Greetings to the potential millions of people I am addressing for the first time!!! It's Cecilia here, not Bug. Rather than doing all the boring introduction stuff (and it would be boring because I lead a singularly uninteresting mundane life consisting pretty much entirely of uni and work) I decided to launch into an account of my antics last night. For starters, I Went Out. Now, considering that I'm 22, this may not seem like a big occasion. But trust me (and Bug will definitely reinforce this), it is. I never really got into the whole 'going out' scene. I just felt out of place and ugly. I didn't even go to a nightclub until I was close to twenty (legal age here is 18), and then my visits were few and far between. The fact that until recently I worked every single Saturday at one job from 8 am until 5 pm played a pretty big role in my lack of going out too, plus I have another waitressing job (which I'm still at) where I work pretty much every single Saturday night, and quite often Friday nights too. So I really didn't have very much opportunity to go out, drink lots (which I MUST do when I go out in order to dance unselfconciously) and have ample recovery time (alcohol normally makes me really ill - not just hangover symptoms but nasty I-must-stay-near-the-loo symptoms). But even on rare Saturday nights off I wouldn't go out. I think I went from January of 2004 until November without ever going out. Then I went to Japan, lost at least five kilos in a week, then went on a Contiki tour around Europe. If you're not familiar with the Contiki tour, basically it's a tour for Aussies, Kiwis, Poms and Yanks (and yes, it is definitely necessary to use the nasty nationality abbreviations in order to fully understand the kind of tour I'm talking about) between the ages of 18 to 35 where you jump on a bus and party your way around the globe. Away from the restrictive air of Hobart (we have only 3 decent nightclubs and you are guaranteed to run into people you know at every single one) and feeling pretty confident about losing the weight, I became a bit of a party gal. And then I returned home on Christmas, got even fatter than I was before, and didn't go out to a club again until I think the end of July. Now I didn't actually intend to ramble off into all this background info, but I think it was kind of necessary in order for you to understand how momentous it is when I Go Out. And I didn't go out without my nice safe Bug and Boo, who know how lacking in confidence I am in the whole nightclub scene and babysit me accordingly, I Went Out with most of my favourite Banquets girls (I work in the Banquets and Conventions department) because it was one of their birthdays - Belinda's*, and some of Belinda's friends, and her absolutely fantastic boyfriend Adrian*. I mean, not only is this bloke in his last year of law at uni, he's nicely tall (yet not too tall), nice looking, well spoken, kind, generous and has a social conscious. Oh, and he knows his Tasmanian forests, very important to me as I'm a definate greenie. And he dances if given enough alcohol. I hope Belinda knows how lucky she is!!! So the night began at an Italian restaurant where I had beautiful food, great company, and my favourite drink of tequila and redbull (minimum hangover and lots of dancing energy) at the bargain basement price of only $7. Then we went next door into this very cool cocktail bar that I didn't even know existed. Great decor and a kind of underground vibe. It reminded me of this place I went to in Berlin. I'm surprised I haven't heard you raving about it Bug - it's definately your kind of place. I had a lovely drink entitled 'Sex in a bubblegum factory' which I could not bring myself to ask for. Luckily one of my girls had just ordered one before the barman turned to me, so I was able to say 'I'll have one of those too'. The Banquets girls found my prudishness hilarious. But as I told them, I can ask for a 'Cocksucking Cowboy', a 'Screaming orgasm', or even a 'Long, slow screw up against the wall', but not 'Sex in a bubblegum factory'. It just seems wrong. Bubblegum makes me think of round-faced little American children blowing bubbles on Seseme Street, and orange Ooma-loompas, and those things definitely do not go with sex. Then Belinda, all her non-banquet friends and one of the banquet girls went down to Isobar the club, and the remaining girls and I jumped in Katie's* car as she was the only one of us driving. The plan was that she would go leave the car at her house, which was pretty close, and her brother (who owed her massively for all the times she'd dropped him out) would drive us down to Isobar, which is at Hobart's waterfront. Unfortunately when we got to Katie's her brother had already gone off to a party himself, so Katie decided just to drive on down and leave the car parked near the club overnight and catch a taxi home, because she wanted to drink up. She was trying to drown her sorrows over the loss of her own car. A BIT OF AN ASIDE ABOUT KATIE'S CAR AND HER HORRIBLE PARENTS Katie is a really striking looking girl - tall, slim with really thick beautiful long red hair in a gorgeous shade of red that cascades down her back and refused to be controlled. She hates it, and everyone else loves it. She often goes a couple of days without brushing it because she's so busy and prefers to try and grab some sleep rather than worrying