#oneaday Day 964: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

As someone who suffers from social anxiety, I’ve never really been one to just “go out” unless I had a very good reason, usually in the form of some friends asking me to join them. (I have, of course, tried going out by myself a few times in the past, but as chronicled in this post, it rarely ended well.)

As such, I’ve never really had somewhere that I could call “my local” with any confidence, there’s nowhere that I could accurately describe myself as a “regular” of. I’m not really bemoaning this fact — I have plenty of better things to do than sit in the pub — but it’s an aspect of life that I feel may have passed me by somewhat.

It was a little different back when I was at university, of course. We regularly frequented a wide variety of places that could quite politely be described as “dives”, but all of them had their own unique charms.

In the first year, there was Chamberlain Bar, which was the “local” for a group of several university halls of residence in the area. It wasn’t a particularly exciting bar, bearing a closer resemblance to the sort of half-hearted establishment that exists to make a few extra pennies for a community recreation centre than a jumpin’ nightspot, but it was “home” for a while. It was where most of us discovered the “Juicy Lucy” (pint glass, vodka, blue curaçao or however you spell it, double shot of Taboo, topped up with equal amounts orange juice and lemonade) and the “Passion Wagon”, officially the laziest cocktail of all time (shot of Passoa with a bottle of Reef emptied into it). It also had a tendency to throw crap events — our flat were the only attendees to dress up for “Seventies Night” and a Hawaiian-themed evening consisted of them turning the heating up full and serving nothing but the aforementioned Passion Wagons all night.

Southampton had one big club at the time when I was studying at the university. I’m not sure what it’s called now, but it used to be called Ikon and Diva, as it was one of those weird places that was split into two separate mini-clubs inside. It was shit. It was the sort of place that you went after you got really drunk and consequently barely remember anything from. Consequently, I barely remember anything about this place save for the fact I was clearly so impressed by it that I never went there ever again after my first visit.

There were plenty of smaller clubs, though. One that springs immediately to mind was New York’s, which has been closed and derelict for several years now. It was also shit, and like Ikon and Diva, it was the sort of place you only went to when absolutely off your tits. I only have random flashes of memories of the one (I think) time I went to New York’s, but I vividly recall looking down from a balcony to a stage-like area below, where a bunch of drunk men and women were stripping because the DJ had asked them to. Sure, I got to see tits, but even in my horrendously intoxicated state, I found the complete lack of human dignity on display to be more obnoxious than titillating. Consequently, I never went back there, either.

Then there was Lennon’s, which I think is probably home to most of my best “going out” memories, perhaps largely because it’s the place that several of us tended to frequent most often. I’m not entirely sure why this was, as Lennon’s was a fairly bare-bones club, being essentially a moderately-sized wooden room with a bar on one side and a DJ on the other, occasionally accompanied by a nice man named Vince who sold chips. They played good music, though, and often played host to live bands. I even performed there myself on a couple of occasions, with our university band the Coconut Scratch Orchestra discovering the folly of leaving drumbeats up to a backing track rather than a live drummer. (We all swore after that to never, ever play Mission: Impossible again.) It was also nice in that it was not frequented by the sort of waxed-chest, greasy-haired chav that frequented places like Ikon and Diva.

Would I describe myself as a “regular” at any of those places, though? No, probably not. I see a “regular” as someone who knows the bar staff by name and is recognised by bouncers; someone who meets friends there without having to make prior arrangements; someone who sees it as a “home away from home” — a place to socialise, hang out and just relax. I never quite saw it that way — it was always fun to go to Lennon’s, sure, particularly if my friend had enough to drink to get to the stage where he thought kebabs made him literally invincible, but it was never a place that I felt like I was a “part of”.

I’m not really sure if I’ve “missed out” on something by not having that kind of experience. I guess I have another chance when I hit, what, 50 years of age and start liking real ales or something?

#oneaday Day 743: Out

It occurs to me that I haven’t “been out” for ages. Not literally; I left the house both yesterday and today and will probably do so again tomorrow. I’m referring to what people mean when they say they are “going out” for an evening — that is, hitting the pubs and clubs of the local area, and probably drinking heavily along the way. Motivations for “going out” may vary — meeting with friends, going on the pull or simply just for something to do — but the results are usually pretty similar.

The vast majority of my “going out” when I was younger (read: during the university years) was conducted in conjunction with my good friend and Agricola demon Sam. We had quite a few memorable nights over the years, but they often tended to follow a fairly similar pattern.

Sam and I, and possibly a few others, would decide that we wanted to go out for some reason. In fact, there wasn’t always an explicit reason — “Let’s go to Lennon’s” was usually reason enough.

Regardless of whether there was a reason or not, we would get ourselves into whatever we considered our glad-rags to be, and head out for our target — usually either the aforementioned Lennon’s or Kaos, two grotty little student-heavy nightclubs within easy staggering distance of most of our homes, and two places with a predilection for cheap drinks that were usually 1) a knockoff of a recognisable drink and 2) out of date. Lennon’s, in particular, proudly sported a fridge which noted “contents may be out of date” and the happily sold you said contents for £1 a bottle.

