My sober clubbing adventure

Chapter one: Powdering my nose

So, I start off by getting into my emo gear. Getting ready is by far always the best part of a night out (alongside the cheesy chips). Who doesn’t want to blend two Natural Collection eyeshadows together and pretend you’re a Youtuber? Well, a vlogger only if you count the windowsill ladybirds as viewers. After deleting about eight identical selfies and missing the intended bus due to my vanity, I’m ready to depart, in high spirits for the evening ahead.

The lipstick was horribly dry but worth it

Chapter two: The waiting game

So I never experienced a proper Freshers' night out before, and I had heard through the grapevine that it is on these alcohol fuelled extravaganzas that you vomit glitter, find out the meaning of life and, most importantly for insecure teenagers with a disposition towards co-dependency, meet your lifelong friends. I figured I would pose looking cool on the side of the bus stop and the friends will just gravitate towards me. But I couldn’t seem to understand them.

All I heard was a series of roars and screams to each other with the occasional coherent words such as ‘PREEEZ’, ‘SESHHHHH’ and ‘YASSSSSS’. I hadn’t seen such primitive basicness since the learn-to-read Biff and Chip books from primary school. They were all in labelled halls t-shirts like some kind of cult, and kept running in the road. I’m guessing their reason for doing that was being out of it, as the self-hate that comes from uni doesn’t kick in until November. It was okay, one mature student decided to start a chat with me.

His opening line? ‘Are you easy?’.

So after about forty minutes of a serious bus droughts and abuse from Connaught across the road, the big security fellas rounded up the freshers like cattle to walk to Highfield. I already went down my three flights of stairs from my flat that day so walking was obviously of the question. So, I called an Uber like any self-respecting Soton girl and jumped into the ambiguous-maybe-a-sex-offender-mobile. Was it the right car? I still don’t know to this day, but at least I got to Orange Rooms.

Chapter three: The grand arrival

So, the theme of this little gathering was that of a ‘Freshers' Zoo’ which means that fancy dress and an overrunning theme would be a given, right? Well, there was an inflatable giraffe and a couple of girls in deely boppers so unless I walked into a Children In Need event by accident I think that was it. There was a smoke machine courtesy of a nearby school disco and a couple of fish in a tank that I think might have been dead.

Fortunately, all of those intent of ‘pulling’ managed to make the night be of a zooish atmosphere anyway, regardless of the lack of decoration. A certain fond memory of mine is this couple dryhumping on the sofa next to me, with the girl refusing to break eye contact with me the entire time she was doing it. Believe me, I tried.

Chapter four: Dancing through the pain

At that point, my eyes were burning with the sheer horror and I was ready to go home, but my boyfriend wanted to ‘get his money’s worth’. To him, we would have fun goddammit. Even if it kills us. So, we danced awkwardly a bunch of obscure remixes which butchered a vwide range of all our favourite club classics; like Despacito and Despacito. Did you know that was a popular song? It’s a good thing the DJ kept putting it on every ten minutes or I never would have known. The DJ even took the liberty of checking after each song if there was any freshers there tonight. The rabid screams they made in response I felt were a cause for concern and perhaps a cry for help, but he seemed to be satisfied.

Still, I got into the slut-dropping as we all do but even that was ruined by this strange figure from the corner of my eye. It’s a given that you’ll always get that one girl in the club giving you evils for no apparent reason, but this was a whole other realm of disturbing. It wouldn’t matter what floor I was on, how far away I was originally from her when I moved away, but whenever I dared to crack a smile she would suddenly appear right next to me, straight in there boring into me with her demon eyes.

Was she a student? A ghost? A manifestation of my conscience? I don’t even 100% know looking back if she was real, but that amount of shade on my first night out was a big fat NOPE.

Chapter five: Defeat

The time was a few minutes past midnight. Cradling my chocolate buttons, I scurried of into the night like a true Cinderella with the promise of Rick and Morty and pyjama bottoms awaiting me.

My natural form as a human burrito shall return with a vengeance