about such things as showering and hairbrushing, yet her hair still looks fantastic. She's very kind, warm and intelligent. She too is studying law at uni, but she hates it and has decided to leave uni next year and not complete her final year that would see her graduate with a law degree. The car Katie was currently driving was her parent's station wagon, which is for sale. They had already bought a brand new car, which unfortunately Katie was not insured to drive under their new insurance. Katie had been left her grandmother's old car a couple of years previously. It was an old maroon Honda hatchback from 1973 that was constantly broken down, wouldn't work in the cold and due to the dodgy brakes couldn't be driven in the wet. So not the perfect car by any means, but she Absolutely, Passionately Loved This Car. Maybe the fact that her nan had given it to her was part of that. On Friday night, the entire banquets department worked at two different dinners until 1.30 am. I was at a dinner for the Malaysian Students Association of Uni, and Katie was over at a Liberal Party dinner that our Prime Minister attended (earlier that night I'd worked a Liberal party cocktail party and given John Howard our PM a mineral water - excitement!). We all had to work on Saturday, poor Katie at 6 am where she waited on the Prime Minister in her very tired, emotional state. Her emotional state was because her father was up before she left for work, and told her how awful she looked and wanted to know if she was going to put on some makeup. My father would never dream of saying such a thing to me. He might say I looked tired or unwell, or suggest repeatedly that I head out into our gym (we have a mini gym at our house that I steadfastly refuse to go and be humiliated in) for a 'workout'. Admittedly, Katie hadn't had a shower, brushed her hair (just thrown it up an a ponytail) or even brushed her teeth (our department has a never-ending supply of mints, don't worry), but she still looked good, just had red, tired eyes. When Katie arrived home from work, her brother comes out and tells her that her car isn't there. 'Where is it?' Katie asks, thinking maybe her father has taken it to be repaired, because her parents had told her it was undriveable. 'It's been sold', he tells her. To Katie's disbelief, and to the shocked disbelief of all of us banquets girls that Katie told that night at dinner, her parents had advertised her car for sale that day in the local paper, and sold it to an international student at the uni from Indonesia for $100. And they didn't even give her the $100. Her parents had lied to her, it still was driveable, because the student took it for a test drive. Katie is not from a poor family. They didn't need to sell her car or anything like that. Her family is very well off. They live in a big old house in a tree-lined street in West Hobart, an expensive suburb. Her father works for a large firm and is based in Melbourne, and comes home every second weekend or something like that. Her mother spends a couple of months of each year travelling around Europe on her own, and Katie went to the most expensive coed school in Southern Tasmania. I just could not believe that any caring parents would do something so premediated and inconsiderate that they knew would upset their own child so much. It wasn't their car to sell. It belonged to Katie, given to her by her own grandmother. Not only had they sold her car, they hadn't taken all of her 'toys' out of the car. They had left a lucky charm she'd brought in Thialand and she was very attached to inside the car. When they sold it. Without her knowledge. I'm sorry, but I just can't get over this fact. It seems amazing. So, anyway, Katie wanted to get very drunk and forget about this massive betrayal by her parents. BACK TO LAST NIGHT So Katie drives us back into Hobart's nightclub 'district'. Isobar, the club Belinda and her friends had gone to, has a reputation for being completely shit now. This time last year you would have had to queue for an hour to get in anytime after midnight - now you can just wander in. It's gone out of fashion for some mysterious reason, and Club Surreal, another of Hobart's 3 clubs, is now the 'place to be'. The other two girls with Katie and I wanted to go to Club Surreal, line up now while there wasn't much of a line (it was only about 11 pm) and get a stamp, then leave immediately and go to Isobar, spend some time with Belinda because it was her birthday night out, then head back into Surreal, bypassing the now anticipated wait of about an hour to get in because they have stamps. Katie and I saw the brilliance of this plan, and agreed, and we went and queued up at Surreal. The line was pretty huge, but it was moving quickly. Unfortunately, it was here that the point of this whole massive epistle of mine happened. I HAD to PEE right NOW!!!!!! When females drink, they need to pee. A lot. This is a well-documented occurance. What all females also know is that it is necessary when drinking to put off going for that first pee as long as is possible, because once you have 'broken the seal' and gone for that first time, you need to go at least every hour. Often every half an hour, if you've been drinking lots of spirits. I had broken the seal just before we left the restaurant, meaning that the minute we walked into the first bar the first place I went was to the toilet. I needed to go again a bit before we left the bar, but we left in a bit of a rush and it wasn't urgent, so I didn't go. At Katie's, we just waited in the car while she went to get her brother who wasn't there. In this line to get into Surreal I had to go so badly I thought I was going to wet my pants. So I ask Katie if she could please do me a massive favour, and drive me down to the nearby service station so I could use their toilet. 