The set-up: it was a Saturday night, only around 11, already in pajamas and ready for bed. Had my Saturday night and Sunday morning gone to plan I would have spent hours in a blur of junk food and movies I only vaguely wanted to watch.
My parents were already in bed (maybe that's where I get my shut-in genes from) when a friend of mine, Jack, rang me up. He said "hey, do you want to come to the village? me and some friends from work are going". He works at a bar, one that me and some other friends continually say we'll soon go to yet never do. I told him I probably couldn't go; I was vague with my reasons why, as if not going out drinking in The Village was simply because I wasn't feeling it, and not because I probably wouldn't be allowed to go and couldn't wake my parents up to be told I wouldn't be allowed to go.
He said "but your always saying you want to go to the village". This reminds me that I am always saying I want to got the village, or out quite literally anywhere on planet Earth. I say I'll go, feeling that sudden urge - and don't say you haven't felt it in your own most impressionable moments too - to say yes to everything and that the actual act of saying something as positive as Yes justifies any amount of stupid shit you do because of it. Jack says he and the work friends are getting a taxi down there, and that they'll meet me outside the Blagdon Arms and I should be down there quick!
I change into day clothes as quietly as possible and leave, leaving the TV on in the living room and locking the door behind me - both questionable choices in retrospective. The Village isn't far from my house, a small street with a barbers, vets and a few pubs. I've never been out drinking, only drunk at friends or random people's houses, although I have run through empty streets in the middle of the night before; a relaxing experience, the grand openness of the world making one want to stretch out their arms and jump around as much as possible. I do so on this night for the first time with an actual destination to get to.
I stood outside the Blagdon Arms a good ten minutes looking like a pleb, my constant strolling up and down the street and eyes surveying the drunk people there possibly making me look like someone on a large amount of paranoia-inducing drugs. I tried ringing Jack but no reply. Eventually I text him and he text back saying he was inside and for me to come in. I was stopped at the door by one of two security men; he said "Excuse me, have you got any ID?" I told him no and he said "well I can't let you in then". A painfully drama-less encounter.
So I went back to standing on the sidewalk. I explained the situation on the phone to Jack - who had managed to get in by clinging to the sides of work friends as they went through the door - who kept me updated with texts detailing how many gulps of his pint were left until he came out to meet me.
By the time he did come out he was already pissed and on the move - on an unbreakable path - towards his house. He kept asking me to come sleep at his, even text his mother that he would be brining me home despite my protests, which had to do with the obvious weirdness of my parents waking up the next morning to find their only son gone. But being I was in the mood to be a Yes Man I followed him home anyway.
His house, now asleep, felt like a blank version of the one I'd only seen lit up by house parties. He loaded me up with a stash of drinks he kept in his room, making me wonder about the fact that I didn't have any drinks in my room, and we sat on the sofa. He put on Celebrity Juice and we talked about how funny Keith Lemon is then talked about which host was hotter; he feigned disgust when I said Fearne Cotton. I sat there downing shots and Jack Daniels trying to catch up to Jack's level of drunkenness.
We ended spending most of the night talking girls; the one that I like in particular. I told him I'd asked her out twice now and she said going out with her would be unfair on me. He didn't get this and I told him she had an eating disorder but he still didn't get it. He went on his phone and started reading jokes about her disorder. I should have felt bad but I really didn't; me and him sat there and laughed hysterically. There was something comforting in it, I guess, in being able to talk about my day problems which seemed so world shattering out in the real world and sit here, partly drunk on a friend's sofa while I should be home in bed, and have him be horrible and make fun of her. I guess that was what I was really looking for when I started talking about her.
He loaded up playlists of gangster rap and we managed to dance to it while still sitting; we sat through moments of Celebrity Juice which you'd think would be extremely awkward watching with only one other friend yet really weren't; and we both decided I would stagger home at two. Which I did. I got home, hadn't been caught out, and downed pints of water to make sure there'd be no hangover. I was glad I'd went out.
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