Memories From London

Preface: This is something I wrote a few months ago about a little adventure I had one Thursday night while studying abroad in London. My friend Ryan's series of posts chronicling his hitch-hiking odyssey reminded me of this, and I figured you'd enjoy reading it. That being said, enjoy!

Thursday in London
It initially seemed like it was going to be a pretty slow night. Before heading down to the pub everybody in my group of friends were planning trips to Rome and France, and we wanted to relax in the Victory (the pub across from our flats) before finishing the trip planning and going to bed. All of my friends in the program were upperclassmen, and seemed to have lost their affinity for getting super trashed and doing stupid things, which is perfectly fine --my hat goes off to them for attaining that degree of responsibility and class-- but I wanted to do a little of that at least a few times while I was there. A couple pints and an Irish Car Bomb later I was ready to hit a club.

I decided to tag along with a couple of the girls I was studying with. Our destination that night was the Roadhouse, a ten minute bus ride from the Victory. After getting on the bus I immediately regretted coming, as all five girls were really obnoxious, loud, and depressingly American. One of the unspoken rules about public transportation in London is that you don't talk while en route; locals give you very haughty and condescending looks if you break the silence. It did not help things that the girls were pretty sauced already, throughout the ride I wanted to clap my hands over their mouths on a number of occasions to save myself the embarrassment of association. I had no frame of reference with any of them aside for one, with whom I only spoke in passing with, so to pass the time I decided to count the number of times the girls said "like" during the bus ride. All in all I tallied up 128 unnecessary uses of the word during the trip.

It was bliss getting off of the bus, at least on the street the sounds of traffic blur accents and diminish volume. We headed to the club, were handed some half-off coupons for entry on the curb, I got carded for the first time (the attendant outside thought I looked like Kurt Cobain in my drivers license picture, a fair comparison I suppose), and we went inside.

The club was really surprising, as it was designed with a very overtly American feel to it. A motorcycle was parked on the center island at the bar, neon American car signs (Pontiac, Ford, etc.) and other pieces of car-themed Americana were everywhere. Given America's less-than-flattering international standing, that there were so many Londoners who would willingly patronize such a place seemed pretty odd. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

I headed off to the bathroom, and the girls headed to the main bar. I joined them shortly thereafter, and we waited to place some drink orders. They were getting Long Island Iced Teas, but the drink seemed too mild to kill the painful embarrassment I felt at being attached to these obnoxious girls, so I opted for a shot of 151. They didn't have any, so I just got some rum. Apparently in the deafening confusion the bartender thought I meant two shots instead of just one; a mistake, but a rather pleasant one. Besides, two shots of pirate juice would do roughly the same damage as a single shot of 151. I downed them upon receipt. The cost for the shots was a staggering six pounds (twelve USD), but I sucked it up and forked out the bills. Might as well indulge myself during my first real British club experience, right? Besides, the bartender wielded his glasses and bottles of liquor with an artistic grace, I figured the gouging was worth the entertainment.

I tried to engage the girls in some sort of conversation through the chest-rattlingly loud dance music, but it was to no avail, so when the live band came on stage I decided to check them out. I really can't enjoy live music unless I know the band or I'm severely inebriated, so I indulged the performers with some half-hearted jumping around and beating of fists for a song or two before retiring to the bar for another few shots. Try as I might, the liquor simply would not hit me, probably an effect of my strange new surroundings.

I pushed my way back to the other side of the club to check on the girls. We did a round of tequila (which I thankfully did not have to pay for), and headed as a group to the stage. I tried to engage one of the girls in some dancing, bought us a round of Iced Teas, but she ended up making out with another random guy later in the night, so it was all just an expensive misadventure. I downed my own Iced Tea pretty quickly and considered getting some more to drink, but a review of the growing collection of discouraging receipts in my pocket and the rapidly diminishing thickness of my wallet kept me from getting anything else.

I did a few circuits around the club, looking for a female of suitable breeding age to waste some time with, but all of the moderately attractive girls that weren't ten years my senior had their faces locked with other men already. I fucking hate dancing, especially by myself, getting drunker would have been pointless and expensive, so I decided to brave London's night bus system and find my way back to the flats. The girls encouraged me to stay, but their misplaced faith in my talents with women wasn't enough to keep me, so I bid them adieu. I was bored, had spent too much money, and wanted to go to bed. I made my way to the front entrance and onto the street.

It was here that I really started to feel the effects of what I had consumed. In the club, I think, there were too many people for me to stumble around and too much going on for me to pay attention to the strange, wonderful things happening in my head, but when I hit the cool night air I jumped a full two or three points on the Andy Fry Inebriation Scale. I was asked if I wanted a taxi by the guys outside, but with little money and an inflated ego I denied them in interest of seeking out a bus stop.

I hadn't been paying much attention to how I had actually gotten to the Roadhouse, and given the state I was in I probably wouldn't have been able to figure out how to get back to the main street anyway, so I set out on a street that seemed appropriate. After about five minutes of aimless walking I got lost. There were many small little streets with nobody on them, few cars, and, most importantly, no bus stops in sight. After a while I figured if I just stuck to one direction I'd eventually come to a major road with a bus station. This proved equally fruitless, and soon I was completely out of conceivable solutions for getting home. I saw a guy with a bike and carriage on a street corner and asked him how much it would be to take me to Edgware Road. "Fifteen pounds." He replied. Out of nowhere a guy came up and joined in on the conversation, at the moment I thought he was another cab driver, so I ignored him.

