys suddenly disperse, surveying the room and you’re stuck standing by the girl on the door who shrugs, patronisingly smiles at you and asks you to move on so she can stamp in the group behind you.

Above the obnoxiously loud Chainsmokers’ song playing, you somehow hear a load of muffled laughs by the bar – it’s the boys. Matt beckons you over and forces a tequila shot into your hand and they all make an empty joke about how you’re managing to keep up with them, “good work” Chris says, giving you a pat on the back whilst he turns back to the group who are laughing hysterically.

Expect this exact situation to repeat itself at least twice throughout the night. Spoiler: the joke is less and less funny every single time.

They disappear to the bathroom

You turn around and you’re left alone with Simon who tells you the other guys just really had to pee.

Turns out, guys, like girls, go to the bathroom together. They’re the ones calling us out for peeing in pairs, but they don’t even have doors. Do they compare and contrast? Do they wash their hands before they get in the next round of drinks?

It’s a mystery bigger than the Bermuda Triangle.

Smoking area

“Let’s we have a cig”, Tom says, Matt agrees and they walk outside. Neither of them actually smoke.

They sit down on the bench and look at you expectingly as you dig out a fresh pack of Malboro’s from your bag. Sure, you’re a nice gal and a good friend, so you dish out the cigarettes. They take a drag, splurt out a concealed cough because they don’t know what they’re doing, but they think they look cool so it’s okay.

Then they turn their backs to speak to the girls next to you, as you sit there laughing every so often to show the girls that your guy friends are really fucking funny, obviously.

Fight

The fight, there’s always the fight. It’s the part of the night that you look forward to least and you mistakenly hope every time that it won’t happen. But it always does.

Testosterone on testosterone on testosterone breeds a hell of a lot of tension, whether it’s between the best of friends or your boys and some randoms. Someone spills Simon’s drink, Tom barges past a bouncer, Matt gives someone’s girlfriend an inviting stare – there’s a million scenarios and they usually involved someone bigger than your friends – they’re hopeless.

You know you’ll be the buffer, grovelling and apologizing to the guy with his hand ready to punch Matt in the stomach. They never get anything out of it but it still happens. Every. Single. Time.

Going home

You just want to get in an Uber and wake up in the morning in a bed full of chips and salsa. But the boys insist on going to Vinnie’s pizza place, so you go to Vinnie’s pizza place.

“I’ll order guys, it’s fine”, Simon announces proudly as if he’s literally solving all of the world’s problems in one go. He returns to the table with five boxes of pizza, which is great because you’re ravenous and you didn’t pay a penny. He opens the boxes to reveal pizzas that resemble an explosion of male desires on a bed of oily af cheese. Ground beef, jalepenos, BBQ chicken, peppers, pepperoni, sweetcorn and even pineapple. You pick up the pizza and it’s literally dragged down by the toppings slowly falling off the edge.

The boys think it’s a great choice, you don’t

But you’ve learnt to never question Simon’s choices, because the boys are obviously always right when it comes to food.

Afters

Boys love playing games when they get home, but why? It’s circa 5am and it’s time for bed, who wants to sit on the couch for another three hours with a controller in one hand, a joint in the other, battling out to be champion of Fifa. Apparently guys do … especially if they’ve failed to pull.

Sure, you’ve had a good night but you want to just sit in front of the TV, watch a couple of episodes of New Girl and sober yourself up before passing out. You know not to argue though, because apparently “it’s what we do” and you can “go to your room and watch Netflix” if you want.

So you sit there, barely able to see the screen, ducking under the joint as it goes around before you’re on the brink of extinction by way of fatigue.

You’ll wake up smelling of beer and tequila with an obscene headache before being dragged out of bed to get a fry up and listen to the boys pepping themselves up because they didn’t pull, but “next time she’ll be so up for it.”

The night is always full of stereotypically awful male habits but for some reason, you can’t get enough and will almost definitely go out with the boys again next week.