The reason we went to these places rather than somewhere bigger and (arguably) better? Stubbornness, partly, but also none of us were particularly hardcore clubbers. None of us were into doing the drugs (to my knowledge, anyway) and none of us were bigtime drinkers. Both Lennon’s and Kaos allowed you the authentic clubland experience of being in a dark, smelly room with music too loud to talk to your friends over, but were both small enough that you never lost track of your friends for very long. Lennon’s, in particular, was roughly the size of a large garden shed and entirely contained in a single room, so if you had reached the stage where you couldn’t find your friends in there, you had definitely had too much.

Part of the appeal of “going out” for some is going on the pull, hoping to score some sweet lovin’ from some trophy guy/girl that you’d had your eye on all night. Or, as the evening went on, anyone who looked vaguely in your direction or accidentally made eye contact.

Suffice to say, our attempts in that regard were usually confined to standing on the perimeter of the dance floor having picked a “target” that we decided we quite liked, and then staring at them off and on for most of the night. When closing time rolled around, we would then leave with the lingering sense of regret that we should have probably actually gone and tried to talk to them, or at the very least danced near them in the vain hope they might pay attention.

I can only remember a single successful instance of “pulling” in my entire life. I was at Kaos, this time with the university theatre group, as it was our wont to invade Kaos every Monday night and enjoy their plentiful stocks of Newcastle Brown Ale and vodka-fake Red Bull. On this particular occasion, I had had a fair amount of vodka and fake Red Bull, and was consequently of the opinion that my dancing was The Shit.

“You ever tried ecstasy, mate?” yelled some Neanderthal I didn’t know in my ear as I wildly flailed around the dance floor.

“No,” I replied honestly. Almost immediately afterwards I was grabbed by a nearby blonde girl (named Beki, as it turned out) who proceeded to snog my face off.

“Yeah,” said the guy to me after Beki had allowed me to come up for air. “You’d love ecstasy.”

Quite.

So why don’t I “go out” any more? Several reasons, really: I don’t really drink any more; I live a long way from anyone who might want to “go out”; but most of all, I’m not sure I see the point any more.

That said, I can think of two people offhand who may well be reading this for whom I would happily make an exception and subject myself to the cavernous depths of The Dungeon or the sticky floor of Lennon’s. But that’s more because I haven’t seen them for ages and miss them rather than any particular massive desire to go clubbing. I certainly don’t feel the same pressure I once did that I perhaps “should” go out, head off somewhere by myself and have a miserable experience of the type outlined here.

Perhaps I’m just an antisocial old bastard. We can probably all agree on that.

#oneaday, Day 14: Is A Tardy Person Called A “Tard”?

Some people are habitually late for everything they do. Some more so than others. Some of them justify it under the guise of being “fashionably late”, that obnoxious concept where people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that the time on an invitation is open to negotiation, particularly if the event in question doesn’t involve people talking, singing, dancing or stripping (forget that last one) for your pleasure on a stage.

Where has this concept come from, though? eHow gives a frankly unnecessarily detailed five-step guide of how to be fashionably late. Urban Dictionary defines it as anywhere between 5 and 45 minutes depending on the event. But then they also define it as “showing up 5 minutes late with a supermodel on your cock”, so perhaps take their word with a grain or two of salt. The ever-reliable Ask Yahoo! fails to come up with any conclusive answers whatsoever. And no-one seems to be able to quote a reputable source pointing out where this concept came from in the first place, besides something vague about “rich and famous people at parties”.

So why do people do it, and where are they taught to be this way? I’m typically on time for things, unless it’s something REALLY IMPORTANT, in which case I will usually arrive three hours early, get bored, go and find somewhere that sells sandwiches, eat them, realise I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry the fuck up and end up rushing to get to the place at which I arrived exceedingly early in the first place. But social occasions? If I say I’ll be there at 8pm, I’ll be there at 8pm.

Many embittered experiences and mournful tweets from a lonely booth in the corner of a bar haven’t taught me my lesson yet. I turned up on time for my own stag night and my guests waltzed in the door approximately two hours later. I’d been having some fun on Twitter in the meantime, of course, but that meant by the time we were all drunk enough to collectively pretend we were a hot 18-year old virgin on Omegle my phone battery was almost flat. We went on to have an awesome night, incidentally, but it could have been two hours longer had people showed up when I’d asked them to.

People don’t change easily, so there’s no real sense complaining about this in the long run, though. So with that in mind, I think I’ll just keep on being the barfly for two lonely, Twitter-filled hours while I wait for people to show up. And the rest of you can take your time washing your balls, applying supposedly-attractive smelly liquids, polishing your shoes, swearing at holes in your trousers/pants/tights, realising that your boots don’t fit any more, finishing watching that hilarious series of 200 cat videos on YouTube or having a nervous breakdown in the meantime.

I’ll see you at the bar! (And just because I got there first does not mean I will be getting the first round in, just so you know. Actually, it does. I will have got the first round in. A round of one drink. For me. Yeah.)