"Fifteen pounds, that's thirty USD man, do you think I could get it down to ten?" I asked the cab driver, not really intending to actually use him to get to Edgware, but bartering for the hell of it.

The strange man who had interrupted me originally butted in again. "Oi, fifteen pounds? I kin direct you to the bus station fer two quid chum."
"Really?" I said, astonished at this man's kindness and my own good luck at finding him, "Excellent, let's do it."

It took me a while to realize who I had just agreed to chauffeur me around London's West End. He introduced himself as Gavin from Belfast, temporarily in London, currently without home. Only upon later reflection did I surmise that it was probably unwise to follow around a strange man in a foreign city, although at the time I thought he was the greatest guy on Earth. He was considerably drunk, and offered me a drag on his bottle of white wine (enshrouded, of course, in a brown paper bag). I refused, partly out of distrust, partially for fear of his questionable hygiene, mostly because I was too drunk to imbibe anything further. Gavin was a really friendly guy, and we talked a lot on our walk to my bus stop-

"So, where ya from Andy?"
"Salt Lake City, Utah!"
"Ooooooh, Salt Lake City then? With them Salt Flats, roight?"
"Yeah man!" I was shocked a guy living in bomb shelter in urban London knew about the Salt Flats. That, friends, is the definition of globalization.
"Yeah, them Salt Flats, with them cars gettin' up to five hunnerd, six hunnerd miles per hour out there, eh?" Gavin continued.
"Yeah! And they hit those fucking pebbles and go flyin'!" I replied. This imagery pleased Gavin greatly. We continued on for a while about the Salt Flats and a few other small topics of conversation. I'd never met a man from Belfast, so I decided to chat with him about the only piece of Irish "current events" I had any knowledge of:
"Yeah! So, Belfast huh?"
"Aye, Belfast."
"You guys have some problems with the IRA up there, right? Tragic stuff."
"Aye, fuck, the IRA the NFW, the…" He listed off a long series of abbreviated Irish freedom fighter armies, most of which I had never heard of. We walked on talking about the politics of the situation for a while until Gavin got to the subject of his wife-

"Well, me misses has gone missin', I dunno where she is." Gavin interjected.
"Ah, that's too bad," I said, " where you think she could have gone to?"
"I dunnoh man, I hope she's fuckin' trashed at the moment, havin a great time. OH SHIT MAN, stop!"
"What?" I said, dumbfounded. I stopped and looked around. I had apparently walked under some sort of overhead street sign, which Gavin regarded as unwise.
"Oi, don' ever fuckin' walk unner those man, bad luck!"
"Oh, oh, ok. Pretty superstitious then, huh?"
"Oi, fuck man, I'm incredibly superstitious, ya NEVER walk unner those."

Throughout the walk Gavin talked to almost everybody on the street, homeless and midnight street-sweeper alike. I had no idea that homeless culture was so extensive; everyone knew everyone. Mostly they talked about how much money they had made throughout the day through various enterprises. A majority were drunk and sprawled out on the sidewalk, the others were walking somewhere, probably to go get drunk like the people on the sidewalk. It's probably unwise to drink yourself into incapacitation at that age, but if I lived on the street I think I would too.

The last topic of conversation was the Fourth of July, and whether I'd be celebrating it here. I said I would, but Gavin said he'd be in court for peeing on a police car. Surprising confession, and a seemingly senseless thing to do, but we all have our shortcomings, don't we? Gavin and I kept walking and talking until we reached the stop I needed, I ended up paying him three pounds for his excellent, much needed service instead of his asking price of two, and promised him we'd have a chat if I ever met him again. He stumbled off in search of another lost individual to guide.

His first target was a woman obviously waiting for the bus, but in his questionable sobriety he tried to convince her that she was lost and attempted to guide her elsewhere. She protested that she was my cousin (hence, had to stay), and we shook hands to prove to Gavin that we were acquainted. She, though, held onto my hand for a lot longer than perfunctory politeness requires, and was giving me serious sex-eyes. "Goodie!" I thought, "Perhaps this night won't end in vain." Gavin eventually departed, shouting in a half-friendly, half-belligerent fashion towards a potential group of tourists in need of guidance.

The aforementioned woman at the bus stop was apparently a South African model working in London until December. She seemed reasonably clear headed, and aside for the questionable alignment of her teeth she could definitely be model material. We talked about Gavin, about how much difficulty we were having in understanding each other's accents, about South Africa, all manner of small talk. Incidentally, we were taking the same bus, so we sat next to each other on the top deck. The bus takes a drastic transformation at two in the morning; while the one I rode in on was completely silent aside for the girls I was with, everybody gets really loud and very angry on the night bus. There were only slightly fewer exclamations of "sod off" during that ten minute ride than "likes" on the first one. I've always thought sod off was a really funny exclamation, but apparently it's an equivalent of "fuck you" in England. I briefly considered some strategy for getting a little quality time with the nameless South African model, but in the end I didn't follow through with any of it. Besides, if she's the type to pick up random drunk American boys at two AM the day before an eight AM photo shoot then she probably plays host to a few nasty venereal diseases.

All in all it was an excellent, incredibly memorable night. Gavin gave me hope for humanity; it probably would have been more lucrative for him to just lure me into an alleyway, rape me to death and steal my money, but he decided to keep his word and led me to where I needed to be. The homeless, or so many believe, are an untrustworthy class of demi-humans, but I --the clueless, lost, drunk foreigner-- was not taken advantage of in the slightest. Our interaction transcended the class boundaries that separated us, and we even connected a little, despite our drunkenness. I consider the night the utmost adventure.