It’s taking me a bit longer to blog about my Paris
experience than I thought it would and, in the meantime, I don’t want to miss
out on referencing things that are happening in the here and now. To that end,
I’m going to set aside Paris for just a moment, and tell you about the start of
my weekend…
But first, a bit of set-up: my sleeping habits are totally
out of whack, and have been for the duration of my time in London (even before
I moved in to Club Lithuanian Frat Guys—who, by the way, I’m more convinced
than ever might actually work for the bratva
because none of them ever seem go to work of any kind!). Most nights, I am
unable to fall asleep before about 2:00 AM.
What’s worse, is that for the last two weeks in a row, I
have not been able to fall asleep on Wednesday nights at all! The first time this happened, I assumed it was because of
the pounding music coming from Olik’s room, and that I was wound-up following a
midnight confrontation with him about it. (I hate conflict, you see, and it
makes me feel incredible anxious before/during /after.) But then, again this week, this whole lack-of-sleep on Wednesday night happened, and I’m not sure why.
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(Mostly) Unrelated Segue
I’m sorry, I need to interrupt the flow of this entry for a
moment. I just went downstairs to check on my laundry while in the midst of composing this entry, and ran into Olik, who
is completely pissed (in the British, drunken sense).
He cornered me in the hallway, put his arm around
me—which, by the way, is the size of a small tree trunk—and asked if I was
bothered by the music he’s blaring at this moment. Not wanting to get into it with him
again, I said that it was fine because I wasn’t doing homework, but that if I
started later I might ask him to turn it down.
At that point he nodded his head
and smiled and said, ‘You’re a good person—I like you. You’re like family now.’
Good Lord, does this mean that I’m now part of the bratva, too? I swear, if anyone tries to kiss me on the cheek while
I’m staying here, I will be getting right-the-fuck-out!
End Segue
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Back to the Wednesday sleeplessness issue, the reason this
is problematic is that my school week begins early on Thursday morning, meaning
that said-lack-of-sleep makes me feel like I’m in a fog for the next two days’
worth of classes (because, as most people know, the second day is almost worst
than the first). Then, by the time Friday afternoon rolls around—and I’m
finished with my classes for the week—I’m exhausted, jumpy, and feeling overall
weird.
So, now that you have this understanding of my mental-,
emotional-, and physical-states in mind, we can proceed to Friday (24
February)…
When I got home on Friday afternoon (circa 2:00 PM), my
upstairs flatmates were already going full-force with their music and drinking.
Mind you, all I wanted to do was sleep for a bit. But, that wasn’t going to
happen—even after asking them to turn it down, they didn’t. This just added to
my agitation.
In short, my only option was to get out of the flat before I
put my fists through a wall. That’s when I ultimately decided to accept my
friend TvH’s offer to go out with him and his friends to Soho that night.
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| A facefull of Purple Steel before goin' out... |
Fast-forward to 10:30 PM, and I was making my way from the
Tottenham Court Road tube stop toward The Edge. Now, although The Edge consists of multiple stories, we never left
the ground floor. This is mostly for three reasons:
(1) TvH, L. (his boyfriend), and I were waiting for the rest
of the group to show up;
(2) the bar—complete with hot, shirtless bartenders—was
within easy reach; and,
(3) there were hot go-go boys dancing on the stage (which is
tucked back behind the disco ball seen in the upper-right of the photo below).
 |
| The Edge, ground floor. (NB: This is not my photo!) |
Owing to some stereotypical gay drama, the last two members
of our group didn’t arrive until around 1:30 AM. But that was okay, because the
music was good (I was shocked by how much ‘new’ music I actually recognized),
and the remix the DJ played of Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ was amazaballs!
Eventually, four hours after arriving, the group decided
that it was time to check out someplace else. So, en masse, we made our way into the gaybourhood streets. After a
stumbling stroll, we finally arrived at G-A-Y Late.
Now, unfortunately, after standing in line for about 15
minutes, the bouncer allowed four of us to enter but arbitrarily blocked the
fifth, saying he was too drunk. Mind you, we were all at the same level of
sobriety—in fairness, we should all have
been blocked.
Well, not to be thwarted, we once again staggered into the
streets (pausing briefly at one of those port-a-urinals—using that was a
bizarre experience to be sure, but better than being caught on CCTV doing
something you shouldn’t, I guess!)
 |
| NB: This is not my photo, nor is it the one I used. Just for the record. |
Next stop: Ku Bar. My recollection of Ku Bar basically consists of another hot,
shirtless bartender with pecs like boulders and nipples like diamonds, a bit of
dancing—which, I’m sure to the non-drunkards in the room looked something along
the lines of the Elaine Benes dance—and a
marine layer of that artificial club-fog that smells like a cross between
artificial sweetener, armpits, and ball-sweat. But, there must have been a bit
more to it than just those three things, because I also have a distinct
recollection of feeling like it was reminiscent of my once-favorite stomping
ground, Velvet Nation.
Finally, at
around 3:30 AM, it was time to head home…
Except, I was a bit turned around, as were TvH and L. As an acquaintance of mine of Facebook just wrote about his similar experience this weekend, ‘’ That pretty much sums up our attempt at leaving.
Eventually, after walking in circles—Piccadilly Circus, to
be exact—for a bit, we found a bus that would take us to Canning Town station,
from whence we could all catch trains to our respective flats. (Of course, this
decision also necessitated that we wait until 5:30 AM for the trains to start
running again…with all of us dressed for going out, and not necessarily dressed
for warmth.)
But, I made it home safely (albeit not until after sunrise),
and without being part of a mugging scenario this time. YAY!
"amazeballs" was a term that was started by a comedic duo in LA that was co-opted and shot into the vernacular by over usage from Perez Hilton. I think we should never use it again.
ReplyDeleteGross. I feel so...dirty.
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