'Of course hon,' Katie says, because she's such a nice person. On the very quick walk back to the car that was parked half a block away I concentrated with all my might on Not Peeing. We got in the car, Katie took off and drove forward about two houses. 'Stop!' I yelled. I was worried I may actually wet myself, so I made her stop the car. I got out of the car, ran back behind a parked black car (very nice car by the way) ducked down behind this car in this darkened street, and peed. In the gutter. For simply ages. Longest pee of my life, I swear. Luckily I was wearing a skirt, so this was accomplished with very little effort. Some loud people walked down the footpath on the other side of the road, but I was well hidden behind this car in a line of cars parked along the roadside. Now, peeing in general doesn't worry me. It's a perfectly normal function, after all. If you don't pee, you die - fact! Being an environmental science student where the entire class heads off into the bush for the entire day I became perfectly comfortable with peeing away from toilets. I'm totally unembarrassed about heading off into the bush when we stop for lunch on a field trip, as other girls all around me are heading off on the same purpose. We even yell to each other 'don't come down here' when you hear another person approaching through the undergrowth. I personally found peeing in a gutter a much more attractive prospect that peeing in a leech infested buttongrass moorland where you constantly feel your bum checking for the disgusting little bloodsuckers. But then that's my environmental science group of people, who have no inhibitions about such bodily functions. There was even a small hardcore group of students in my year who'd get their gear off and go skinnydipping every opportunity they had on field trips, despite it being below 10 degrees on one occasion. The witness to my humiliation last night was Katie, who although being a lovely girl would see what I did as being disgusting and unnecessary, as would everyone else in my department at work. And everyone else will definately find out and condemn me for it. Katie would have told the other two girls we were out with, and as one of them is a very judgement person who loves a malicious gossip, she'll tell everyone else. After my little wee-wee by the roadside, Katie and I decided to bypass Surreal and head down to Isobar to be with Belinda, as it was her birthday after all. At Isobar, Katie then decided not to go in, but to go to Telegraph, a nearby bar, in search of her very good friend who was out for her 21st birthday. I went up and did a lot of dancing with Belinda, her friends and the one other banquets girl left, and had a great time, despite Isobar being pretty damn deserted and there being some creepy old men, and some very forceful Sudanese men. Mel, one of Belinda's friends that I hit it off with, and I dragged Belinda up onto the stage where we danced for the whole of our stay. When I headed home, I spent the rest of the night awake (due in no doubt to the four cans of redbull I'd consumed). I didn't get to sleep until about 9am. I just kept dwelling on my gutter pee, and the ramifications that is going to have on me at work. When I woke up at noon, not at all hungover and still buzzing with redbull-induced euphoria, I decided to lie to nice, kind, lovely sweet Katie. Because I am a bitch. I am, there's no denying that fact. I sent her a message saying that I'd had a great time last night, hope she'd had the same, and that early this morning I'd started peeing blood and freaked out thinking I'd done something to my stomach with all the tequila I'd drunk, and gone to the doctor only to be told I had a bladder infection. I am such a lying, self-preserving, scheming bitch. Any girl who has had a bladder infection knows how damn horrible they are. I had two in three weeks a couple of years ago, and have never been the same since. They are awful. Now I've lied about having one, I think karma will punish me and I'll truly get one, or ten. And I'll deserve it too. Katie, being the beautiful person that she is, sent me back a nice sympathetic message saying 'poor you, no wonder you had to pee last night'. I am wracked with guilt for lying to her about such a stupid thing, yet I don't think I could stand the behind-my-back gossip about my drunken antics on the weekend at work. At least when they talk about me peeing in a public place they'll say 'but she couldn't help it, she was getting a bladder infection'. It's a small thing, but hopefully it should mean I won't be too ashamed to hold my head up at work.
And so that's me. This absolutely mammoth posting has let you know me most intimately, with all my faults, and golly there's heaps. But I've told you all the truth, you faceless people, which is more than I told poor Katie.
Cecilia, for the very first time.
*just like Bug I've changed names. This state is just too small not to. |
